Of course there is that whole title thing I do.

I'm not ritualistic. I don't have a lot of traditions. I don't even shower on any kind of reliable schedule.

Yeah, so? I live alone and I don't take public transportation. As long as I keep a can of Lysol by the door for when company drops by, where's the problem?

Ah you're just jealous.

Back to my point, if Muthering Heights is reading this she's probably experiencing a great galloping whallop of deja vu, because my opening statements are basically a repeat of a comment I left on her blog entry about traditions yesterday. It's certainly fair to say that her post helped inspire this one. It was the date, however, that instigated it.

December 01st. Is anybody else territorial about their birth month? That's right. I might not be ritualistic or traditional, but I'm hard core sentimental. I have no desire to relive or recreate any part of the past, I just don't want any of it to go anywhere. I'm alternating between writing this post and browsing vintage purses on-line. Guess how many of the ones I've earmarked remind me of my mother?

Hey, I'm a girl. It's not Hitchcockian for me to dress up like my dead mother. It's actually a really good idea. Mom always said I'd inheritted my father's sense of style. He of the self described "Chinese New Year" colour combinations, more popularly known on this continent as "Christmas decoration" colour combinations. When wearing his beloved bright red shirt and bright green pants combo stopped satisfying he painted our entire basement those colours. In high gloss paint. It looked like the dungeon where Santa keeps the mean elves. And yes, mom was right. I always did like the way he dressed. Even after I grew old enough to know better.

And now I manage both a roster of performers and a costume department. Yup, that means people have to wear what I tell them to. Adult people. If ever a job hiring deserved an evil laugh it was mine.

No no, I'm very careful not to dress other people up like me. I'm kind of Beethoveney that way. He could write the most delicately phrased passage in a symphony and then scream for peas at the dinner table like his underwear was on fire. I might look like a feral child raised at a flea market, but my performers are always polished.

December will always be my month. I was born in it, and I'm keeping it. I will always be my father's daughter, and I will always be reminded of him everywhere I look in December.

I guess I just don't feel a personal need for rituals or traditions. The world always manages to remind me of the things I want to remember without any help from me.

That all said, you know I'm going to be keeping this:


super awesome fox tail tie that I won from The Girl With the Flour in Her Hair over at her awesome blog Peeling An Orange With A Screwdriver for absolute ever. I just wish my father could have seen me in it.

Eh, it's probably just as well. He'd likely have just borrowed it and never returned the thing.