January feels like yesterday, but it’s closer to being tomorrow. This year has sped by in the blink of an icicle. Sorry, I am veering from cliché. Anyways, I feel spirited to write, seeing it is Year’s End Twilight – the days betwixt Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
Since my last entry, I have busied myself with making harp videos, releasing a new short story on Amazon, and of course holiday shopping. To avert another cliché, instead of brewing lemonade from life’s lemons, I say – When life browns your bananas, make banana bread.
To my dismay, I did not win the short fiction contest I entered this year. However, even if you lose, you still have created something. It’s not like a baseball game, where winning gains you a shiny trophy and losing gains you immaterial experience. I gained experience and retained a story to share with others. My mom likes hearing me read my work to her, but I don’t always have time, so I had a Christmas gift idea. I recorded myself reading, Shapes and Holes, and made an audiobook for my mother.
If you're curious to read the story, here it is: Shapes and Holes
In a way, it was like making banana bread out of over-browned bananas. Besides, I kept having recurring incidents involving banana bread. There was banana bread at home. Then, banana bread came up randomly in a semi-heated argument in Lyra Hoop class, and when I saw Banana Bread flavored Pop Tarts at the grocery store, I felt this had to be an omen, hence the name of the first Lyra Hoop Harp video. The Pop Tarts were good, by the way.
Regarding
harping, I still had numerous songs left over from my harp shoot back in
October, and although the focus was off on the visuals, the audio was still
good. I salvaged some elegant improvised
songs and used them as background for my Lyra Hoop clips. Moreover, I had more time to tinker with the
new video editing software, ClipChamp, that came with the automatic Windows
update. Using both ClipChamp and the
legacy software of Windows Video Editor, I was able to experiment with new
visual effects. Thereafter, I made two
more videos with the salvaged harp music, hoop content, and special effects.
Then I needed to make two
holiday harp videos, one for Hanukkah and one for Christmas. This year, my family bought a new artificial
tree. It has three different settings on
the lights. I wanted to make a harp
video with the new tree in the background, but tragedy struck and creative
plans came second to caring for my family.
I’m not going into detail – it’s not for the internet to know. I couldn’t even complete my audiobook and
wrapping presents had to wait. After the
chaos cleared, I made a Yuletide harp video, using photos of the new tree. In utilizing three different editing
softwares, I created visual effects that complimented the Hanukkah video I had
made before. The holiday videos were a
good pair this year.
On Christmas Eve, I had to burn the audiobook onto disc and complete it with a CD cover. All the blank CDs were at my parents’ house, so I had to complete this task without my mother finding out. My dad and I worked together to insure the audio transferred properly. Once I slipped the printed cover into the jewel case, I was relieved to know I was finished with gifting for the year. I still needed to wrap, though.
Christmas Eve and Day were wonderful. During the evening prior, my mother and I baked blueberry scones for Christmas breakfast. Before then, we carried out a recent tradition of driving around local neighborhoods to view Christmas lights, especially the houses that were really decked out. One detoured turn led us to discovering a new house bedazzled with lights synchronized to radio music.
As per the usual holiday traditions, we enjoyed scones, berries, and tea; opened presents of course, and watched movies. My mom really thought my audiobook was cool. My dad loved his 48 episodes of Rin Tin Tin that I gave him. When I was a kid, I loved receiving presents, but as I grew into womanhood, I appreciate giving presents more. I don’t usually ask for a lot, and my folks usually urge me to add more to my Christmas list. A notable gift I received this year was a book of Japanese tales.
