Shift. And I do what I want.

My winter sky is back! The trees have stretched out their arms and intertwined their fingers in sleep, and the stars shine again through the empty spaces. Tonight the cold wind cut through my sweater and chilled my bare knees between the hem of my skirt and the tops of my boots, and I directed a toothy grin toward Orion.

And now, of course, the house feels like it's a hundred degrees, and I'm sitting in the front window (because that's where my computer lives, lately) with no shirt on. Good thing this isn't a highly trafficked street.



I was feeling so emo earlier this week--witness the past couple of entries--and two nights in a row I was rescued by unexpected phone calls from friends. One from a college friend (Katy) I haven't had a good conversation with since, well, probably since before graduation, and another from my we-always-hang-out friend Sara. Katy and I talked for over two hours, which was awesome. And she'll be in town soon! Or in the town where we went to school, which is only an hour away. That's a far sight closer than Salt Lake City, so I'll take it. Anyway it occurred to me that I had started getting emo around the time that I had stopped taking these vitamins that I had started taking. Looks like that may have been the reason, and it turns out that B-complex vitamins really do play a role in emotional health. Who'd have guessed it?


Also: boys.

Winter and spring, then summer

Here is the difference: I love winter like I love sleep. I love the quiet. I love the dreamy, ethereal qualities of the season, of the air. I focus on the fixtures: the unmoving trees, the pendulous moon, the here-and-gone frost that mirrors the glittering stars in the night. And when summer comes, I am suddenly lost. Where is my moon? Where are my bare, silent trees? Where is my quiet beauty? The leaves grow suddenly so thick that I can barely see the sky. But then the sun sinks toward the horizon, and its yellow rays mix into those green leaves, and my breath is stolen away. I am slowly, slowly coming to remember that I can't look in the summer for what I loved in the winter. In the summer the beauty and magic are in the movement, in the shockingly quick growth of the plants, in the changing landscape, rather than the spinning sky. It's in bioluminescent bugs, and in all of the animals that seem to somehow have appeared out of the ether. Where have they been? This evening I stood barefoot in the stream again, again drinking in the feeling of its coolness around my calves while Miley refreshed herself by swimming in small circles and huffing, and I was struck by the fragility of the water skaters. I was glad to see them, firstly, but (never having done a whit of research on them) I always wonder where they've come from. How could such spindly, tiny little bugs--water bugs, even--have survived such an icy winter? But it doesn't matter. They're here now.


Just as Miley and I crested the hill, the church bells up the street chimed eight, and the late afternoon sun reached over the Western trees, and gilded those standing to the East. A handful of bluejays circled the sky over the neighborhood, calling back and forth. Winter is about sleep, but I am relearning how to be awake.


I am still sneakily trying to teach Layla that all life is precious. This week we've (finally) been doing swim lessons rather than math lessons, and the design of their backyard pool is such that hapless spiders crawl up to the edge, lose their grip, and fall in. They are light enough to be able to stand on the surface tension in the water, and can often cling to floating leaves or make their way back onto the walls of the pool, but they can't make it up over the lip and back onto dry ground. We've been rescuing them when we see them, and noting those that are jumping spiders. They still make her nervous, but at least she no longer demands their deaths on sight. I'm working to warm her up to bees, but I am making less progress.

Snow.

There seems to be a lot of it going around. We had some tonight, and as I was mentally composing bits and pieces of this post I realized that I wanted to call tonight's snow heavy, and I also wanted to call it light. I decided that each descriptor was accurate, as they (sort of) apply to different aspects of said precipitation. The flakes were large and wet -> heavy. The flakes were large and caught the air to provide that great floaty, spinny effect -> light. It looked so gorgeous, so romantic. The descriptive phrases I came up with tended to be less romantic. Example: the way the snow floated so gently down, it looked like particulate matter suspended in a liquid. Candlelit supper worthy, I know.

But speaking of particulate matter, I love the way such light, slow-falling flakes provide a perfect visual aide to the wind, and show every swirl, gust, and riffle in the air. I loved the way the snow fell beneath street lamps, and I especially loved the way it swirled and spiraled down onto the steeple floodlights of the church I passed on the way home tonight. My favorite, though, was when a light shone straight into the branches of a small tree, and I could watch the slow snow settle gently down through the branches.


Unfortunately, wet snow is much prettier from the car. Once I was outside in it again it sounded and felt like a sullen, lead-footed rain. Tonight when I walked Miley the rain (all that was left of the former snowglory) had essentially stopped, and the damp wind made the night feel significantly colder than 39 degrees. I buried my chin and walked on, and spent very little time looking at a sky which was the color of stomach acid adulterated with varying amounts of charcoal.


But the key point here is that the snow was super pretty. It was. Ok, sleep time. (Showers? Who needs 'em?)

Whatever.

The sky looks fabulous tonight. It's weird of me to say that, I know. I think maybe I'm slightly more biased than most (as though there are more than three other people in the world walking around with massive crushes on their local starscape) because I walk out my front door* every night and look up at it through these massive trees that tower over our house, and then I wander down through the neighborhood until I can stand by the dark, sleepless, singing creek and look through the woods. It's like taking a pretty girl and dressing her up in satin and silver and pearls. She would be pretty anyway, but some nights she is breathtakingly lovely.

Tonight every inch of the ground (not the road) gleamed under the glow of our two streetlights. I love the frost on nights like this. It made me a little sad though to think that for so many centuries of winters this magic lay on the ground, right under people's feet, and no one could ever see it. Perhaps it will show up under the full moon, but I'm not counting on it. This may be the first time ever that I have been grateful for street lights. Wonderful!


































*Toor? Really? I can't type worth a damn tonight.

ice

shortly after 2 am I stumbled out the front door with leaden feet and a dog leash clutched in one fist. eventually I began to realize that I was passing most of this walk with my chin tucked down into my chest (no doubt a subconscious message that any person in her right mind would be tucked into blankets just then, rather than scarves), but when I convinced myself to lift my head I could see that it was (is) a beautiful night. the sky is purple. purple! and the stars are, of course, just lovely. sleet obviously has its downsides, but in the small hours every tree branch gleams in the porch lights, and the liriope*plants looked like dim green sea anemones underfoot. Walking on the thick frozen grass felt pretty spiffy, but it was less fun to hit a spot that had been tire-flattened earlier in the day, and slide on the ice-slicked ground. another note: wind chimes on an extremely early january morning sound pretty mystical. That sounds horrible. "Mystical" is not the word I want to be using, but I'm not sure there's another that fits better. You know? When you picture wind chimes, it's sunny and hot, 3pm on a july afternoon. (it's 3. f capitalization.) hearing them in the dark cold of january is so unexpected, and somehow a little amazing.


I noticed on the way to work tonight that the ground was all frosted. it irritates me a little that when you read this, you'll read "frosted" as a reference to cake, when actually cake frosting is almost certainly a reference to the phenomenon I was noticing on the grass. worse, if you're really doomed (like I evidently am), you'll hear "frosted" and think of the "ladies, frost yourselves" diamond commercial from "how to lose a guy in ten days." /shudder.


okay, TO BED. for real this time.






























*Evidently I've never written that word before. Had no idea how to spell it. Thank you, google.

There just isn't enough trashy in my life.

It has come to my attention that there is nothing in my wardrobe that sparkles. Not one thing. Where can I find cheap crap with glitter and sprinkles*?

This appalling lack of trashy came to my attention on New Year's Eve, when Eva and I went to get dressed and while she was putting on a sparkly tank top, I was dejectedly pawing through my piles of cotton blends. It was a sad moment.


One thing I am happy about, though, [disclaimer here: I am so terrible at drawing a line when it comes to TMI and noonegivesashit and "that girl is so crazy (in a bad way)." I am aware of this. You should be aware that this is maybe one of those times where my inability to properly screen my subject matter is more apparent] is my colorful undergarments. I got some new ones via mail order while I was in Scotland, and I noticed this afternoon that the under layers I was wearing were (are) colored as follows: blue and white polka dot, plum-colored, bright yellow, and bright blue. And in the dirty clothes pile on the floor were (are) pink silk long johns with a matching shirt, and some more pink and blue and bright green and purple and "with stars" stuff. So maybe most of my normal clothes are boring and I have too strong an attachment to blue jeans and zip hoodies, but it's okay, because I'm like a mullet. Business in the front, yes?


I bought new chapstick (I use the term loosely in that I never buy Chapstick, only sticks of wax-based stuff to keep my lips from bleeding when it gets too dry out) tonight, and I didn't like it at all. This is at least the second time in a row that this has happened. Not cool. I gave it to Chloe. I've been using Burt's Bees for a while, but have been looking (out of boredom and curiosity more than dissatisfaction) for an alternative. I haven't been particularly successful, obviously.


We're throwing an engagement party for my cousin this weekend, and as trying to get me to cook or bake is generally a pretty painful experience for all involved (not that I can't; just that trying to get me to is a huge pain), my main job in all this is to paint the bathroom and not eat the freshly baked biscotti or cheese pennies or ham biscuits with pimento cheese, or whatever other delicious things get made this week, all from scratch. I'm sure that second part of the job, the not-eating-stuff part, will get harder as the week progresses, but at the moment I am feeling the irritation that is trying to scrape a bathroom that, for some unfathomably asinine reason, was painted ten years ago with flat paint. Except for the closet door frame, and one stretch of wall below the medicine cabinet, which were sensibly painted with semigloss. Whose idea was that? Flat paint, by the way, does not hold up to moisture. Like, at all. Don't f-ing paint your bathroom (or kitchen, for God's sake) with flat paint.


On the plus side, and on an entirely different note, we lost power the other day. I think some drunken idiot ran into a power pole or something, because a huge section of the neighborhood lost power on a fairly clear, non-windy evening. Obviously that isn't super great. It's "on the plus side" because I texted Jack to tell him the power was out and ask him if he needed a flashlight or extra blankets or anything, and then he came home with five snuggies. I have way too much stubborn pride to actually buy a snuggie, but damned if I'm going to let one go to waste. Also, as it turns out, a snuggie is (or seems to be) the perfect thing for my father, who is nearly always cold but doesn't like using blankets or adding lots of layers. Cozy light blanket with arms? It's the perfect compromise! I can't imagine why we didn't think of this before.
































*Halfway meant to type "sparkles," but had intended to type "metallic sequins" before I stopped paying attention to what I was typing. I think I'll leave sprinkles though.

**Homeless footnote: in the interest of using this like a diary and giving myself some actual record of what's going on even when I don't feel like typing/talking about it, I should admit that I have been super emo about David lately. "Super emo" is probably far too strong a phrase, but whatever. And anyway, it's hard to be so completely single when kissing is so much fun, and when there are piles of colorful awesomeness lying around. I mean really.

Upon reflection

I wanted to write earlier with fluid words and glowing appreciation about our caroling venture, but it just wasn't in me yet. Perhaps it still isn't, but earlier it was definitely too soon, and I hadn't had the time whilst caroling to begin composing the descriptive pictures in my head. So I know I have already posted twice (three times?) today, but this is my space, and I am writing again.

When we caroled, it was fairly chilly. When I left my second tutoring job, it was (or felt) colder still. Just now when I walked Miley, the air was a balmy 36 degrees. It was cool enough to mist my breath, but warm enough that wearing my jacket and scarf felt almost silly. We walked down past our neighborhood creek, as we usually do in the evenings, and the days-old snow lay dingy under the full moon, trodden down by dozens of feet and hundreds of footprints. Back on the road past the creek woods, I walked on the ground as much as possible, avoiding the slick ice and hard tarmac. In many places the newly bare, newly thawed earth was so soft that I felt I was walking on quilts.


My family and friends began caroling without me, as I was a little late leaving tutoring and stopped at the library to stock up on audio books. After I ate I stepped out the front door, walked to the corner, and followed the sound of their voices until I found them. We sang two songs for each house: first, a song we chose anew each time, and usually only the first verse, and second, the first verse of "We Wish You A Merry Christmas." Exceptions to the one-verse-only rule were made so that Chloe and I could sing the descant for "Oh Come All Ye Faithful," which just isn't as magical if sung on the first verse.

We sang for Chloe's old choir buddies. We sang for Lynn-Ellen's sister, who offered us cookies and invited us in for hot spiced wine. We sang for a handful of strangers, and for Celeste's piano teacher. One woman had heard us singing down the street, and then surprised us at the door. Her husband came out after we started singing, then ran back in at the end and returned with a handful of M&Ms bags and a cry of "Thank God for leftover Halloween candy!" We sang for Bill and Lynn-Ellen's children and their visiting friends, most of whom refused to come to the door--probably out of embarrassment. We solved this problem by invading their dining room and singing "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town," with special emphasis on "he knows when you've been bad or good" and "so be good for goodness sake." This performance was followed by a walk-home conversation about the joys of embarrassing one's children.


Tonight, as I neared home and the end of my walk with Miley, our resident hoot owl began to call. It is such a homey, comforting sound.

Notes from the last two days.

There is nothing like the blue stillness of moonlight falling on snow. And the treeshadows are never softer than tonight, in the blue still small hours of the morning.

I am so tired. I need to read Chloe's paper.

Do you remember this? Though my picture wasn't exactly the same, I do. Oh, I do.


My day Wednesday was supposed to go like this: wake up, drive to Northside, meet uncle to figure out car issues, go prime and paint all day, make a bunch of money.

My day Wednesday actually went like this: wake up to a surprise phone call from an aunt: "can you help me pick up and install insulation?"; say "I guess"; call uncle to adjust plans; drive toward aunt's house; redirect to Lowe's; wait 1hr in parking lot; shop for renovation supplies; transport insulation to aunt's house; realize that these clothes, while perfect for priming and painting, are not perfect for insulation installment; argue, get stressed out, measure/cut/install a bunch of unfaced insulation; get fiberglass in eyes despite work goggles; stack firewood; meet with uncle for 10 min and establish that the car won't disintegrate on the highway; arrive home to find dinner guests sitting down to eat; shower; eat and socialize; meet Kelly and Jr and Maggie at a Mexican place to talk and laugh for ages while they have dinner; come home.

All in all, not so bad. Today I had really hoped would be a make-up day for all the work I failed to do yesterday, but then it snowed. I don't like driving in the snow, and I don't like driving in the Fan, so I decided not to try the two together. (Also, my car's front left shocks have been acting insane when they're cold and bouncing me around like mad, which doesn't sound like a great idea in the snow.) It doesn't look good for this project getting done before the tenant returns on Sunday, a probability which I find a little frustrating and a little shaming, though I'm not sure there's a lot I could have done differently.  Today I wrapped presents though, and  made French bread all by myself (unless you count motherly advice), and it turned out very well. I also had the extreme pleasure of consuming for breakfast a fried egg and grits doused in the juice left over from last night's duck. We've never had duck at home. It was fabulous. This was better.

Notes

I went to a beautiful international lessons and carols concert tonight with Anna, and... well, as I said, it was beautiful. The chorus was amazing. I liked almost all of the arrangements, and most of the carols were new to me. The orchestra was excellent. Each reading was in a different language, with the English translation projected on the wall. During each song, works of art related to the nativity (and often to the culture of the song and/or previous reading) were projected on the wall. I teared up a few times.

(Faith, our cat, is sleeping curled up on top of a sheet-covered milk crate. Her head just tipped off the edge and woke her up. Adorable.)

As we were leaving the concert, I was giving Anna a ride to her car, and someone backed straight into me. I have the worst reactions in these sorts of situations. I just sort of watch, dumbfounded, and maybe say something like "stop!" Eventually Anna said "your horn! Honk!" And then I had to find my horn, which broke a while back and has been relocated. Anyway, there's a small dent in my door, and I have the woman's name/number/insurance information. I haven't told my parents yet--I forgot at first.

I remembered when Anna called me around 10:30 to tell me that as she was leaving the birthday party she attended after the concert,

wait for it,

someone backed straight into her car, and hit her in the exact same spot as the woman at the show hit me.

What are the odds?



Speaking of odds, I spent the bulk of my evening after I came home shopping for snow boots. Originally I was shopping for thin wool socks for Scotland, and I was looking on planetshoes.com because they'd sent me a coupon. I searched "wool" on their site, and ran straight into these:

I want them. I want them so bad. But I have been able to semi-successfully convince myself that they wouldn't look good with jeans. Do not dissuade me. I can't even afford them at all. The best price I found was $122, and that took a lot of doing, and was a temporary sale. No one else had them on sale (reg price $160); hardly anyone had them in my size. It was slightly hellish.

I ended up with these, from footwise.com, with which I am pretty well pleased:

As a ridiculously fabulous added bonus, they were on sale because footwise only had them left in one size--my size. NO ONE else had these in my size except maybe Nordstrom's. Nordstrom's was charging $100. The footwise sale was $49. God loves me, I think. Now let's just keep our fingers crossed and hope they fit and all that.











On an unrelated note, I walked Miley tonight. She insists upon strangling herself. I constantly find myself thinking, "Buy a semi-choke collar! Strangulation theoretically optional."