I don't know about you, but it's been a dreadful month here. Well, for us anyway. Not big dreadful - not life changing dreadful but little, everyday things that add up to dreadful none the less. We like to think we have at least a bit of control over things. I like to think that when I turn a radiator on I'll get some heat out, or when I drive down a busy street My car will obey my every command - but no - not this month. This month things have a mind of their own. Brian can just look at something and it will break. No matter where I look for something important that I KNOW I haven't lost, it still won't appear. There isn't any place it can be except where I put it but it's not there. We feel like hibernating until this bad patch is over. My mother, who is very wise in the ways of the unexplained says that it's just because it's February and a leap year at that. I hope she's right because then things will start to improve in about four days.

I was sitting here trying to picture what the faeries are doing this month. I thought of them sitting around being grumpy - bored and out of sorts like us. I was going to write about that. Then I looked outside. Now of course I've been looking outside all month. Sometimes it's wet, sometimes sunny - rather typical really for a February here. I've seen what's been happening but I think because I've been sunk in my own little state of discontent, I haven't been paying attention. Well, I can tell you that the faeries are most definitely NOT sitting around doing nothing. They're busy in the garden singing the flowers out of the ground, coaxing buds out on the branches and generally seeing that spring comes again as it should. The beauty in those small things is staggering. Life is staggering. The very fact that we're still here, still alive and able to experience the world around us, able to (if we choose to do so) appreciate the gloriousness of all of this makes the "dreadfulness" of February fade a bit. As I'm writing this, a picture comes (unbidden) of friends and relatives who live in places where the snow is still three feet deep and spring is a LONG way away. I feel a bit guilty writing about the joys of spring when they're going to have to wait a lot longer for theirs to return again. It will though. That's the beauty of it. I do wonder what their faeries are doing right now though. Maybe they really are sitting around being grumpy.

Now for news.
Buster (our cat) is turning into a guard cat. He growls like a dog whenever people he doesn't know or doesn't like come to the door. He doesn't just sit there and growl - he menaces them as well. It's scary. He terrified a dog the other day. The poor thing was trying to be friendly and Buster went wild (or wilder). He's an "interesting" cat. We are definitely "his" people though and it's good to know that he'll do his best to protect us.

I'm getting ready for my major workshop tour in the states. I'm coming over at the end of March and won't be home until after the first week in May. It's a long time to be away but I'm really looking forward to teaching in new places. Toby will be with me and together we'll be teaching a puppet making workshop as well as the doll making workshops I usually teach. Making puppets is so much fun. I think everyone taking it will have a good time. Toby will be teaching basic puppeteering skills as well.

Brian has a cold. He's feeling pretty miserable right now but apart from that, he IS painting. His creativity isn't hibernating even if the rest of him wants to.

This has turned into a long ramble. I blame it on leap year. Roll on March.

Wendy Froud
February 2008

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