Wrapping Up December 2021

  I envisioned myself blogging (and writing) much more this December than has actually happened.  Part of this is due to posting to social media more than actually blogging.  I suspect that I need to have add some time-keeping software to my apps to bring social media usage back into balance.    

To recap the last few weeks.   

Through a series of events, the Day Jobbe has expanded to full time.   It's mostly remote, and I drive in to work some days.  I am doing a combination of departmental intranet design and web site management.  It has been a reminder of how brutally insurance benefits are awarded (or not) to vested employees. 

 

Writing is going very slowly, which I find it tends to do this time of year.  

My extended family is doing mostly well and managing to stay healthy during the pandemic.  

The cats have crossed another threshold with the dog and are more likely to spend the night in the house (rather than the garage) with the dog.  The cold might have something to do with this.  They also seem more tolerant of the dog in general, and no longer zip out of a room whenever she appears.  

Smokey seems to have recovered from his earlier medical emergency.  He's still as fluffy as ever, but--whether through the medicine he's taking or through the touch of age--he is bonier than he used to be.  

On the design front:  last November I sat down and decided to see about reproducing an Islamic design I've always thought was an interesting interlocking of circles, triangles, and hexagons.  As is usual with these sorts of designs, one can make it tile infinitely.  Other design projects include designing this year's family calendar and paper projects.

The Holiday Season officially starts the Day After Thanksgiving:  this is when we travel to my folks' house and help raise their ginormous artificial Christmas tree.  It's easily fourteen feet heigh and comes in five parts, six if you count the stand.  Last year the built-in light strings zapped Mark, so it's lit with separate strings.  Our lives became much easier when we stopped installing the (very heavy) base:  the resulting tree is shorter and doesn't completely overflow the traditional corner in that house which trees have gone into for the last fifty years. 

For whatever reason, my role this year was to channel Pure Capricorn Energy and direct family members to get boxes out of storage, unpack decorations, and don't just stand there: start hanging those birds and angels on the highest branches (this tree isn't going to decorate itself!).  

I ended the Thanksgiving Weekend with a trip to the Cascades Raptor Center.  It was fun seeing all the residents, but the winter light comes in at such a slant that photographs of them turns the raptors into dark, gridded proportional studies.  Understandably, the raptors want to sun themselves on a chilly winter day:  so they're either right next to the front mesh of their aviary, which makes it hard to blur out the bars with telephoto lens tricks, or they're in the back of the aviary facing away from the humans.  I did manage to get some close-ups of faces.  

 

Earlier in December, I somehow stumbled over the latest Christmas decorating at the White House.  It was such a relief to see a White House that had not been transformed into a chapter from the White Witch of Narnia's reign for the holidays.  In the Blue Room, white paper doves--one for each state--spiraled up the tree.  I was so taken with the idea that I worked from photos of the decoration and some actual doves to make a silhouette in InkScape to send to the cutter-plotter.

I unpacked the cutter-plotter, hauled out the paper, hooked up everything. . . And discovered that a recent Windows 10 upgrade had broken the USB driver to the cutter-plotter.  Christmas Was Ruined!  

The fix involved a firmware upgrade, but my particular cutter-plotter is so old the hardware is no longer officially supported.  Luckily, the support folks at Silhouette were able to send me the firmware and I was  back in business a few days later:  I had a design that cut out one large dove and two-and-a-half small ones from one sheet.  

Mark really liked the doves, and once they were all on the tree, it was like a small flock taking off in our living room.

During holiday shopping, I purchased some nice cooling racks for the house.  I've been making cookies all these years without them, and the problem with cooling them on a plate is that there's this worry that they're all going to stick together in a large pile--not to mention the micro-stress of juggling three or more cooling plates on a limited counter space.  Making cookies with cooling racks became more relaxed by several degrees; one appreciates having the correct tools to do a job.  

I probably made too many cookies.  I certainly ate too many cookies, judging by the numbers on the scale when I stepped on it.

The last third of December approached.  

I'd been trying to get a COVID booster shot, and unfortunately, the first one I could schedule was for Saturday the 18th.  This threw Mark and The Child's Birthday Lunch Surprise schedule for a loop and required some rescheduling of the lunch.  

After a Family Christmas Zoom Party, Mark drove me to the Lane County Fairgrounds for my shot.  There were many families getting pediatric shots for their kids, so I was a little surprised that cardboard cutouts of various Disney characters with their shoulders bandaged were liberally displayed in the exhibit hall around the "Oh-My-God" line, the paper-work line, and the post-paper-work line.  

I'd say the whole process took about forty-five minutes (including the fifteen minute wait-to-see-if-you're-going-to-faint period).  The M.D. who gave me my shot was personable and professional.  

The reaction I had to my second vaccination shot more-or-less repeated:  about ten or twelve hours after my third dose, I got muscle and joint aches, chills, and a fever.  I spent the night shivering and hugging Mark like a hot-water bottle.  

I spent most of Sunday napping (with Animal Helpers).  

I thought I was better Monday, but not really, and spent most of Monday with an ocular migraine and bouts of vertigo.  I had thought that I would be able to spend some time writing, but I was so tired that I ended up reading "Sword and Sorceress XVI" for "research" instead.  

Tuesday morning, December 21, was the Solstice, and Tuesday evening was the UU Solstice Spiral Walk.

Earlier in the month, C.N., one of my friends from Pearwood Pipers, contacted me about holding a Solstice Spiral (the forth one in as many years).  With COVID beginning its omicron surge, we held it outside again.

This time I brought a pop-up tent to place over the spiral's heart, which was a Good Thing, because it rained again this year (possibly not as heavy as last year, but more continuous).  I also brought the bistro-altars, which we put at the spiral's edge and placed directional candles on--I didn't want to put out my ritual tools out in an outdoor public ritual, so we just had the candles.

In the rain-darkened night (5 PM), people had a difficult time seeing the fir boughs laid out in a spiral--a few folks missed the entrance of spiral.  The rain put out all but the candle of the North.

Last year we'd laid out something like forty candles in spokes across the spiral's center, and it was much easier to see.  Honestly, we need to just get eight covered glass lanterns we can put votives into, or a string of battery-operated LEDs, and that would solve many rain-induced problems. 

I hefted my metal tongue-drum, invoked the circle and the directions with drumming, and the Solstice Ritual started.  

The drum is an effective ritual tool, but I wondered as I perambulated around the spiral while improvising on the drum, if the sound was too annoyingly like a wind-chime on steroids.  Hoever, several people thanked me for the music, and The Child said folks whipped out their cell phones and snapped photos of the tongue-drum when I set it down for a little break so they could purchase their own.

The event was very ritual-lite, which kind of happened last year, too.  People congregated out of the rain under the church's eaves, or around the small fire set to one side of the lot.  Next year I have to practice the invocations beforehand more so that I can do them and have the ritual be more formal.  Possibly we can get elemental banners, too.  

I spent the days between the Solstice and My Birthday shopping and decorating.  And trying to photograph things.  I thought about visiting the Cascades Raptor Center, but the overcast and the rain disinclined me to do so.  

We have a Very Country Cute Holiday Star that I put up on the chimney.  It has solar panels and lights up at night.  Except when it doesn't, or blows over.  The solar panels have a battery in them, and the batteries are shorter than their receptacles, so one has to fit little spirals of copper wire between the batteries and their contacts for them to close the circuit. The long and the short of it is that one should really test the whole thing out about December 10.  

 

What I like about the star is that it is festive, and ambiguous enough that it doesn't offend Christians or NeoPagans.  Okay, so this year the star did blow over and for half a day it looked like we were inviting Satan Claus to come up on our rooftop.  Mark pointed out to me that every year I have to scamper up to the roof at least once to fix something with the star. 

  My birthday started out with Special Birthday Eros.  Then, for breakfast, I made myself some bacon (mmm bacon).  The night before I had filled the samovar with water, and I set it to boil.  I love the light of a beeswax candle shining through black tea.  

My Dad texted me with a last-minute, spur-of-the-moment request to come drop off a birthday present.  I used to worry that he wasn't getting the hang of his cell phone, but given that he texted me instead of calling, I think I can relax.  I called him back and explained we had an 11 AM appointment, but that we'd love to seem them.   

Glad to have a samovar full of hot, black tea, and an abundance of freshly cooked bacon, we spent the rest of the morning tidying the house a little and I pulled out some books on Egypt to read later.  For birthday music, I put on Purcell's "Come Ye Sons of Art (Ode for Queen Mary's Birthday)." Mark's not so into it, but I love the counter-tenors and the "strike the viol, touch the lute" section.

We visited with my folks over tea and small snacks.  I was rather surprised that they drove up, because they probably spent more time on the road than actually visiting us--I hope they were able to run some other errands.

Then it was off for a surprise lunch at an undisclosed place.  I wasn't quite sure where we were heading until we were on the Lorraine Highway.  Mark and The Child had scoped out King Estate Winery last October and decided it would be a good birthday lunch location.  We pulled up to the palatial complex.

The interior is spacious, with high ceilings supported by Arts-And-Craft style beams.  We were seated near a fireplace.  The tables and chairs reminded me of Savouré--it was the sort of place I imagined myself writing in--and I wished that the winery's restaurant was in Eugene instead of fourteen miles outside of town.  

Our food was delicious (I had roasted salmon with vegetables) and the servings generous.  I don't consider myself much of a food person, but I found myself closing my eyes and eating slowly to savor the food.  

The most fun part was dipping almonds and figs from the cheese platter into honey and having Mark quote Absolutely Fabulous with a "what's that honey-almondy-yogurty smell?"

 

Possibly the best part about this birthday was realizing that once again, Mark had convinced me that I was practically sixty, but that in reality I'm closer to fifty-five.  

  Christmas Day started earlier than I expected.  I thought for sure the Child would sleep until ten, but he got up at seven.  I'd say the most fun gift was the Egyptian Revival desk clock Mark got me:  it looks like a cross between an altar to Anubis and the Ark of the Covenant.  There's been an attempt to have some authentic looking hieroglyphs, but I'm pretty sure there's some made-up writing on the sides (at least it doesn't always look like Middle-Kingdom hieroglyphs).  

Mark got the house a cuckoo clock.  He says it was on sale.  It has a recording of a cuckoo and will play music--but the music is horrible 8-bit reconstructions of old folk tunes that would have sounded faux-cool coming out of a greeting card or an infant's mobile in 1990, so we turned that off fairly quickly.  The cuckoo sound is fun, but we still all jump when the recording, which is loud, starts up every hour.  Supposedly, the clock doesn't sound in the dark.  It's ... quaint.  

We drove to my folks for a Christmas Dinner, prepared by my dad (my sister's family brought salad, we brought cupcake dessert).  Mark and I walked their German Shepherd.  I chatted with my mom.  Dad did fairly well with his latest kitchen toy, a Quick Pot, and I managed to shoo him out of the kitchen so he could enjoy the rest of the family opening presents (he was mostly done, but was going to stick with it until everything was plated up). 

 

The favorite gift to give was a collection of beads and jewelry making supplies to my niece.  I suppose some day I should see if she knows how to weave "friendship braceletes" out of embroidery floss and teach her how if she doesn't (assuming I can remember how, it's been something like thirty years since I've made one).  

I must have eaten too much too late, because my dreams involved scorpions.  Probably the most dramatic was the giant scorpion that smashed through a window--luckily Wonder Woman was around to deal with that one.  Later I dreamed a line of scorpions was trailing through our house.  

Boxing Day, today, dawned--well, okay; dawn is too strong a word--with snowfall.  We had about three inches on the ground.

The dog loves the snow, and Mark took her out to play in it at least four times.  I took some photographs around the neighborhood before the official sunrise, but I've spent the day writing and haven't yet reviewed the images.  

The temperature is supposed to get down to twenty-three degrees Fahrenheit, which necessitated emptying the fountain the hummingbirds use and removing the water pump.  This makes me a little sad:  the fountain has been running more-or-less continuously for about the last nine months, and the hummingbirds were still using it last week.  But if I leave the water in the fountain when it's getting down in the mid to low twenties, I'm afraid ice will damage either the pump or the basin.

This time around, I boiled some water and added it to the basin before using my hands to take out the fountain and tubing.  So I didn't have to run around the yard with my icy hands in my armpits to try to warm them while shouting obscenities.  

I'm pretty sure that last image is a metaphor for the last year.