The winter holiday is upon me! I've taken a large swathe of time off with the vague notion that I will write and do various projects. The first thing that I've discovered is that I'm going to be writing in the morning, I really need to wake up about two hours beforehand to get things like exercising, showering, eating, and generally waking up out of the way. I also need to maintain a list of tasks to do besides writing.
Aoife has figured out what Postal, FedEx and UPS trucks sound like—apparently, it's pure evil. Whenever one pulls up anywhere on our street, she goes into high alert, determined to kill whomever it is out there who is obviously a homicidal fiend in human form bent on deeds of depravity and trespass. She's pulled the brass hood off of our door's mail slot twice since the holiday delivery season began, prompting Mark to replace it with a tasteful wood cover.
Saturday was the last day of clear skies, and the grey overcast has returned. I was able to take some photographs of Mars near Aldebaran and the Pleiades, and later the next morning the waning moon. To my surprise, as I was crunching around on the frosty deck, one of the local hummingbirds came and visited the fountain. Mark had been raking, and when he realized I was photographing them, he thoughtfully froze. All I can say is that I am glad I'm not a little hummingbird sticking my bare bird feet into running water on a 30F morning. I don't know how the little things stay warm.
The first weekend of vacation was taken up with holiday preparations. We attended an in-person gathering of the cousins on the Burridge side of the family—out-of-state family stayed out of state, and various folks with children cancelled with child ailments; so while it was sad not being able to see everyone, the gathering was less boisterously overwhelming. The Zoom Gathering was stereotypically Zoom, with a little bit of lag, odd camera angles, muting issues, thrown in to keep things hilarious. We will have to host a outdoor gathering some time in the spring or summer when more folks can attend in person.
Sunday I went shopping at the local Holiday Market. I enjoy shopping, much more so than Mark or The Child, and when I go alone, I'm able to do the reconnoiter-commando-raid style of shopping. In addition to visiting with some of my vendor friends, I made several new best friends by wrapping myself up in a storybook glamour of the green and grey wool cloak, the Assassin's Creed hooded vest (with green shimmery paisley), a pewter Green Man pendent, extra rings, black KN95 mask, and my unbound hair. Everyone seemed more interactive than I recall from previous years; I'm going to guess that the last two years of COVID has the extroverts overcompensating, myself included.
The only downside of shopping at the Holiday Market is that I have to remind myself that I'm shopping for others and not myself. And that I'm a solitary practitioner and not someone in a jewelry coven. And I'm sure that I have enough ritual jewelry.
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