Abstracts in oil

Or was that extracts and shortening?

My reflection smiles back at me from just above the front porch railing--the glass is dirty, and double-paned, and maybe that's why, but I look younger and thinner and I don't mind looking at myself there.
I am slightly blurred, and I think to myself, "Yes, life is not as clear as I had expected it to be," but then I remember that I never expected anything from life but happiness.
The future was always very vague on the rare occassions it entered my mind at all, though the past would gurgle to the surface fairly often, and the present feels like a magical combination of both.
Everything I am is a product of my past, but I revel in the way it all feels around me in the air I breathe.
Right now, more than ever, I am caught in this web of past, present and future, feeling confused sometimes and feeling like I've warped through time somehow--grabbing pieces of each segment of my time line (past, present, and future) and jumbling them all up like a bowl full of marbles.
Living in the location of my past while embarking on a very unexpected future is only part of the vertigo.

Glancing back up to the reflection of me, I see...headlights approaching the driveway, through the distortion of a clear glass bottle on the windowsill.
Far away, tiny.
But my breath quickens--
He is home!
My heart thuds in my chest, my fingers dance across this keyboard, a mere shadow of the dancing my heart is doing.
That smile, that long stride coming swiftly across the kitchen to scoop me into a "Hi-honey-I'm-home" embrace!

Twenty minutes later, we have stopped embracing and smiling and touching.
I have rubbed down his tired back and sent him to shower.
We are going to a dinner party and my blueberry pie is almost done.
I should freshen up, get dressed, but my feet are tired from holding me up all day at the rental shop on the mountain.
Such a beautiful spot...the lake is finally frozen and the top of the mountain has almost enough snow to open!
I love my job.
I love helping people.

I miss my kids.
They'll be back from their Christmas visit to their father in a few short days, and I can hardly stand the wait!!

I hope you had a wonderful holiday season.
Welcome, 2009!