New Year Greetings With a Fling of Sandpipers 𓅪

And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.
Rainer Maria Rilke

We’re getting ready for another storm but yesterday it still was sunny and warm. Check out these south-facing sandpipers, all looking in the same direction. I wonder what they’re thinking about…

Maybe they’re hoping 2026 will bring peace and harmony and love to the world. That’s my wish, too.

Do you know what a group of sandpipers is called?

There are many recognized collective nouns for a group of sandpipers:

𓅪 a bind
𓅪 a cluster
𓅪 a contradiction
𓅪 a fling
𓅪 a hill
𓅪 a time-step

My personal favorite is a “fling” of sandpipers.

𓅪 Happy 2026!
Hauʻoli Makahiki Hou

In Limbo

The days between Christmas and the new year are suspended in amber; a week of feeling in limbo — at least for me.

The frenzy leading up to Christmas that started at Halloween and progressed to Thanksgiving and finally to December 25 is a mess of cooking and baking and cleaning — and now it’s over, along with the twenty-four hour Christmas music on the radio.

It’s so so quiet outside, like a day during the pandemic.

It’s a great time to shop the after holiday sales, but I have enough wrapping paper and Christmas cards and decorations to last until the next century, so I’m not all that excited about the 75% off prices…although I DO love a bargain.

But — we’re not quite done because the end of the year is only a few days away and that occasion is supposed to be memorialized by some sort of celebration, whether you choose to go to a ball or a party or stay home by the fire with a glass of champagne and try to stay awake until midnight.

And then it’s over — but not until the idiots shoot guns in the air and set off more fireworks that scare all the animals.

I’m not sure I’d call this feeling a full fledged depression, but there’s a term that describes it pretty well… Post Holiday Blues. It sounds like it should be the title of a song, right? PHB refers to the letdown we might feel after all the excitement and anticipation leading up to the holidays.

I hope Santa brought you everything you asked for and enjoy this week in limbo, waiting for 2025.