My STUFF...

IT'S NOT EVEN DECEMBER YET, AND I HAVE CABIN FEVER ALREADY.

A snow-storm and windchill temperatures of around -30C (while it's +17C a mere province away) can do that to you. I feel shut in, a bit shut down, knowing winter has grabbed us.

And won't likely let go until March at the earliest. For you Aussies, South Africans, Floridians, Mississippians and others living in southern climes, this means many things.

It means I have now started plugging my car in at night to keep the engine block from freezing so I can start my car in the morning.

It means shovelling snow and skin freezing in less than a minute.

And it means staying inside a lot and unavoidably becoming more introspective. That means thinking about me.

And what I have within these walls that I spend most of my time in, things that make me feel warm and secure and comfortable.

Here are a few of them:

This is my Marvin the Martian coffee cup. M the M is one of my favourite Bugs Bunny characters of all time. I don't drink coffee out of him, I use him to store things, as you can see, and to be just be there.

This is a cheap picture my son bought me for a birthday from a dollar store when he was about 8. It's the first present he ever gave me that he paid for. It's a brutal picture, but I hang it anyway so he can see that I value it, which I do.

For the same reason, but also because of the words on it, I hang the scroll thing labelled "Dad" (on the right) on the wall above my computer screen. It's a gift from my daughter.

The C's are my initials, given to me by a woman I was involved in a relationship with who had also bought herself her own initials. The MYO 244 is a vehicle licence plate I found in Bangalore and brought home from India in 1979.

The mask on the left is something I bought in Spain in 1992, I just love all the colours in it.

The huge snake-charmer painting on the right I bought in India, also in 1979, for my mom.

She knew how much I loved it; she gave it back to me several years later.

These things will hang on whatever walls protect me, forever.

And to the left here is a treasure trove of stuff that never leaves the top of my TV/sound system wall unit.

The clock my mom gave me; the "Beary Special Dad" teddy bear from my daughter; the bottle of Quebec maple syrup from my son.

Other items are there from different people, including an Alaskan bear, a vase, a black puppy dog from women past and present.

And this is only a small sample of the knicks and knacks of my life and my travels and "my stuff" that I keep not in a closet but there for me to see, all the time.

Blogger wouldn't let me download any more pix, so I might have to follow this up with a Part 2 unless I've put all of Blogworld (or at least the few visitors to my little part of the planet) to sleep by now.

And if I haven't done that, I'll say this: I've opened up a bit of my life to you...now what are some of the things you hold dear, knick-knacks, gifts you've received, keepsakes, etc., that adorn your home?

Things you want to have around you to remind you of this thought or that person or that time or that relationship...or whatever?