Crafting a Calendar

Since its a Mandatory Monday, the Monday before a holiday when no one wants to work but everyone has to, I decided it best if I start my day with a craft project.

I've been planning to buy a calendar, (hee, hee) but get so overwhelmed with the options. When I look for one it's as if I'm stuck in some torturous nursery rhyme... this one's too big, this one doesn't start until next year, this one's ugly, this one's too expensive... 

I WANT WHAT I WANT AND I WANT IT NOW... ooooh, look at the pretty glitter pens... and now you've lost me... time to exit the store empty handed once again.

Wait... I have paper and pens and markers and rulers and clips and rivets and tape and a hole punch and wire and a work table and stickers and 10 fingers and a creative brain.

Society has taught us that we have to spend money to solve a problem while my markers sit in a jar drying up, paper wrinkles and yellows, all left in a pile of "one day..."

I assemble my supplies feeling terribly defiant and self sufficient.  

NOVEMBER... although the month is almost over I have to make a page.  I need to write down the tasks for this day and the next day and the one after.  I've waited too long to compile this list of days and tasks.

I use a big fat black marker to form my rectangle... turn the perfectionist switch off, this is strictly utilitarian.  Its good to know that if I screw something up I can start all over, I can make more months, I can make more days, weeks and years.  I can start over whenever I want.

I begin to fill in the boxes, each day fitting in one two-and-a-half inch square.  Then I make more months, the connection between days and weeks and months becomes interesting to me.  Sometimes you wake up and it is a new week, sometimes a new month, sometimes both but always a NEW DAY that fits nicely into a little two-and-a-half inch square... on a calendar... on a wall.

Suddenly I feel like a beatnik and that maybe the big fat black marker has gone to my head.  Mandatory Monday.

I'm feeling nostalgic.  This has been a big year for me.  "30 days has September, April, June and November..."  I fill in the dates and remember the events, the people and the places.  I know that I will see many of them again in the coming year.

APRIL - where will Girl Bike Love be?  

The questions form and I'm overwhelmed.  I'm excited, I want to have a marathon of writing and riding and picture taking and riding and interviewing and the list goes on.  But that's why I have a calendar, a BIG calendar, because I look at the world of women's cycling and I know... THERE IS A LOT TO BE DONE.  Time to spread the Girl Bike Love far and wide.

Marking National Holidays