Life is made up of both the grand sweeping panoramas, like this hidden canyon, and the small things, like fixing the toilet. The Pataha by Steve Henderson

It’s not that he’s getting into installation art or anything, it’s that he knows the basics of fixing a toilet, which, while it may not rank with six-pack abs or rippling biceps on the sexiness thermometer, is way up there on the real life, I-like-living-with-this-guy scale.

The initial fix, after the handle broke off, involved fluorescent orange cord wrapped around one of the Toddler’s plastic blocks, creating a one of a kind pull toy until we got it through to the Toddler that this was not a porcelain product for her playtime use.

Then something happened with the inner sanctum of plastic and metal parts, resulting in a stream of living water that flowed into the holding tank and out of the holding tank but never into the bowl itself. A temporary fix was attained by removing the tank top so that we could manually adjust the parts, but I assure you that, while the Norwegian hoped that this would be a long-term temporary solution, I emphasized the temporary aspect of it over the long-term part.

While the obvious next step – replacing the entire toilet with a shiny new model – seems the simplest, complications arose because the Norwegian eventually wants to move the toilet to the opposite corner, where the claw foot bathtub now is, which will then move to where the not-quite-finished six-foot wide and all-the-way-to-the-ceiling towel and toiletries unit now stands; but that’s okay because the Norwegian will tear that out and build a new, smaller one where the corner shower is, because the corner shower will take the sink’s place, and the sink will rest in the toilet’s old spot.

Sand on the beach, clouds in the sky -- even the simple things in life are complicated. On the Horizon by Steve Henderson

So, replacing the toilet isn’t that simple.

You know, there’s no use having color coded towels and pretty soap in a bathroom whose toilet screams at every visitor, “Look inside!” While my love for the Norwegian Artist did not waver, the sigh I discharged upon entering the bathroom must have increased in forcefulness, because eventually he disappeared to the workshop, found an extra toilet and gutted its inner parts, then performed reconstructive surgery on the lavatory chinaware.

(By the way, parents, this is a great reason to encourage your children to play with blocks. It may look like they’re not doing much of anything now, but the skills they pick up will be invaluable to a future spouse.)

While I recognize that most people don’t have spare toilets in the workshop – we have spare everything in the workshop – they do have more ingenuity than they think, and if the spare weren’t an option, they, like the Norwegian, would raid more of the Toddler’s toys or the kitchen drawers to find what they needed to do to effect the repair.

While in some ways the world is different these days, certain things never change. Chief Joseph Mountain by Steve Henderson

“It’s a different world nowadays,” my mother likes to say, but in many ways, despite the smart phones and the notepads and the blue tooths that she doesn’t even bother to understand, we are finding ourselves back in a time that was familiar to her: the 1930s, with its Great Depression; the 1940s, with its wartime scarcity of resources; the 1950s, with its confidence to do the things that needed to be done.

Whether or not our Great Recession is officially over, and this depends upon what the pundits and the media want us to feel and believe, a lot of people are living on less these days, be it because they’ve lost their job or whether it’s because what money they do have sure doesn’t buy as much as it used to.

And we learn to make do.

It’s hard at first, because for so long the easiest solution involved sliding the debit card, but little by little, we are rediscovering the resourcefulness that we let slide. And along with saving money, we earn confidence in ourselves, our skills, our abilities, and our tenacity.

Just bursting with joy, the catalog offered all sorts of promises and products. Dahlia Girl by Steve Henderson

Jumbled amongst the pile of paper pulp on my desk, the catalog caught my eye.

Great, I thought. Someone has sold our name to a religious organization.

I really should stop making these snap judgments – it’s not too late to make and break another New Year’s resolution after all. This particular group, while it was indeed religious, was more concerned with the Goddess, as in Mother Earth, as opposed The Masculine Guy. Oddly, though, much of the language was the same:

“We give thanks” – to God, to Mother Earth

“We must be good stewards” – of our financial resources (so we can tithe), of the planet (so we can breathe).

“Tap into the Life Force” – via prayer, or biodynamics.

Some of the pictures from the Joyous publication could have been lifted from Sunday school materials – my favorite was a group of people, sitting at a long, food-laden table under the trees –holding hands while they gave thanks.

You don't have to be religious to give thanks for good food and good things; we can all be grateful. Polish Pottery by Steve Henderson

Looked like an outside church service to me.

I guess I find this intriguing because this is an election year, during which much will be said about the Rabid, Radical Religious Right, a frightening force of fanatical fundamentalists whose goal is to take over this country and turn it into a Puritanical paradise.

And yet, these people had nothing to do with a major city’s recent decision to ban plastic bags at grocery stores, forcing shoppers to pay for woven synthetic (read: tough plastic) “eco-friendly” products. Those who choose paper bags – which are made from trees, a renewable resource, by the way – are assessed 5 cents each. Agitators in the city are striving to make the ban statewide.

“We’re out to save our planet,” proponents say.

And your polar opposites are out to save your souls.

Both of you get in people’s faces.

It's cold 25 feet from the doorway, and you definitely know that you're outside. Ridgetop View by Steve Henderson

Although I don’t smoke and I’m happy to not deal with people’s lip-kissed dross on the ground and occasionally in ash trays, I extend compassion to shivering workers taking their break out in the alley and 25 feet away from the door – in compliance with state law.

“People shouldn’t smoke,” proponents say. “The law discourages them from doing so.”

A generation ago, many religious people considered smoking a sin, but they never passed a law banning it.

Much as none of us want to live in a Puritanical world of somber, black garbed deacons and deaconesses (and by the way, most religious people aren’t this way), the opposite, which isn’t as opposite as it seems, and isn’t as far away as you think, is no better. Bureaucratic vicars and prelates who detachedly shuffle forms and administer regulations and assess fines for trespasses like providing raw milk to consumers who are asking for it, or transporting incandescent light bulbs over state lines (wait for it), or possessing an open bottle of wine in the trunk of the car, or glowering at a police officer (we don’t universally call them “peace officers” yet, do we?) are just as joyless, just as merciless, just as bad.

Far Right or Way Left – these are both bad directions, and interestingly, rather than move further apart as polar opposites, they share so many similarities in the way they seek to control other people’s lives that they actually amalgamate, as if they were on a circle as opposed to a line.

But most of us don’t belong to either group, because we’re not the principals trying to grasp the strings: we are the ordinary people in the center of the circle, bumping elbows and jostling one another because we’re humans and we don’t agree on everything, but we’re friends and co-workers and family members and even strangers who are willing to live, and let live.

We pick and choose what, and how, we want to eat, and the more we know how to cook, the better we choose, and eat. Garden Gatherings by Steve Henderson.

For years I’ve bought the stuff, meaning to incorporate it into our eating lifestyle, and I have: we’ve eaten chocolate tofu pudding (silken tofu pulverized in a blender with sugar and cocoa); tofu scrambled eggs (soft tofu mashed with spices and fried like eggs); tofu tacos (firm tofu crumbled with onions and fried like hamburger) — and they all tasted about as good as they sound.

But I never let things go, even when the pop medical news journalists announce that we don’t have to eat the stuff after all, because maybe it’s not as good for us as they’ve been trumpeting for so long. True to the way I live most of my life, I finally discovered a decent use for tofu long after I stopped looking.

I stir fry it as part of a Thai food entree.

Well, duh. Common sense shouts that food unusual to the American palate generally tastes best in its original habitat, and Asian cuisine has incorporated something like tofu well into a rich history that does not include chocolate pudding.

But for awhile there, I was reading healthy lifestyle cookbooks, you know, the ones that extol the fresh, peppery taste of dandelion greens straight from the lawn (Yes, I did that, once. And no, we don’t spray our lawn with pesticides; I’m honestly not THAT dumb.)

The soup course consisted of vegetable stock, boiled without salt, with a cup of detritus stirred back in for textural interest.

The main course: broiled “steaks” of mashed black beans and ground green peas, which the book insisted tastes like something “just off the ranch.” Well, I suppose there are a lot of things you can pick up off the ranch that aren’t meat.

Cows aren't the only things you find on a ranch. Rumination by Steve Henderson

Beverage: water. Starch: You don’t need it. Vegetables: That’s all you’ve been eating. Dessert: mock-chocolate fudge drops made with no chocolate and sweetened by boiled, pureed raisins.

“Your family will never know the difference!” the book promised.

Are you kidding? The dog knew the difference, and you do know . . . the types of things that dogs eat?

These recipes must have been written by the same disconnected souls who advise in women’s magazines:

When you feel like a doughnut . . . have a rye crisp cracker!

Craving chocolate? A tasty prune will satisfy!

Bagels for breakfast? Not when there’s hot creamy oatmeal on the table! (Bagels are chewy, not creamy.)

Perhaps the problem lies in seeking substitutes for the real thing — deceiving ourselves that there is no difference between the two — as opposed to learning how to cook, and eat, satisfyingly savory food that doesn’t come out of a white bag, isn’t laced with unpronounceable additives, and isn’t marketed by a pasty white computer-animated snowman creature.

There's no substitute for the real thing: real food, real life, real beauty. Last Light in Zion by Steve Henderson

No, it won’t taste like a Twinkie. It may take a while to get used to this. But it is possible to adjust our palette to appreciate real, cool food like Parmesan cheese; chicken bussed by lime and garlic; hot fresh bread straight from our own ovens; even vegetables stir fried and coated with green curry paste which, if I can find in my isolated hamlet, anyone can.

I read once that the fewer ingredients you use in a dish, the better quality they need to be, and, ergo, the better the result.

Like this: Mac and cheese from a box, or pasta and white sauce (butter, flour, milk) with real cheddar cheese. Guess which one not only tastes better, but is better for you?

Do yourself a favor this year — learn to cook.

Rabbits are prolific, and generally hidden, so you don't realize how many there really are. Lady Camp by Steve Henderson

During our parental career, we have heard dinnertime stories from our progeny who have been happily socializing in a group, when one of the clutch, a coyote, starts picking on the progeny who is telling us the tale.

“You’re fat. I’m not. I’m slender and willowy. That’s why boys like me.”

“Your front teeth are crooked. Mine aren’t. They’re perfect – and white, too.”

“What ugly hair you have. It isn’t soft and wavy like mine.”

Not once, but repeatedly, the coyote darts in with a variation of the theme while the surrounding rabbits who look like friends immobilize in silence, watching and saying nothing, some afraid that they, too, will be singled from the group and attacked, others so inured to one person making personal assaults upon another that this doesn’t seem wrong.

In our own case, most of the coyotes were oddly enough from good, religious families, attending all sorts of good, religious events, never taking the name of Jesus in vain in front of their parents but regularly stomping on it with their words when they were away from the authoritarian eye. This is not to say, however, that atheists, agnostics, and persons of widely divergent faiths cannot be bullies – all you have to do is flatter the people more powerful than you, and flatten the ones who aren’t.

Sometimes, we are a lone sailboat on a vast river, seeking and finding our own way. Stillness by Steve Henderson

“Did you speak up for yourself?” we invariably asked.

“No, that would have been rude.”

That one floored us.

“It is not rude,” we repeated repeatedly, “to say something along the lines of, ‘What’s with the personal comments?’ or, ‘When you’re out of the attack mode, maybe we can get on with this game/project/conversation.’”

“I was afraid that, if I said anything, she (it’s often a she, isn’t it?) would tell her parents, and since you know one another, it would ruin your relationship.”

It’s not much of a relationship that can be ruined by one person’s child standing up to another’s.

Fortunately, after years of our fruitless counsel and years of their growth and maturation, the older progeny found their voice. Recently, one of them countered an attack on her physical features by pointing out a physical anomaly of her attacker.

The rabbits in the room thawed, en masse turning not on the coyote, but on the progeny:

“How can you say something like that?”

I am to the point now, with the younger progeny, of communicating more explicitly about the reprehensibility of what the coyotes are doing, and emphasizing our unequivocal parental support of whatever actions the progeny deems necessary to counter the attack:

Gracious eloquence would be nice, but not realistic, so if that doesn’t work, and transcending the situation with aplomb isn’t possible, then two words directed to the attacker, the second word being “off,” is fine with me.

At least it isn’t an aspersion on the coyote’s physical features.

We were always taught not to make personal comments on people's physical features. Not such a bad rule, actually. Ruby, by Steve Henderson

Snarky girls and berating bullies don’t just go away; they grow into insecure widgets stuck inside adult bodies who learn to finesse their attacks, which they then perpetrate upon co-workers, subordinates, relatives, retail clerks, relationship rivals, under-deaconesses – anyone they perceive to be weaker, smaller, frailer, or more vulnerable than they.

Rabbits – masquerading as friends – allow them to do so.

We don’t so much need anti-bullying legislation as we do people of backbone and character who stand up for themselves and for others. Perhaps this could start with the parents of the good, exemplary children, teaching them that what comes out of their mouth looks disturbingly like what resides in their heart.

I do not speak to dogs and expect an answer. Neither do I chat with aliens. But I do receive meaningful communication from fortune cookies. Ruby by Steve Henderson

In a long standing tradition of some three months, I and members of my tribe enjoy Chinese takeout from the eminently authentic Safeway deli on our weekly foray into the Big Town (population: darn near 50,000).

And while the Chinese food of the grocery store is not as genuine as the Chinese food of the Americanized restaurant, the fortune cookies look, and sound, the same.

It is gradually dawning on me, however, that the messages within the cookies are not universally generalized inane sentiments that apply to the population at large, but insightful acumens directed specifically to me.

 Like this one:

“One week from today, a very positive thing will happen.”

Well you can bet that I was looking around for positive things to happen one week from that day, and the sale of a major painting by the Norwegian Artist, an upbeat notice from one of his representing firms, AND a quarter I found on the sidewalk added up to three, which, come to think of it, qualifies as “things” not “thing.”

No matter. Next week’s message wasn’t as cheerful (and the cookie was stale), but it was accurate:

 Stop trying to be number one in everything you do. Be content with the good things that you have.”

There are so many things for which to be grateful, not the least of which are memories of good people, now gone. Out of Africa by Steve Henderson

This is so patently directed to my aggressive, out of control competitive nature that it must have been written by my mother. (I never realized I was this way, incidentally, until the day I commented to a friend, “It’s not that I’m competitive, but . . .” “YOU? Not competitive? Hah!” was her response. Do you see the kind of friends I have?)

But Week 3 was the clincher:

“You will benefit by being patient. Good things will come to you soon.”

This one said so much of what I needed to hear that I ironed out the creases and set it aside for framing, although considering that fortune cookie notices are ½ inch high by 2 ¼ inches wide, it’s difficult, even on a positive thing day, for a person of my out of control aggressive nature to find an appropriate frame. Maybe I should cross stitch the message onto an antimacassar that the dog can drag into her bed. (Don’t know what an antimacassar is? You’re not reading enough Regency Romance.)

Last week, the Norwegian Artist joined us on our culinary expedition, and even though he never eats fortune cookies because he has some prejudice about their being flat, tasteless, stale and filled with inane statements of advice, I insisted.

“Hmm.”

Yes? What did the Fortune Cookie Goddess say?

Where does the Fortune Cookie Goddess live? Descent into Bryce by Steve Henderson

“This is interesting.” (Of course it is! What did she say? What did she say?)

“Make sure to eat dessert at least three times a week.”

I’m not sure what symbol I can place in this sentence to indicate the weighty silence that followed his pronouncement.

Rather than comment on the astonishingly iniquitous proclamation, however, I focused on ripping open my own plastic-wrapped cookie with my teeth. It kept them from grinding together.

“What about yours?” the Norwegian asked. (Does his tone sound smug to you, too?)

“Your impatient nature is something you need to learn to control.”

Maybe next week we’ll just order pizza.

How does the Norwegian Artist do it? Each painting is even more beautiful than the last. Shore Leave by Steve Henderson

But as much as I never tire of paintings on the wall, I acknowledge a surfeit of images on the dashboard of my car – a series of green, yellow, and red icons that flash at me while I’m driving and are supposed to be telling me something.

Color’s important, I know that. Whatever the green icons are that shine at me from the time I turn the key, they’re good, including the one that looks like an eyeball. (My mirrors are on, maybe?) One, in green, says “Cruise Control” –  this has something to do with the cruise control, being on, or working, but happy, somehow.

I also know what the orange disc is, even though I’ve never seen it from the driver’s seat, because when I’m behind the wheel, the gas tank is never so low that I need to be warned that I have less than a gallon left. This one I’ve seen only peripherally, from the passenger side, far more times than I could wish.

Last week a yellow lyre stared back at me. As I am unconvinced that Japanese car manufacturers concern themselves with celestial harps to the point that they installed one in my car, I don’t look for a broken string.

Orange is a gorgeous color, except when it shows up as a symbol on my car dashboard. Siletz By by Steve Henderson

But something – that looks disturbingly like an ancient Babylonian religious symbol — isn’t working – and darned if I know what it is.

“What’s the yellow light?” the Norwegian Artist asked when he started the car. “Not the gas light – that’s orange.” (He should know.) “Isn’t there a chart of these symbols in the car manual?”

There is indeed, buried somewhere within the 350-page tome, not listed in the index under “dashboard symbols” or “warning lights.” We find it, four pages worth, after the third shuffle through.

“There it is,” the Norwegian’s eye is sharp and clear. “Tire pressure’s low.”

Well of course, two curvy parentheses with a dot in the middle clearly points to a tire, a low one at that. Maybe these symbols are Babylonian in origin after all.

One time, a red symbol flashed at me – and in the same way that I knew that running through a flashing red intersection light is not a good thing, I knew that running a car with a flashing red light in front of my face was just as bad. But what did it mean?

It looked like a red soup can with a bat wing coming out the side – was this the oil pan then, the wing representing that something was broken and oil, like red blood, was gushing out? Or possibly that the radiator – smooth and cylindrical – was blowing up?

Damn.

Red light on, red light off. On. Off. Redbush by Steve Henderson

I opened the door, to get the Norwegian, then thought of the manual in the glove compartment, and slammed the door. The light went off.

I opened the door again and the light went on.

Closed it and the light went off.

“Everything okay out here?” the Norwegian Artist peered through the studio door.

“Just fine,” I replied. “One of the red warning lights was on, but I fixed the problem.”

Some places -- not remotely close to where I live, incidentally -- are eternally springlike. Summer Breeze by Steve Henderson

The Norwegian Artist and I regularly walk three miles a day, in one mile increments, but lately I’ve been joining the dog near the wood stove and giving the Norwegian That Look when he arrives from the studio, leash in hand, and booms out, “I’m in the mood for a WALK!”

By the way, the leash is for the dog.

Who, incidentally, pauses for whatever passes for thought in a dog’s brain, even though she has two extra reasons for taking a walk than we do, if I can avoid being more explicit than that.

While around this time of year, my exercise regime tends to focus on indoor aerobic DVD s, or indoor yoga DVD s, or indoor Pilate DVD s (there is a recurring theme), the Norwegian Artist reaches deep back into his arctic roots and does everything but jump into the creek and run naked back to the sauna, which is fortunate because, although we have a creek, we don’t have a sauna.

“The cold, crisp air is invigorating and exhilarating!”

It’s hard to tell if it’s foggy immediately around our faces or if that is simply the exhalation of the Norwegian’s warm breath into his 80-degrees-cooler-than-normal-body-temperature-surroundings, and it doesn’t matter to me if you use Fahrenheit or Celsius with that description, because once all of the trees look like those fake frosted Christmas trees, it’s just plain COLD, and any sensible person is sitting by the wood stove, doing jigsaw puzzles with the dog.

While yes, there is a creek nearby that we can jump into (fun in the summer), there is no corresponding sauna. Where the River Bends by Steve Henderson

Actually, there are a lot of things that need to be done inside, with or without the dog, the latter which I’ve lately caught gazing longingly at the toilet as more than just a ceramic water bowl.

(Speaking of which, the female progeny and I spent last Friday night watching YouTube videos of cats-on-toilets-potty-training techniques, which isn’t weird, really, because 649,252 other people watched the same clips before we did. This Friday, we’ll look up the dog versions.)

But back to things you can do inside, as opposed to taking walks with the Norwegian Artist, and the dog, outside: dishes, laundry, vacuuming, dusting, changing the Toddler’s diaper (another YouTube idea, there) – it’s amazing how the most mundane of tasks become qualified exercise activities when Jack Frost squats outside on the porch and takes up residence.

You’d think that, being a knitter with 13 wool hats, and counting, from which to select for outside wear, I would welcome the chance to try out the scarves, and the mittens, and the socks, and the sweaters, but I find that I get more than enough satisfaction modeling these creations on my way from the front door to the car, which I then drive – heat at full blast – to the library where I check out another exercise DVD.

It's so snuggy and warm and inviting -- Inside the farm house. Winterscape Farm by Steve Henderson

On my way back, I spot the Norwegian, and the dog, on the driveway, and I give a warm, welcoming wave. Somebody needs to be inside to make sure that another log makes it into the wood stove.

The mighty majesty of three-dimensional thought is the province of the Norwegian Artist, not the Polish Writer. Chief Joseph Mountain by Steve Henderson

Yes, there were (nominal) directions and no, this shouldn’t be that difficult, but it was, and the box is mid-way between its initial two-dimensional state and its preferred three dimensional one, and the checks are stuffed in a drawer, nakedly boxless.

I do not have a three dimensional mind.

“Does this mean that your brain is flat?” Son and Heir asked.

This would be funny if it weren’t disquietingly true.

Years ago in high school when I was attacked by a barrage of multiple choice career selection tests, I slogged my way through the section dealing with lines and dots that you were supposed to connect in your mind, or shapes that you mentally turned 45 degrees to the left and backwards, or a series of pulleys that somehow reduced the load borne, and I scored around 3 percent, which is considerably worse than random chance.

So, yes, I guess my brain is kind of flat, which is okay because so is the computer screen or the average piece of paper, and I work a lot with these.

All work -- legally, morally, and honestly done -- is honorable, so it's okay that I'll never be an engineer. The Fruit Vendor by Steve Henderson

(By the way, my test results came back with strong recommendations that I not pursue careers in engineering, construction, auto mechanics or sculpture).

So I’m married to this guy who would have scored 97 percent on that three-D test, meaning that between the two of us we post a score of 100 percent, and he speaks 3-D, or at least he used to, until he figured out that the blank look on my face wasn’t an act.

“You seriously don’t understand what I’m saying?” he asks.

“I was right with you until just after, ‘This is what I’m going to do.’”

My continued ineptitude in this area is not for lack of trying; I spent a concerted period of time focusing on the North South East West concept and, as long as I am in my own home, I can find East, so it’s not as if I, unlike the dog, can’t learn.

It’s genetic, another gift from my profoundly nearsighted brilliantly scientific father who once fixed the 500-pound sagging overhead garage door with baling twine (my mother, who is also 3-D inept, is remarkably gifted verbally, something we children enjoyed firsthand in her response to the garage door “repair”).

Replacing the front doorknob was a two-day affair eventually solved by my mother’s desperate unending phone calls to my middle brother, who somehow, from generations deep in the forgotten past, received the gift of mechanical ingenuity.

After 28 years of marriage to the Norwegian Artist, I still marvel at living 24/7 with a man who also has this mechanical ingenuity gene. He may not be able to explain, step by graphic step, the infective cycle of amoebic dysentery, but by God, he can replace the intestinal workings of a toilet.

Just now the man walked in and I handed him the mangled box.

The knight on the white horse shows up in the oddest places at the oddest times. Working Trigger by Steve Henderson

“This is a stupid design,” he said immediately.

Yes!

“And someone has totally messed it up.”

Oh.

Ninety seconds later he has it assembled, and it looks like the box it was always meant to be.

My Prince Charming — all 3-D of him.

Big groups don't excite me, which is why, like this Utah Juniper, I prefer solitude or small gatherings. Utah Juniper by Steve Henderson Fine Art

At the end of the day, the leader approached me with a black garbage sack full of scraps, the largest of which was half the size of a toilet paper square.

“None of us can use these, but we just can’t bear to throw them away.

“I know you quilt. Maybe you could make a project out of these?”

Easy answer.

“Of course I can.”

I took the bag home and did what 19 other quilters in the room could not do: I threw it away.

I know you’re concerned, but don’t be. My inner green girl was fine: she recognizes a bag of trash when she sees it, and it’s beyond even my obsessive nature to piece a king-sized bedspread with fraying clumps of crumpled cloth French kissed by dust bunnies and entwined with bent straight pins.

Which is not to say that I don’t reduce, reuse, recycle, or, as the generation before me put it, use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without. My brother laughs at my “chicken” pie, which consists mainly of meat scraps from the boiled carcass, rounded out with lots of onions (cheap), potatoes (cheap), carrots (cheap), and celery (cheap). The ratio of vegetal matter to meat would make the food pyramid people (oh wait now, it’s a plate this week, isn’t it?) swoon.

My hat of many colors was a joyous compendium of texture and tone. Awakening (study) by Steve Henderson Fine Art

Over Thanksgiving break I embarked on a knitted junk hat, a simple confection of leftover yarn from earlier projects, because when the stash grows beyond two shoeboxes full I feel dissipated and dissolute. So, surrounded by the most important things in my life – my tribe – I knit during the off moments, enjoying sibling squabblry and chaotic serenity.

One yarn – merino wool and cashmere – I bought on vacation years ago; another, camel blended with mohair, returned from a business trip; alpaca spooning with silk evoked memories of a weekend at College Girl’s lair – I unashamedly and unabashedly go for the good stuff, and I wear what I make out of it.

What’s left over goes into the plastic shoe box, and when the lid doesn’t snap shut, I knit chicken pie, but seriously, the yarn pieces need to be more than two feet in length. Enough of neurotic already.

It’s okay, at some point, to call junk what it is – trash – and throw it away. I recognize that many times, it may be another man’s (or quilter’s) treasure, but sometimes, seriously, it’s truly garbage, and the effort of packaging it, storing it, and worrying about what to do with it, outweighs the benefits of stuffing a pillow with it. Despite the wisdom of middle age, I have not found a certifiably constructive use for old toilet paper rolls, and there are only so many long cords to be contained by a cardboard tube.

Whether you're living green or budgeting mean, it's okay, and necessary, to treat yourself to special things. Tea by the Sea by Steve Henderson

We all have a lot of stuff, too much, admittedly, but rather than reprimanding and rebuking one another into a lifestyle of fanatical austerity, why not live in reality? We can use up what we’ve got, pass it on to someone else if we don’t need it (as long as it isn’t a black garbage bag of snippets), purchase what we require, indulge in what we desire (yak yarn!) and be thankful for it all.

So buy things, wisely, for yourself and others, and enjoy them with gratitude – the same way you enjoyed the turkey, the stuffing, the mashed potatoes, the pie. Eat leftovers, make soup from what’s left after that, bless the kitties on the porch with the giblets.

 I mean, somebody has to eat those things.

It was a day of reflection, not a bright day, but one pregnant with the portent of rain (and no, I'm not pregnant). Last Reflections by Steve Henderson

I was at the dentist’s office scribbling my way through a tiresome sheaf of forms asking about bladder infections and toenail fungus and an array of physical and mental disorders that had curiously little to do with my teeth, when I realized that I had blanketed the form with no’s, as in, “No, I do not have algebra pre-test anxiety,” and “No, I do not suffer from enlarged prostate.”

Up to that point, it had been a bad day, a discouraging day, one of a series of discouraging days building one upon another, and a dental visit added to the disheartening, dispiriting, dreary grey of gloom that I found myself sinking into (and to those of you eager to point out that I technically ended the last sentence with a preposition, don’t, just . . . don’t).

But the dentist’s office, figuratively, slapped me around. As I surveyed two pages of closely spaced print outlining diseases and disorders that I could potentially have but do not, I stopped feeling sorry for myself long enough to say, “Thanks.”

We have entered a season of thankfulness that encompasses more than one day of overeating and wrestling with a 25-pound bird, kickoff to a purchasing and partying frenzy that is somehow linked to a message and a Messiah totally unrelated to fat men in red suits.

Not that I don’t love Christmas (by the way, I’m not Jewish, so I don’t do Hanukkah, but neither is the purchasing and partying frenzy particularly wrapped around this holiday; if you must object, please remember that aforementioned sentence with the preposition issue), but I think we dispense with Thanksgiving too quickly.

Indeed, Black Friday needs to be renamed, since it is starting earlier and earlier each year, diners barely finishing their third slice of pie before tipping away from the table and belching, “Better go get in line . . . urp . . . tiny little electronic things I gotta have, you know. Ooomph.”

And then come the parties, all requiring sparkly clothes; and the office gifts and the school presents and the church white elephant jumble exchange; and the musical programs and the plays and the interactive living nativity scenes – and the one day on which we bowed our heads and reviewed our blessings that outweigh our griefs and murmured, “Thanks,” before we stabbed the centerpiece, is far away and forgotten. Another year will pass before it comes again.

But there is no rule that limits our saying “Thanks,” to one day a year.

We are not limited to one day, or one thing, in our process of saying Thanks. Polish Pottery by Steve Henderson

Some of us mark a lot of yeses on those dental forms. Some of us have run through our unemployment benefits; others have just learned that we need to apply for them. Many enter the holidays without loved ones who celebrated with us last year. The car is leaking oil and the furnace needs more of it. Food’s going up, gas is obscene, taxes are high, and politics continue to reach a new low. We are tired and scared and worried and anxious and fearful, because life isn’t perfect, and it isn’t fair.

But each breath we take is a gift, one that we cannot buy, charge, grab, wrap, or return. And with that gift, we bless others – with a smile, a joke, a recommendation for a good book, a warm handclasp, an “I love you.”

We all have our problems; we all have our blessings.

Kittens, children, life and hope -- how beautiful they are. Garden Gatherings by Steve Henderson

There are many, many problems, and they fill the rooms of our lives like a stinky wet dog with gas, overwhelming us to the point that we don’t see the blessings, fluffy kittens sleeping in a basket.

How beautiful they are.