It Takes a Village

I haven’t felt my best today. I’m sluggish (more than usual) and my stomach is all churned up. However, I got a bit of a boost by a visit from my grandson, son, and daughter-in-law. I haven’t seen them in quite some time and it was long overdue. My grandson has grown to be such a handsome young man. My son and daughter-in-law both looked healthy and happy. Could you ask for much more?

After they left, I needed some time to myself, quiet time. Last year, we bought a shipping container to help store some of our overabundance of “stuff”. I’ve been depositing some of that stuff through the course of the year. Some has been neatly placed in air-tight totes and other have not. Today I moved the nots to totes and was also able to get a mental inventory of my Christmas Village pieces. Some I had forgotten I even purchased.

I spent the better part of the afternoon peaking into totes, opening boxes and bags, trying to get some idea of how I am going to use the pieces. I am currently working on a project that involves setting up village scenes, photographing them, and writing poems to them. The end goal is to publish them in a sort of coffee table book. I am trapped in an avalanche of fake snow. There are so many totes, so many buildings.

I floated the idea to my wife of renting a temporary structure when the book comes out (hopefully in a couple years), setting up all of the pieces and scenes, charging admission, or accepting donations to a food bank, and selling the book at the event. She didn’t say no, but kind of gave me that look like I was nuts. I see that look a lot. It’s well deserved. I still think it’s a great idea and that it will get my book some wonderful exposure.

I gave up on tote count. Let’s just say that the shipping container is forty feet long, more than half of one side has totes of Christmas Village, totes stack five high. That’s a lot of totes, with many of them containing five or more buildings. That doesn’t include the buildings in the house I’m currently working with or the ones in the car that I just acquired. I have a little bit of everything and have already written thirty six poems. Of course, I can’t do this alone. My wife helps out tremendously with the little details that my big fingers can’t handle and she has lots of ideas.

I’ve had a number of pieces given to me. My sister-in-law says she has a bunch for me, but it’s been a while since she said that. I’m always open to donations of village pieces or even ideas. Like I said, I can’t do this alone. It takes a village.

Let’s talk soon…