Close to Nowhere

• Are you making a New Year's resolution?

I used to. Sometimes I'd even write them down. I never managed to get all the way through January with them though.

Now, I think about things I'd like to accomplish ­ how many quilts I'd like to finish is a favorite, but I don't do that either. I bet I have at least 10 unfinished quilts in various stages piled in my sewing room ­ and the quilt kits and fabric collections.

I'm always finding a bag with a quilt project. One year I joined a block of the month club. Each month I got a package in the mail with a block, the fabric and how to make that block. By the end of the 12 months, I had a bag with all 12 packages tucked neatly inside.

And that quilt pattern/kit has bunny rabbits all over it. I love bunny rabbits.

I also found a stack of eerie fabric ­ covered with ravens and clocks and bony fingers. Someday that should be an Edgar Allen Poe quilt for youngest granddaughter Remy. I also have a farm animal quilt pattern I bought to make her graduation quilt ­ she graduated four years ago.

I made four graduation quilts one year ­ Grace, Robin, Emily and Mere, my oldest granddaughter and the granddaughters of my heart.

By the time I finished those, I couldn't move my shoulder without shrieking in pain.

• Another Christmas is gone, perhaps the strangest one the world has known.

Christmases are strange now anyway. Many family members are gone and it's kind of bittersweet. Remy said something this year, as we were leaving her house ­ we'd had Chinese food and Shepard and Sissie, the great-grandbabies and the joys of my life, had opened their presents from all of us. It was a good day. She said, "This is the first Christmas that's felt like Christmas since Pop died."

It's been a strange year and an even stranger Christmas, yet it did feel like Christmas this year

Shepard and Sissie bring joy to all of us and the things they say make life so fun.

When Mere got to Remy and Mitch's house Christmas day, Sissie ran up to me, climbed in my lap and exclaimed joyously "Bumpy! I'vemissed you." And that little 2-year-old hugged me off and on all day long.

Shepard made me laugh. At 4, he thinks he's a grown man now. He was telling me all about how Santa had brought him bunk beds and a dump truck (that will pull 50 pounds) and he casually mentioned that his dad had to spank his butt. I asked him why and he said, "Because he's a jive turkey!" (That's something Tim is always calling Shepard).

My wishes for the New Year are simple ­ Peace on Earth, Good Will to Man.