With Christmas done and New Year’s Eve and Day on the way, we are in that mid-holiday-week limbo. I’m not a fan of such indecision – on with the weekly recap…
Cookies for Santa from a friend.
A Boston holiday tradition evolves.
A Christmas tradition coda with Chris.
A Christmas message for you and yours.
Christmas counter-programming.
Why do appetizers taste better when served on fancy toothpicks?
There were no Dazzlers of the Day! Send me some names on who should be featured…
I don’t see it. Is this zebra moving?
Some say it is, some say it isn’t.
I’m in the naysayer camp.
This Sunday morning post has been brought to you by sleep-deprivation.
This purgatorial place between Christmas and New Year’s Day used to be a space of joy, when I was a kid and on vacation, when I was in college and on break, when there was magic on the eves of both those bookends. Now we have to find magic in different ways – no, we have to make magic happen, because life doesn’t just hand you anything when you’re no longer a kid. Growing up is the sad realization of this, and it happens over and over. Some people try to recapture it, to prolong their childhood – adults still playing at life, afraid or unable or simply refusing to mature. Some people give in to it early, then learn later to find the play and the fun again. Some are just trying to get through the damn day.
I’m not sure where I’m falling these days, but I’m somewhere in the middle of it all, like most of us. Trying to be better than the day before, trying to be ok with when I’m not.
“It takes the rare spirit to convince them to flock with those unlike them.” – Gregory Maguire
This evening marks what is the first grown-up dinner party that I am throwing for the twins and their guests. It’s a bit early (my first attendance at an adult dinner party was when we were planning Suzie’s return from her exchange year in Denmark which was when I was about seventeen) but at fourteen the twins are already growing up faster than anyone wants to admit.
When they asked what the dress code was, I blurted out ‘casual elegant‘ since that seemed like the easiest thing to do, in my particular mind, which may not be the mindset of the average teenager – but who the hell wants to be average? Let’s lift it. And so it’s an outfit of sequins for me, to highlight a sparkling theme as we near the finale of the year. There are a few surprises in store, some conversation sparkler-starters, and the requested comfort food dinner of macaroni and cheese (Patti LaBelle’s Over the Rainbow Mac and Cheese to be precise).
Watching the twins grow up has been one of the joys of my life – and with little Jaxon just starting out on his journey we’re not done yet. If there’s one thing I hope they pick up from their crazy Uncle Al, it’s that they keep their hearts and minds open to people who may be different from them, that they forge their own paths of goodness and decency even when it’s not popular or accepted, and that they always try to do what’s right even when it’s not the easiest way.
“Watching the world wake up, dress itself in the dark, take on its daily guise, reminds me of how we fathom human character when we encounter someone at a distance, at a gallop, in the shadows. We get no more than a quick glance at the man on the street, the child in the woods, the witch at the well, the Lion among us. Our initial impression, most often, has to serve.
Still, that first crude glimpse, a clutch of raw hypotheses that can never be soundly clinched or dismissed, is often all we get before we must choose whether to lean forward or to avert our eyes. Slim evidence indeed, but put together with mere hints and echoes of what we have once read, we risk cherishing one another. Light will blind us in time, but what we learn in the dark can see us through.
To read, even in the half-dark, is also to call the lost forward.” ~ Gregory Maguire
Sweet blessed day after Christmas, how grateful I am that you have arrived with my sanity somewhat still intact! Of course, we have merely landed in that strange purgatory that leads through New Year’s Day, but the biggest day is over, and I feel no shame in rushing quickly through the rest of it. My daily meditations have fallen by the wayside the past few weeks, which is strange as this is when I need them more than over. I’ll begin again soon, because I miss them, and they provide a calmer baseline that would have been especially helpful these past few weeks. Luckily, my healthier survival mechanisms saw me through, as did a few friends, and always Andy. He has his own difficulties during the holiday season, so when he made me an omelette on Christmas Day it was one of the sweetest offerings I’ve had this season.
Now onto the year-end recaps and all that nonsense, even if I don’t know anyone who wants to look back on this year at all. Maybe I’ll skip the year-end recap entirely – or just truncate it to a one parter. Some years are best left forgotten.
Coming off a weekend filled with my family of friends, I’ll keep this brief as I need to sleep (this is being written late on Sunday night after a glorious Boston visit – well, almost glorious, but that story is coming in a bit). Here’s our weekly recap as we begin the week of the big show…
You’re not going to get sweetness if you squeeze me.
We can’t all be Elphaba or Glinda.
The holly has been enjoying a banner year, much like the hydrangeas did this past summer. I’ve captured sumptuous berry displays like this both in Boston and Albany (these are from the Boston show during last weekend’s holiday stroll). Its pointed foliage is pretty with or without its scarlet accents. ‘Tis the season for these berries. Life’s little delights… little, poisonous, deadly delights…
Don’t eat the holly.
At approximately 4:21 AM, we officially entered the realm of winter. Marking the shortest day of light and longest night of the year, from here on out our daylight time will elongate, gradually unfurling second by second, minute by minute, until we max out at the summer solstice. This is it – the bottom of the valley – and it feels very still, very dark, very quiet. Here is where we move in hushed tones and gentle whispers. Here is where we look up from the lowest levels of light, seeking out any pinprick or spark of illumination in the sky. Here, then, is winter.
Several years ago I made my peace with the season of slumber, embracing its elements and using its storms as opportunities to slow down and be mindful. That is once again the intent this year. Patience comes into prominence and importance here. I find it best to focus on the days as they come rather than be impatiently annoyed and antsy at the prospect of spring’s far-off arrival. Life should not be spent in waiting but in little actions that can be done in the moment.
While last summer began in frilly bombast (hello Coquette!) this winter begins in quiet and calm. Simply and grandly. Still waters, especially when covered in winter ice, churn with seismic shifts, making them more dangerous. Their danger is often in the unstoppable force of their immensity once set in motion. It renders the little things we may try to halt their movement relatively ineffective.
Within every shell of the promise of peace is a jagged bit of potential for the opposite. Without that kernel of knowledge, that possibility of contrast, peace might be entirely meaningless. And maybe it is. At this point, I just don’t know.
These roses glow differently at night, when the cold light of the almost-winter day gives way to the warm hues of candles and human-crafted light. There is only a slight difference from the pictures seen here, probably only discernible to the Virgos among us, of which I am begrudgingly one. Either way, and in whatever light they are shone, these roses are here for the final day of our Fade-To-Black fall, and stand gaily defiant upon the doorstep of winter.
There was much I wanted – and needed – to get out on this blog, years of family secrets and a suddenly-clearer understanding of patterns of family behavior – and I barely scratched the surface. That only means it will come out in the winter, which always makes for good clickbait during those colder months. Stay tuned, and stay warm…
“The story is told in so many ways, depending on who is doing the telling, and what needs to be heard at the time.” –
We can’t all be Elphaba or Glinda, as if life could ever be a strictly binary choice.
Some of us have to be Fiyero, if only because dust is what we come to…
Having seen ‘Wicked’ three times now, I am still haunted by this exchange, and it comes from Elphaba talking to Fiyero when they are in the enchanted forest:
Elphaba: No matter how shallow and self-absorbed you pretend to be…
Fiyero: Excuse me, there is no pretense here. I happen to be genuinely self-absorbed and deeply shallow…
Elphaba: Oh please. No you’re not. Otherwise you wouldn’t be so unhappy.
She renders him speechless then, and it’s a silence I know too well.
One blog post.
Just the one.
I usually have three scheduled:
Yesterday I only had one in me.
It wasn’t for any particular reason. I didn’t get around to pre-populating anything, and didn’t feel like doing it after work. So you got one – and a rather piss-poor one at that. Tuesdays often suck and yesterday was no exception – if anything, it was a Tuesdayer Tuesday than usual, making for a pretty shitty day that ended in rain and a sky that couldn’t decide whether to turn off the light at 3 or 4 o’clock.
Suzie and I mutually cancelled our planned holiday excursion, which means it won’t happen before Christmas; she didn’t feel well, and I didn’t feel like doing it at all. And I don’t think either of us is very bothered by it. That’s somewhat new for me. Slightly worrisome, slightly a relief, mostly a shrug.
The same way I feel about this blog. And this month. And this year.
Just the one.
Someone once said that fish were the most mysterious animals on the planet. It makes sense for that to be an assumption, as silence is so often cloaked in mystery, and fish would be among the most silent animals we know. I like the idea of fish being mysterious, and carrying secrets to their watery graves before we even know what to ask. Humans have analyzed and examined so many things to death, there is less and less that we no longer know – and not knowing is part of the joy of life. Some mysteries can never be solved, which is as thrilling as it may be infuriating for some. Personally, I like leaning into the mystery, being left with things slightly unknown, and certainty only guessed at. It stands as one of the many exceptions to my organized, Virgo nature.
The koi seen here are housed at Koto Restaurant. Andy and I pause to inspect them whenever we dine there, and I could feasibly spend hours just watching them slowly swim back and forth in their pond, not once understanding or fully knowing why they do what they do. For the longest time, I’ve wanted a koi pond of our own; Andy’s fully on board for it as well, we just need to find the space, and time, and human-labor to make it happen. They need a lot of space, and most people don’t dig their ponds deep enough; that would be fatal in our winters.
Maybe this is the winter I plan and plot and incubate the idea of how it might actually occur – the same way I used to make plans for the garden when it was asleep during these months. Knowledge and planning are key components to trying something new.
Just a few days until the official start of winter, a light coating of snow sticks to the ground – just the right amount for a white Christmas if we can keep it this way and not go overboard. A little goes a long way, even if we are at the very start of things. This outside scene will stay largely similar until spring comes again, and so I am taking my meditative moments to consider it each day, finding one point of interest or note at varying times. Winter provides ample opportunity for meditation if you allow yourself the time and focus.
I’ve reached the point in life where I embrace the winter, welcoming its insistent calls for pause or quiet when it heaps snow on our paths or rushes us indoors with an icy wind. Listening to those signs is a part of mindfulness, and that practice is especially important as we transition from the holidays to the doldrums of winter. With an aim and an eye toward keeping things steady, I’m taking in the moments as they come.
As if the season couldn’t get any more indulgent, this cupcake ornament reminds us there is no such thing as too much. Well, at this time of the year. Only I can get away with being too much year-round. More on that unhappy revelatory realization later, when I’m in the mood for almost-naked navel-gazing again. And I don’t so much get away with it as simply command that it happens.
The holidays bring out the sweetness, the stickiness, the mess, and the mayhem.
As a full moon subsides, and this latest bout of Mercury in retrograde moves to the past, we enter the high holiday season. I just spent a long weekend in Boston for our annual holiday stroll (early sneak-peek of that drama has already been posted here) and if I get ambitious I’ll try to have that rundown up here in a few days. In the meantime, enjoy this weekly blog recap…
The first awards of the FAFO season!
Changing the channel for Christmas, and beyond.
A day of comfort in every way.
