Yuletide

 It is snowing again. It began in the morning with big wet flakes that did not stick much. But as the day went on it changed to the small misty flakes that you need to squint to see. But those stuck plenty. By early afternoon, the sidewalks and roads were too slick for me to attempt taking a walk. I was a little unhappy about that. I was really feeling the need for some fresh air and exercise. I had to make do with enjoying the snowfall from my porch. It would have been all the more enjoyable if the road construction company hadn’t do extremely overstayed their welcome. They were supposed to be gone before Thanksgiving, and here it is Christmas. 

Tomorrow is the solstice, sometimes known as Yule, or I’ve been told that it was before Christians co-opted the term to mean Christmas. To me, it has been my brother's birthday since I was four. So, on this night so many years ago I stood on another porch and called out to the sky to snow while my mother was in labor. On Christmas morning my mother was allowed to leave the hospital early, so Santa brought me a doll, a coloring book and a new baby brother. Do you remember what you got for Christmas in 1961?  My brother hates that we all have a vivid memory of the night he was being born. I won’t bring it up to him tomorrow…

I have struggled to get myself into a holiday mood. In between recovering from the flu and repeated snow storms I have missed some of the activities that I had been hoping to attend. I had to forgo caroling at Fort Nisqually, which was what I had been looking forward to. I have always had fun caroling, but hardly anyone does it anymore. To find it here, and in a charming location. Oh well, it might work out next year. I did go to our towns parade. It fell between snow storms, and was thankfully brief. The flu hit the town hard. A lot of people were still sick and there was still quite a bit of ice on the ground. Not only were there not many people at the parade, but most of the houses hadn’t been decorated yet. Some of them still haven’t. 

We put up the tree, about a week late for us. But we are happy with it. The waiting did not hamper our selection. I think the tree is nicer than those we’ve had before. And I made an attempt at the shortbread that I had in Chicago last year. They weren’t bad, but I do need to work on it before I try to wow anyone with my Maple Shortbread. I’d try again tomorrow, but I will be baking a birthday cake.  

I did manage to get my packages wrapped and sent in plenty of time for them to arrive before Christmas. I even got cards sent this year. When I write it down, it seems as if I’ve got this one down. But its all been very perfunctory. The excitement and magic just seem to be missing. The gifts that I sent are okay, I guess. But nothing that I can’t wait for them to see what I found for them. If my cookies don’t work out, I’ll buy some from the store. Karen found some chocolate ornaments for the tree, and they are fine. But they aren’t the European ones we buy from the Christmas market that we had to forego this year. I doubt that anyone will be remembering this Christmas sixty one years from now. But that’s okay. Maybe it’s someone else’s turn this year.  Saturday night we will have Jim and Nora over for a steak dinner and open gifts. I will have extra, because I decided to save the ones my children sent me to be opened on Christmas Day. 

After getting my presents sent in a timely fashion, I was feeling okay about myself. Then as I was putting things away I found a pair of socks I made for Jack’s gift. And I forgot about them completely. I’m wondering now if I should just send them separately. Proof that Nana is getting old…

I hope that you are having a wonderful holiday celebrating what you choose. 

Influenza

 

It’s snowing now, big fat wet flakes that will cover the newly thawed ground before morning. The snow has been falling on and off for a week. It hasn’t been obnoxious as there are times between the storm where the roads dry out.  We haven’t been kept form anything we have felt like doing. The forecast for the near future has more of the same. If this is a precursor for what to expect from the winter, I will be glad for my snow boots. 

What has kept us from anything is that we have been down with the flu. It started with all of us, a week ago Wednesday. I am the only one of the three of us who has taken the shot, and I was extremely less sick than Karen and Ken. Karen got sick enough that her daughter took her to the hospital. She was scared by not being able to breathe. They diagnosed the flu and sent her home with a sack full of medications and the standard advise to rest and hydrate. She and Ken have disparaged the fact that I get vaccinated every year. Now she is onboard. I am mostly well, but I still get very tired very easily. 

To pass my time, I have been watching holiday baking shows on TV.  It has me wanting to attempt the maple shortbread cookies that I tasted last Christmas in Chicago. The recipe that I have calls for both maple sugar and syrup. I haven’t found any maple sugar, but I do have an organic cane sugar and a very top shelf syrup. After the cookies are cut and stamped I will brush them with some of the syrup and top them with turbinado sugar before I bake them. I’d love to have the Chicago recipe, but it is a family secret and it’s not my family. 

I’m hoping that Karen and Ken will be feeling well enough to help me eat them soon. They have been really sick. 

Last Bastion

It happened today. The last thread by which I was clinging to my youth card snapped. It would take a Trumpian level of denial to conclude any thing other. I have jumped the shark and crossed to the side of the crazy old cat ladies. It is sadly official.

It all came about very unwittingly on my part. I didn’t mean to loose hold of that card. It is really a shame. It happened this way. If my clothes are reasonably clean at the end of the day, I don’t throw them into the hamper. I have a set of hooks on the outside of my closet door where I hang them to be reworn another day. Please don’t judge me harshly for that; my closet is small. And I don’t often entertain in my bedroom. My clutter bothers me less than washing my clothes every week. 

There are a couple of mitigating circumstances you should know about. The first being that there is a good deal of roadwork and accompanying mess going on right in front of my house right now. I have to traverse that mess each and every time I leave my yard. As a result, my shoes, my socks and the cuffs of my leggings or jeans get filthy every day and must be washed. The second circumstance is that it is Indian summer here, and the weather changes are volatile. One week we are in the 90’s, the next we have days where we don’t even break 70 degrees. 

The other day, I put on a pair of leggings, blouse and sweater and started out the door. But before I got to the garden gate I realized I was terribly overdressed for the weather. So I went back, picked out a pair of capris and left the sweater behind. The next day I wore the capris again, but with the polka dot  blouse seen in the picture above. The leggings and the sweater stayed on the hooks. That night I hung the polka dot shirt on one of the hooks to wear again later. 

This morning I…I have no excuse. I don’t know what I was thinking. After my morning shower I grabbed the clothes on the hooks and put them all on without thinking; obviously without looking at them either. Not only did I put those clothes on and putter around the house, I walked out the gate and paraded all around town in them too. Umm, hummm…for four and a half miles. On coming home, my camera snapped the picture above. I am mortified! Have I become a plumped out version of Maxine? Am I the cranky old cat lady now?

Yep, that card fell right out of my hands. It’s pretty much gone forever…

The Fullness of Time

I have sat for a day or so thinking about what to say. My family is inclined to gallows humor during times of sadness and stress. My first inclinations of what to say during times like this lean toward this kind of wit,  and as such are usually inappropriate. I have to watch my tongue. I am truly saddened by the passing of the Queen, and have great sympathy for her family who must now grieve in public. Snark and wit seem out of place and offensive. I do send my condolences to her family and subjects. I will miss her Christmas addresses. It has become a happy tradition for me that I really enjoyed. It was like getting a Christmas card from her every year. I can think of nothing with which to replace this custom. I will miss it, and her.

I do have a bit of a quandary though. Two of my ancestors signed the death warrant for King Charles I. They came to America and helped to found the city of New Haven, Connecticut while running from the wrath of King Charles II. Should I be concerned about King Charles III? I do hope not. 

Closer to home, it was my birthday. I turned the silver age of sixty-five. I am officially a senior citizen. I. Get. Discounts! My niece and my sister both have birthdays coming up too. But none of us has any money. Who does these days? Instead of piling a lot of debt on credit cards, we decided to have a joint celebration. We went to see a local impersonation group perform at a street festival. We even splurged and got milkshakes at the Dairy Freeze. It was a lot of fun, and nobody had to blow spit on a cake. 

And a bit of happy news for me; a wonderful new business is opening up in the new artsy fartsy “South of Main” area they are trying to create downtown. I am thrilled that they were planning an artsy fartsy area of town. I had no idea, but it is so needed. And I need an outlet to sell my merch… Seriously, this is what I have been wishing for. I hope that we will soon get more of the same. It will be nice to have more than tattoo parlors and nail salons to shop at. It may be a tough economy to open in. But I do hope it works out for them, and me. 

I’ll end this post here and get to bed. That is if I can convince Pippy that she has to share…

ESPIONAGE!

 

I’m shocked, but sadly not surprised. He held meetings with Putin that he did not allow any witnesses in. He owes a lot of money and soon it will be much more. Can we really claim surprise?

Perfect Summer Day

It’s late now. Being after midnight, I suppose that technically it is early. And it's also technically tomorrow. So, yesterday morning I woke up, showered, put a load of laundry into the wash and left to go on a walk. 

The weather was perfect, sunny and warm just enough with a nice breeze. I thought about taking the bus into Sumner to browse the shops. But I was still stinging a bit from the trip I took to the beach. It was fine, but I really didn’t plan anything. So I showed up and after a while I noticed I was the only single person on the boardwalk. Then I started feeling self conscious, as if other people were watching and thinking I was creepy for being there alone. So I left after about twenty minutes. Today I stayed close to home. I went to the park and then wandered around town for a while. 

The walk was good for me. I walked until I was completely caught up in the feeling of the moment. With the warm day and cool breeze, the bounty of summer around me I was reminded of a hundred lazy afternoons in the sun. 

 

Itinerary

 

I looked for a sunrise picture on the beach and didn’t find one. Of course. The sun rises in the east. Sunrise on a Pacific beach isn’t going to be all that spectacular. It’s sunsets that are going to be the better picture. It makes sense. But part of me still is set for the east coast. 

I went to bed really early last night. I was exhausted. But now I am up extremely early this morning. And I must admit, I’m not sure what to do with myself so early. I’m not much of a morning person. I did it for all those years when I raised a family and worked. It was demanded of me. But very little is demanded of me now, and nobody cares what time I get up or go to bed. 

Today will be almost ideal weather wise. I should stay home and wash my clothes, but I think I’m going to catch a bus to the beach, maybe have fish and chips at Little Chinooks for lunch. 

As Seen On TV

Today is a beautiful day, 83° F with sunny skies and a gentle breeze. It is a little on the warm side, but it is August. 

Do you have any unusual routines that you use to get yourself to wind down at bed time? Some people read, but I'm the kind that reads to the end of the page, the chapter, oh Come On! I can't put the book down NOW! So it isn't really all that helpful. I can't tell you how many nights I have stayed up reading, knowing that I would have to pay dearly for it. But when my children were young, I used  to make up fairy stories to tell them at bedtime. And I would find myself nodding off too. Who knows what impact staying up the night before reading all night had on that process, but it did seem to work. 

Lately I have been watching the surveillance cameras in a nearby tourist town on YouTube and making up stories about what I see. The town is a family orientated vacation spot, so the nightlife is pretty tame. Even the brewhouse seems to close at midnight. But one night I was watching and I spotted four men run out of it in single-file, one right after the other.  Then suddenly a large crowd emerged from the nearby buildings and watched them run off up the street. There did not appear to be any police to stop them and after a while, the crowd just wandered back to wherever they came from. So that night I told myself a bed-time story about the men having been caught trying to steal from one of the travelers who was staying the night in the inn above the brewhouse. I never write the stories down, because that would break the bedtime story feel of it and keep my mind from winding down. 

Last night I was indulging in my routine, watching the tourist town on YouTube. I was about to turn the TV off and go to bed, when I spotted a man wheel a large dolly filled with boxes up to a door of one of the buildings I could see very well on my screen. What happened next floored me, and left me feeling quite disturbed. Beside the door stood an ornamental shrub that looked to be about four feet high. He tipped it slightly and rummaged around underneath it. Then he used the key he's all too obviously found there to let himself in through a different door. I can only hope they have a key lock box under that shrub, and not just a key lying out for anyone to find. But no, it was all too obvious that there is a key lying out under the shrub by the door....And a camera that broadcast live on YouTube exactly where it is and which door it works on.

Remember, the expectation is that if you are in public, you are being recorded.

Big Brother is watching.

Fever Break

This time last week I was gathering table cloths and towels to cover the east and west facing windows of the house. Tonight, the heatwave has broken. For the foreseeable future, we will have normal summer temperatures. A few of the days will be a little on the warm side, but oh so doable. The chance of rain is miniscule, I will be able to get out and view the damage done. I wonder if the heat killed every flower that bloomed. 

I was able to see the mountain when we went grocery store hopping this afternoon. It was visible despite the air quality being hazy. Unlike after the heatwave last year, it is still covered with snow. I did not stop to take a picture, it was just too hot.

This evening I gave the dog a bath and then took a shower myself. Bear was so happy that he grabbed the buckets that I had warm water in and tried to pour more on himself after he'd been thoroughly rinsed. That dog loves to be clean. He even let me trim his nails. I too, was happy to get a shower. I could feel the heat rinse away from my head and the ache that had been behind my eyes eased. It is so nice to smell decent and not feel sticky and oily. It is better knowing that it will be fourteen degrees cooler tomorrow. The dreadful heat is gone for now. 

Let There Be Coolness

One more day of incredibly hot temperatures and we will be through it. That is what I tell myself. It's what I hope. I hope tomorrow won't be as hot as expected. Does optimism count?

I've worked hard not to whine, but this is the sixth day of this dreadfulness. Mostly, I have stayed inside, moving fans around to accentuate the coolest airflow through the house. 

Karen and I were stir crazy enough yesterday to decide to take a field trip. At first she wanted to visit some garden. But she found out that it was more than an hour away and would close soon after we got there. We made the sane decision to wander more closely to home. We decided to visit several stores that are on the way to Enumclaw. The road winds through the Muckelshoot Reservation and farmland. The stores are more interesting than almost anything we have in downtown Auburn. There is a butcher where if I was so inclined I could purchase a side of beef or swine. They have lockers to store it in too. But it is great meat at decent prices. There is a farm store that sells fruits, vegetables and local selections of home made soaps and honey, greeting cards and Sasquatch paraphernalia . There is a flower shop, that is not to say a florist. But I would wager if you need flowers for a wedding they'd be able to handle it. How I wish we had something like this to walk to in our town. 

Tomorrow will be hot again. If I could only wish it away! And then it will get cooler. I so need it to be cooler.