More snow is on the way tomorrow morning in my area, and the past two weeks have been unusually cold. The winter is getting closer to its end, though, and however much it may snow in the morning, it won’t be long before it all melts. Beaches and other good things are not far away!
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
All parts of this story are consolidated on one page here.
Ina carefully laced her bandaged feet into John’s oldest pair of boots. Scratched and torn, those boots didn’t look as if they would survive much more than one wearing; but they fit well over her thick cloth bandages, and Ina expected they would last long enough for a ghost-hunting expedition to the nearby river.
Whether she should have agreed to go—well, that was another question entirely. To free the wailing spirit of Nellie’s sister from a curse that might not exist seemed a fool’s errand. Even so, if she could make Nellie happier simply by trying, the short walk would be worthwhile for that reason alone.
Both children still slept soundly, and John was close by to watch over them. Nellie already had taken an impatient step toward the porch stairs. Ina got up slowly, relieved to find that her feet were not in much pain when she put weight on them. She followed Nellie down from the porch and into the woods. After the first bend in the path, she noticed raspberries ripening in the tangled undergrowth.
(Creative Commons image via flickr)
Ina had picked raspberries somewhere nearby, almost a year ago, when she’d stayed with Nellie for a day after waking to find herself beside the lake. She had fallen asleep after walking through the woods, and before that she’d come from…
Just as the image of a well-kept house and a rose garden began to come clear, Nellie started talking, and the memory faded as quickly as it always did.
“That’s where I found Hetty’s body, on the other side of that stand of sycamores. The river was still far out of its banks after the storm.”
Looking ahead, Ina couldn’t see the river, but she could hear water softly trickling not far away. Today’s rain had not lasted long enough to increase the flow by much. Behind the sycamores that Nellie had pointed out, there was a faint, reddish gleam through the leaves, like a pale reflection of the sunset.
Ina shook her head at that thought; it was high summer, with many hours of sunlight remaining. Still, there had been something—what could it have been? Not fire, certainly; she’d have sensed that, even with her magic depleted by healing Mabel. Quietly sending a tendril of awareness in that direction, Ina couldn’t sense any life beyond the usual forest creatures, but she was left with a general sense of unrest.
“I hear Hetty. She just started crying now,” Nellie announced, turning off the main path to follow a narrower track around the trees, in the direction of the river. The mysterious reddish light grew brighter, and Ina began to see gleams of white through it.
All at once, the outline of a young woman in a long white dress took form. The woman knelt in the grass near the sycamores, her head bowed, with a shimmering net of fiery red energy surrounding her.
Ina still couldn’t hear anything beyond the peaceful sounds of birdsong and the river’s gentle flow, but the fiery net assaulted her other senses with a ferocious blast of emotions—anger, hate, a burning need for revenge, an unyielding refusal to forgive. Unrest, indeed; that word came into Ina’s thoughts again. Unrest, or no rest; she was still trying to sort out the word’s significance when Nellie spoke again.
“Can you hear my sister?” Nellie stood within arm’s reach of the imprisoned spirit, evidently unable to see or feel any of what Ina was sensing.
Ina looked up from the kneeling figure and met Nellie’s eyes as she began to understand what had happened on that long-ago midsummer day.
“No, but I can see the curse.”
My daughter got her New Zealand “Straight to Residence” visa approved this week. If she stays and works there another two years, she can get a permanent resident visa. Good news to start her year.
She’s certainly living an adventure after deciding to jump into the unknown and go get it!
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
Now that I have a functioning art display again (hooray!), I’ve been browsing for more landscape photos to upload. Every morning, I change the image to give myself an imaginary window with a different view, looking to expand my mental horizons and inspire creativity. This was the one I chose today:
(Photo credit: Ruth Hartnup)
My preference always has been to match the image on the art display to the season and to the ambient light in my house, making the “window” more believable to my subconscious mind. That’s not as much fun in the depths of winter, though, when every morning brings bitter cold and heaps of snow that won’t melt for a long time. It’s not nearly as easy to imagine myself being magically transported through the picture, like in a child’s storybook, and going on an adventure there.
At some point, I expect I’ll give in to the temptation to choose a tropical photo with palm trees waving in a gentle breeze, brilliant white sand beaches, and a lovely blue sky instead.
This weekend’s giant snowstorm is forecast to reach my area on Saturday afternoon, but I am not worried. My husband and I are well prepared; both of us work remotely, we had a generator installed over the summer, and my husband also set up a backup cellular modem just in case the broadband cable goes out. He is so well organized that he was charging his car battery today because he hadn’t gone out in a while. The only thing left is the grocery shopping, which I’ll do tomorrow on my lunch break. It’s all good.
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
It’s Friday afternoon now; last night the time got away from me, and although I remembered that I hadn’t posted anything to this blog when I was getting into bed at midnight, hurrying to do it didn’t make sense when Thursday was already over.
Anyway, what I like most about winter is that it’s an unhurried time of the year.
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
Sharing a cute word-art image with a list of New Year’s resolutions. As for the one that calls for wearing more lingerie, I bought a pack of ordinary cotton panties this week. A little more creativity in that regard probably wouldn’t go amiss. It fits well with the cheerful tone of the other resolutions, anyway.
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
If I had been inclined to assess my performance on last year’s resolution to Allow What Is, then I would have noted both setbacks and improvements. Not judging myself was part of that resolution, however, so this post won’t get into what I did or how it might have gone better. I’ll just say that I arrived in December feeling calmer than last winter, and leave it at that.
The word “Permission” came to mind several weeks ago as an intention for 2026. Going beyond avoiding self-judgment, it’s about simply giving myself permission to be. Whatever plans and schedules I may have, they’re not going to collapse into an unmanageable mess if I am not ruminating about them.
What often happens, as when I found a replacement for my art display, is that when I can quiet my mind and set aside the to-dos, there’s enough space for new solutions to appear. I’ve found and uploaded a few Creative Commons images for the display, and I plan to use this one tomorrow as a reminder that life should be like a tree, growing naturally without need for wasted effort:
(Photo credit: Christopher John)
Although I changed the image on my previous art display every morning, it never felt like a daily chore. Rather, I welcomed the opportunity to give myself another view from the imaginary window each day, and I plan to do so again with the new display. I expect there must be something in all my daily routines that can inspire gratitude as well—or if not, there are ways to improve them.
I still take the week between Christmas and New Year’s off from work, as does my husband, even though our kids are long since grown and we don’t do much of anything for the holidays. Not doing much is what I like about this week now; it’s a peaceful, uninterrupted time to let the pace of life quietly wind down, while reflecting on what has gone well in the past year and what there is to be glad about as another year begins.
(Image credit: The Graphics Fairy)
Nurturing Thursday was started by Becca Givens and seeks to encourage self-nurturing and to “give the planet a much needed shot of fun, support and positive energy.”
My first digital art display, from the now-defunct company Electric Objects, turned into a brick when the online library was shut down in 2023. I’d been changing the image almost every morning to give myself imaginary windows into new places, many of which gave me ideas for blog posts and stories. Without my daily picture to spark fresh thoughts, I felt that I’d lost some of my creative energy.
I thought there had to be something out there with similar features, but Google searches didn’t turn up anything quite right. I’d been busy with overtime work as my employer focused more on AI, my husband was busy too, and our rowing exercises and long road trips to regattas didn’t seem to leave much time to research available products. Replacing the art display ended up on the get-around-to-it-sometime list.
It wasn’t until the day after Christmas, when I’d had enough quiet time to free up a few brain cells, that I realized I could simply use AI to find a new digital art display with the features I wanted. I had to edit my prompt a few times, but Copilot soon located the Meural Canvas II by Netgear, which has what I was looking for—an online library, upload capability, and an app to change the picture whenever I want.
I cropped one of the images my daughter sent from Auckland, with her dog and the Christmas tree in her apartment, and I displayed it this morning. Then I sent her a photo showing the picture on the wall, to give her some holiday cheer when she’s so far from home.
It cheered me up, too, on a dark midwinter morning when there was so little sunlight that everything around the image looked gray. (That wall is actually white.) I’d turned on a daylight lamp on the end table beside the couch, but it didn’t do much to relieve the gloom by itself. Having a new art display with a cheerful image reminding me of close family bonds did much more.
