This one is even more rough than usual, so please bear with me.

I didn’t have a lot of time to read this morning. I have plans to meet my youngest son for a hike and need to leave the house a 7am if I’m going to get to our meeting place at a reasonable time. That’s one reason I don’t have much to report on Trotsky’s The History of the Russian Revolution.

The other reason is that I’m a tad lost already. History is complicated, especially to read. If it’s too simple, then you miss the bigger picture. If it’s too detailed, you can get bogged down and give up. I wouldn’t consider myself a real student of history, more of a dabbler, so the Russian Revolution era is a rough row to hoe for me. I love it though, and I know from experience to keep reading even when I feel like I’m lost in the weeds of who, what, where, and how. I’ll find something useful if I keep going. Time reading is never wasted.

Friday, I spent outside, despite the cold wind, and got some of the garage cleaned up and ready for the next project. I finally put away the Christmas boxes, after going through them and donating the last of the old things I don’t use anymore. It felt great getting tired and dirt-covered!

The wind was blowing even harder on Saturday morning, so I started my next indoor project.

These are houses from my grandpa’s Christmas village. He made them in the 60’s when he and my grandma had a ceramics business they ran out of their garage. As a kid, I remember the big kiln in the corner, the stacks of molds bound together with fat rubber bands, the smell of clay. I’d make small sculptures from scraps and blobs of half dry ceramic and fire them in the kiln alongside grandma’s angels and bears. When I was older, grandpa let me scrap the seams on pieces left behind from the casting molds with a razor blade. I never got into painting much. I didn’t have the patience or the steady hand for it.

Years ago, I’m not sure if it was before or after my grandma passed away, my grandpa finally got rid of all those supplies. The kiln and many molds were still in his garage. I wanted to badly to bring them home and store them in mine, but I knew it would be years before I could ever spend time at a hobby like that. I didn’t have the space to store them all properly so they weren’t ruined. It was hard, but I let someone else take them. I don’t remember where they went.

When my grandpa moved out of his home and into my mom’s, we were going through stuff in his garage. He needed to downsize in a big way, and I was trying to help. In a box I found some of grandma’s Christmas decorations, the angels I remember being so hard to get out of the mold without cracking their slender necks, the three kings she worked so hard on painting and decking with jewels, among some other pieces.

I also found the houses. I don’t remember them being made, they were older than me, but I do remember seeing them under my grandparent’s Christmas tree. When I saw them in the bottom of the box, with their faded hand painted colors, I had to have them.

Each year I put them up on a shelf, arranged with a blanket of fake snow under them. They are too precious to leave on the floor under the tree. One year, I got a set of the Rankin/Bass Rudolf characters. My houses remind me of the Island of Misfit toys, so I set the characters up next to the houses. I’ve said I would make a backdrop for the houses, and decorate the whole shelf like the movie, for years, but haven’t got around to it.

Here comes the tragedy, so hold on to yourself.

The day after Christmas 2020, with covid BS, one son moved out and couldn’t come home because he was sick, one on his way out to go to university, I sat there on my couch…ok with life, but a little sad, when I heard the cat jump, a scratch, and then…the fall. I didn’t look. It’s making me cry just writing this a year later.

I was frozen, looking at my husband across the couch. “I can’t look. Oh, god.” I started to cry. It sounds so dumb, but dammit. Why? What else could go wrong? “Worst year ever!” I yelled.

Once I had myself under control, I went to inspect the damage. It wasn’t as bad as I thought. Only two houses had a piece broken out of them, and it looked like it would be easy to repair. The church, on the other hand, I wasn’t so sure. I got a tray and carefully collected all the pieces, down to the tiniest sliver I could find.

The cat had jumped up to walk over the top of the bookcase as he typically does. Walking across the fluffy carpet of snow, he got a claw stuck, shook it get loose, and knocked a house over. Because the houses are lit up from underneath by a string of Christmas lights, they were all pulled over the side, one by one. If I am going to keep putting this set up after I repaired it, I am going to have to find a better way.

So…it’s over a year later and I’m repairing the houses. I can’t match the paint exactly, and they are rather old and faded, so I’m repainting them all. The sparkly snow is dull and dirty, so I ordered some new paint to make them beautiful again. I’m having so much fun working on them. When I’m done painting, I’ll work on making a better lighting system, a background of the Castle of the King of Misfit Toys, and small stands for all the characters so the village looks less like a drunken festival.

Thanks for sticking with me on this one. The story needed to be told. And now I’m off to go hiking with my boy. Hopefully I can keep up this time!