Pig and farm report
I began dismantling Christmas in earnest two days ago and plan on finishing entirely this morning there are still sugar cookies in the lewdly winking Santa cookie jar and the two Santas that I put on a tall shelf that I can’t reach but the tree is gone the lights are down (Mary’s idea of winding the lights around a wrapping paper tube is brilliant something I never before considered) all the ornaments back in my closet I took a picture of that beautiful little beat up angel because she is my second oldest ornament hand carved no bigger than my thumb given to me by my friend Diana one of my best friends for years who I eventually lost because I got sober and crazy but my son is still in touch with her husband through his father etcetera it gets complicated as families do but that little angel persists in spite of her trauma she is a fighter my oldest ornaments are the White King and Queen From Alice in Wonderland I found them in the Canyon Way Bookstore in Newport Oregon
I believe and have believed for years that Christmas would be much improved if it occurred in February in that long bleak stretch of unbroken winter where nothing is green and the sky and water jostle for a bit of blue I could really bring the joy in February now we are in that liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s day where everything seems to stop completely except the eating of cheese and chocolates
yesterday I drove to Mount Vernon to look at the snow geese and the trumpeter swans and hawks and eagles that live there in abundance in the now abandoned cornfields that drive along Old Pioneer Highway is gorgeous to me and teeming with Animal Gods three times now I have seen red foxes standing alert in those fields and great blue heron striding along the storm drains near the road I stopped and looked at the Skagit River which has been near flood levels I got out of my car and slid down the muddy bank and just stood there breathing before I realized that not only were my shoes muddy but so were my legs my entire butt and my hands so I had to get the giant piece of plastic the nursery put in my trunk when I bought my fig tree on my car seat to drive home
I had some upsetting news on Christmas day but I think I have it handled though it involves me having to change my health care provider to a clinic that is 40 minutes away in order to continue seeing New Nurse but I only go to the regulation doctor once a year and that’s only if I’m visibly bleeding New Nurse needs to step up her communications game though to be honest I sent her back a panicky reply and when she still hadn’t written back I sent her another panicky reply asking her to please let me know when she read it then later (this morning) I realized I had saved both of those damned emails as drafts so yeah I also need work I also saw a terrible car accident the same day a car hit a tree was still imbedded in the tree when and there was a head shaped hole perfectly punched through the windshield on the passenger side it was a day of pile ons and panic that would have been much more bearable in February
maybe
I’m cooking red beans in my tiny slow cooker for New Year’s red beans and rice and cornbread which I have eaten since the dawn of man and I don’t even know why but in such jangled up strangely fast and roller coastery times such traditions count at least for me
Love to you Darklings for muddling through somehow
posted by Radish King at 9:28 AM
9 Comments:
We only eat black-eyed peas here in the south for New Years. No idea why.
Did you tape the ends of the light cords to the tube? That helps. Or, alternately, you could make a cut in the ends of the tubes to tuck the cords into. That might work better.
Anyway, you may be right about February. Or, perhaps we should just skip everything but the cheese and chocolate eating. You know what I did this year? I gave half a fruitcake to the chickens because it sucked. I am almost tempted to send a stern letter to Costco to tell them that their quality control has obviously got a problem. Or did they change their recipe? Whatever, they need to try harder. The one thing I really look forward to at Christmas is fruitcake and this year, that small pleasure was taken from me.
I suppose I should start making my own again.
I am glad you got your health care problem sorted out. Why are the hardest things always seemingly made even more difficult?
(Back to the fruitcake.)
Love you, Woman. The animal gods are smiling on you.
Mary I did tape the ends and your genius was much praised throughout the land. I loved you writing about homemade fruitcake because I thought I was the only person on god’s green green who loved it.
Love back
Ps I have been a stern letter writer and fierce documenter of everything under the sun and my stern letters have often got results. I say hold their feet to the fire. Somethings are sacred.
The most money I ever made writing was with a letter that I wrote to the Viking company after we bought one of their over-priced, over-hyped stoves a long time ago and it went to shit and they said, "Too bad. The warranty's run out."
After they got the letter they sent a TEAM of men to my house and honey, they fixed that stove and it was beautiful.
"now we are in that liminal space between Christmas and New Year’s day where everything seems to stop completely except the eating of cheese and chocolates" - I'm holding up my end.
Well done Jason, well done. And welcome!
ps I have now used the last of my 2019 allotted punctuation
Oh the cheese eating. I am currently digging my fingers into this squat jar of sheep's milk something or other in olive oil. I smear it on everything.
I’ve seen those jars now I will
XXOO
I exhale when baby Jesus's birthday is past and feel glad that the season from christmas to new years is but one week. This year was particularly bad in that I wondered what the world would be like without me but I didnt tell anyone. i just closed the bathroom door and cried and then i blasted cello music and it helped.
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