Welcome, winter

Last year at this time we'd had snow on the ground for a week straight. This afternoon it began to fall again, heavy wet flakes blizzarding in the breeze. Mr. Thel and I strolled up to the taco truck for lunch, and the wait outside turned us into snowcones. Luckily my year-old wool hat, knitted at Thanksgiving last year, kept my head toasty. My khaki-clad legs were not so lucky; I was happy to scuttle back inside with my ginormous burrito.

Mmmm, carne asada. Mmmm, snow.

Hi-diddly-ho there, neighborinos

Wow, where'd the last week go? I am a bad, bad Nablopomoer.

I came down with a cold two weekends ago, which had me lolling about uselessly for a few days. When I get sick, which is rarely, I'm so unaccustomed to the state that I feel pathetically unable to deal with it. I whine and loll and sniffle and whine and make Mr. Thel fetch me soups and juices...a terrible patient.

We drove down to good old Roseburg (well, Winston) (well, Lookingglass) (well, further than that...up into the f'real sticks) for Thanksgiving weekend. Played with the nieces, lounged about with grandparents, and ate the requisite 4,000 calories or so. Less, actually, because there wasn't any damn stuffing! My mom said she was roasting a ham, and when I asked about stuffing everyone laughed at me. "Where would you stuff it?" my dad chortled. Please--as if you'd have stuffed it in the turkey, anyway! Thanksgiving without stuffing...and they wonder why I so infrequently coming home for the holiday.

I jest, of course. Mostly. The ham was nice, and the hollow caused by the absence of stuffing was filled by the delicious salmon we had on Friday night. Then a small person all hopped up on pie launched herself, howling gleefully and windmilling her arms, at Mr. Thel, and Chloe leapt to intercept the threat, and there was a collision, and some sobbing, and oh dear. Fortunately the small person is a hardy soul, and the next morning found her once again happily patting Chloe and tweaking her ears, and Chloe enduring such untender administrations with admirable equanimity.

Happy Thanksgiving, la la la.

Illy

I've been sick and missed a couple of days. But apparently this counts as a posting! So I don't have to miss three days!

Day 17 is a mini-vacation day

A rundown of the last 24 hours:

--Enjoying delicious Indian food at the restaurant across from our hotel
--Listening to good music until after midnight
--Sleeping in late
--Eating bananas, doughnut holes, orange juice, and coffee in our hotel room overlooking the Strait of Juan de Fuca
--Driving the half-hour out to Lake Crescent, beautifully draped in grey mists and rain
--Stopping at the easy-to-overlook "Granny's Cafe" on our way back to Port Angeles for a tasty cheeseburger, sitting at one of about eight tables in the cafe, and eavesdropping on the conversation among the three park rangers sitting nearby
--Lounging in the hotel room, watching the clouds slide past and indulging in a trashy magazine

Day 16

Made it to Port Angeles by 11:00 this morning, so we spent a few hours wandering around town.

We stopped at a music store so Mr. Thel could purchase spare drumsticks, and I found the piano instruction book I used to pore through, trying to teach myself to play, when I was a kid:



We had an old piano stool, all the upholstery worn off it to reveal the wooden seat lid. Under the lid lived a hodgepodge of music books. The John Thompson one was old and tattered, falling to bits around its edges and its cover faded to pale orange. For all I know it was an original first edition print from the book's 1938 origin.

When my parents moved into a smaller house they gave the piano away; I didn't ask, but I imagine the piano books went away as well. I still don't know anything about playing the piano past a first-grade level, but it was such an unexpected delight to flip through and hum all those old songs to myself. Maybe one of my nieces will find it useful someday.

Day 15

My bus driver this evening drove as if she were trying to work the gas pedal and a yo-yo with the same foot, simultaneously. Lurch, brake, lurch, brake, lurch, brake. I disembarked and came reeling home like a drunkard after a six-month sea voyage.

Tomorrow Mr. Thel and I are heading over to Port Angeles for two nights; his band has shows there on Friday and Saturday. We have engaged our lovely neighbors to take care of Chloe while we are gone, and I'm nervous as a mother about it. I wanted to write out a detailed list of all the instructions and suggestions we'd already discussed with them, but Mr. Thel convinced me that as competent, dog-friendly adults they are unlikely to forget to feed her. (To be callous about it, she could stand to lose a few pounds anyway. When I took her to the vet two weeks ago the assistant noted approvingly that Chloe had lost about three pounds since her last visit. Then the vet came in and started to lecture me that Chloe is getting slightly chunky. Fortunately, the assistant leapt in to note that we're "heading in the right direction, actually." Mm-hmm!)

I'm not as worried about the neighbors neglecting her as I am about her getting into some kind of trouble between their visits, including but not limited to:
--having an attack of diarrhea and tracking it through the house
--chewing on an electrical cord
--chewing on something of ours in resentment at our prolonged absence
--knocking over a bookshelf, OR! --having a bookshelf fall on her in an earthquake!
--Or having the whole house fall in on her in an earthquake!
--Or having the whole house fall in on her in an earthquake, surviving the house's collapse and fleeing the scene in terror, ending up in the greenbelt on Beacon Hill where the coyotes are rumored to live and, believing herself abandoned by her people, insinuating herself into the coyote pack, until one day getting into a poisoned chunk of meat set out by a coyote-hater and dying a slow and terrible death.

This is why I don't do well at "thinking through the potential outcomes" of my choices. Too many appalling possibilities. Better to leave the vet's phone number, our cell numbers, and a new bag of dogfood on the counter and zip away before I talk myself out of it.

Books and lists

I need to update the list of books I've read this year, languishing at midsummer's point there in the sidebar. I'm fairly sure I've surpassed my year's goal of 50 already, thanks in part to my belated discovery of Diana Wynne Jones. Though I'm past the age at which I should have read them, I have still fallen in love with her young adult novels.

A fun thing about the last year or two has been realizing and embracing the fact that I adore well-done fantasy writing. Aside from a handful of best-beloved series from my childhood (Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Susan Cooper, Loyd Alexander, and Madeleine L'Engle spring to mind as the reigning quintumvirate of those years, although Robin McKinley and Patricia McKillip shouldnt' be left out), I'd somehow managed to miss most of the genre for the last decade or so. Thinking about it now, I can't imagine what kept me away...probably some sense that it was a childish interest best put away as I became an adult.

Well. You know. Fuck. That. Shit.

I think it was Lois McMaster Bujold's novel Paladin of Souls, plucked in idle curiosity from a shelf at Third Place Books about 3 years ago, which deftly reminded me of how much delight, satisfaction, and beauty there is in fantastical literature done well. Since then I've been bolder about picking up fantasy books I've never heard of, and trying them out. As with anything, I've had varying success with that approach; some extremely popular books just aren't my cup of tea. But then there's Neil Gaiman, and Diana Wynne Jones, and Bujold, and now Robin Hobb (whose Assassin's Apprentice just swept the evening away from me...), Philip Pullman, Susanna Clarke...

It's nice to stretch out more comfortably inside my skin. Openly relishing the fantastical is one way I'm getting more comfortable in here. It's jolly good fun, too.

The view from my office, three weeks ago

It's barren now, but this tree turns such a determined yellow in the fall that I frequently mistake its brightness for sunshine even on the gloomiest of days.

Weeeoooeeeoooeeeooo...

I just spent about fifteen minutes squinting at this. For the life of me I could only see her spinning counterclockwise, and then I realized that if I focus on her feet I can trick my brain into seeing it both ways. Freaky.

clipped from www.news.com.au Right Brain v Left Brain THE Right Brain vs Left Brain test ... do you see the dancer turning clockwise or anti-clockwise? If clockwise, then you use more of the right side of the brain and vice versa. Most of us would see the dancer turning anti-clockwise though you can try to focus and change the direction; see if you can do it. LEFT BRAIN FUNCTIONS uses logic detail oriented facts rule words and language present and past math and science can comprehend knowing acknowledges order/pattern perception knows object name reality based forms strategies practical safe RIGHT BRAIN FUNCTIONS uses feeling "big picture" oriented imagination rules symbols and images present and future philosophy & religion can "get it" (i.e. meaning) believes appreciates spatial perception knows object function fantasy based presents possibilities impetuous risk taking

Into the grey

With the second Windpocalypse of the season behind us, we are well on our way into the heart of winter around here. Solstice is nearly six weeks away, and as always I find that facing three months of short days makes my spirits sink a bit.

I don't mind chilly, wet weather. In fact, I prefer it to hot, dry weather. You can always throw on another layer of clothes in the winter, but there are only so many garments you can remove in the summer (and sometimes removing them all leaves you wishing for still more layers to peel back). It's the brevity of the daylight hours, combined with the prospect of finding most of those daylight hours sodden and grey, that makes me quail.

But then I always shake myself sternly as I begin to wilt and whine, mid-November, and remind myself of three things:

1. Long, dark evening hours provide you the perfect cover to do the things you most enjoy--knit, read, journal, drink hot sweet beverages, squirrel around on the internet, etc. Indoor activities, you know. During these months nobody questions the notion of spending hours curled up in bed with a good book; the same practice in June gets you a scornful sigh.

2. 'Tis the season of three-day weekends and holidays aplenty, starting with today's federal holiday and lasting through February.

3. Even the dimmest days tend to have long enough dry spells for a brisk walk with Chloe, or around the block at work.

I had a lovely reminder of that last point today. A windstorm blew in, pelting the windows with rain while the winds banshee-wailed at the front door. Chloe had the world's fastest potty walk in the rain this morning, and then we hibernated in the living room with the aforementioned reading materials and tea (Chloe satisfied herself with a bone and a nap). I worked on my revised mitten, curling my toes inside my slippers, and began to feel those first pangs of the rainy-season blahs. But by midafternoon the wind had blown a hole in the cloud cover, the sun came blazing out dazzlingly on all the wet, and I spent the better part of an hour romping outside with Chloe and a tennis ball. My bright new rubber boots, as hoped, made running around in the tall, wet grass a satisfyingly dry-footed experience. So even on a stormy day, we were able to gallivant in the sun with the brisk winds no more than a nose-nipping nuisance.