Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

The State of Autumn

In brief? Ungood.

Not that anything horrible has happened. In fact, taken individually, the events of the past week have ranged from acceptable to downright excellent. Good rehearsals, fabulous concert, wonderful group cello lesson, awesome guest lecture, kickass edits/rewrites handed in for the forthcoming book, decent handling of freelance assignment, good private cello lesson, phenomenal revelation concerning the non-fic music essay collection and subsequent deluge of wordage, unbelievably good buy of a new winter coat this morning plus the boy had his haircut and charmed folks in the bookstore afterward as usual. Lots and lots of stuff done.

No, it’s all those things piled on top of one another. One or two would have been fine. I’ve worked so much this past week that I’m very close to burnt out, and all the regular stuff was still going on too — groceries, laundry, tidying, meal-preparation, caring for small child when he’s home, and so forth. I ran out of patience and sense of humour three days ago and have been running on empty ever since. I’m irritable and snappish. The constant checking of what time I need to be where, with whom, and carrying what equipment and/or supplies has really gotten to me. I haven’t slept well a couple of nights. Between the cracks of sunlight there is mostly Doomful Gloom outside. I wrenched my back last Friday and it’s not getting better. HRH and I are out of town tonight and tomorrow in order to meet an online friend, and what was originally a cosy little gathering ballooned into a horde of strangers I don’t know, which isn’t helping my dangerously low energy levels and instinctive desire to find a small dark hole and cover my head with a duvet.

It’s odd to realise that the actual holidays are going to be less crammed with stuff than this past week has been. No wonder I’m exhausted.

I will share with you instead the Unbelievably Good Buy of the New Winter Coat this morning. HRH bought me a lovely fluffy periwinkle blue down-filled coat last Christmas and I adore it. But it’s just too much for pre-winter wearing and the warmer winter days. My black wool coat is seven years old and beyond brushing and dry cleaning now; it just never gets to the neat stage, let alone the polished stage. I fell in love with a horrendously expensive red wool coat last year and couldn’t afford it in my wildest dreams. I found something similar this year for a quarter of the price that fit beautifully, but I still didn’t feel that I could afford it at the time. Today it was supposed to be on sale at thirty percent off. When I took it to the cash it ended up being fifty percent off, so I walked away with a new tailored cut, double-breasted, knee-length, red wool coat with an empire waist (and black buttons!) for sixty dollars. I kid you not. Today, life loves me. I wish I loved it back the way it deserves.

I am currently baking the cake part of the Evil Chocolate Tortes for tonight’s feast. I do wish I was looking forward to this gathering more than my energy is allowing me to. I just feel mostly flatline-ish.

PSA For Music-Types

In my zealous search for something that will distract me from my valid and time-sensitive work, I went looking for cello-friendly sheet music for “Gaudete” and “In the Bleak Midwinter.” Because I don’t have enough music to occupy me, evidently. I woke up thinking that “Midwinter” would sound absolutely gorgeous on solo cello, and “Gaudete” popped into my head too, likely as a result of one of the songs on the new Loreena McKennitt album that has the word in it. The version I want, though, is the trad. anon. one covered by Steeleye Span.

Going through regular sheet music purchase sites was useless. Then I found ChristmasCarolMusic.org. Gentle readers, it has just about everything you can think of in almost any arrangement that you might ever want for the season. Lyrics, vocal/melody line, guitar chords, instrumental parts for C, F, Bb, and Eb instruments that all work together… you name it. Everything in public domain, that is, which covers a decent cross-section of traditional Christmas stuff. Including “Gaudete” and “Midwinter.” Bless them.

So there, that is my Good Deed for the day: sharing a link with you.

I really ought to work.

Snow!

As the cat panic-strickenly told HRH last night, and as the boy told me with great excitement this morning: SNOW!

See, snow now is okay. All the leaves are gone, it’s been bitterly cold, the calendar date is closer to December 1, and there are holiday decorations sneaking into the neighbourhood (although, thanks be to the gods, no one near us has turned them on yet).

So we have an inch-ish of snow on the ground. Although I see now that it is raining, so who knows how long it will stick around. I’d kind of like it to stay.

And I worked in bed last night after reading the boy the first chapter of A Bear Called Paddington.

Harpsichord Dreams:
New words today: 3,522
Total word count, Harpsichord Dreams: 10,302

I really, really wanted to hit 4K as a day’s work or 11K as a full count, but I’d been working for two hours and that after a full day of other work. Also, wow, it’s been a very busy past four days, and I am cumulatively zonked.

Today: my freelance stuff. Jan is stopping by for tea this afternoon, too, which will be a nice break.

Introspective

There’s a whole bunch of stuff going on inside me and it’s hard to sort it all out. As many of my readers know, Emru has been in palliative care for several days now and things are coming to an end. The stem cell transplant was successful, but his cancer has not gone into remission. Most of the time I’m handling a classic set of grief-related responses: I’m angry; I’m scared; I’m reminded of my own mortality and of that of everyone around me; I’m reminded of how random death and disease really is; and perhaps most of all, I’m drowning in empathy for Emru, Emru’s sister, his parents, his wife and son, his extended family, and his closest friends.

HRH and I stayed at the dinner table after we ate the other night and did some serious drinking and talking about past experiences with death. HRH has mainly dealt with deaths of older family members, while I’ve dealt with the sudden death of a close friend at the beginning of university as well as relatives and parents of friends. We talked about what is worse, losing someone immediately and having to deal with the shock and pain of not being able to say goodbye, or watching someone die slowly over a long period of time and having to deal with that long-term pain but being able to tell them what they mean to you. There’s no correct answer, of course. Actually, there is, but it’s an implied answer: Tell the people you admire, honour, and/or love on a regular basis how much they mean to you, and then you won’t have to regret a lost chance.

That session with HRH at the dinner table did help me realize something important, though. All my friends are above-average people, so when they are taken from us of course it seems extra unfair. Of course it seems as if the best of the best are being taken away, and we feel even more pain for the best of the best who are left behind and those who have to deal with the immediate loss. Emru isn’t a close friend, but we work in related writing and editing fields and have interests in common, so we cross paths frequently enough. He’s pointed me in the direction of a couple of job posting lists that netted me a contract or two; he deftly touched up an article of mine and made it stronger. I’ve always respected his opinions and his work, enjoyed seeing him at movie premieres or when he visited us at the F/SF bookshop to discuss animation, and was honoured when he invited me on board the contributing staff of the revived fps magazine. Many of my friends are his close friends, however, and I count his sister among my own set of close friends.

Anyway, all the empathy and frustration at the injustice of it all has been playing havoc with my equanimity. Most of the time I feel frustrated at being useless in this situation. And there are other private things going on that are big-ish and messing with me, too. Plus it’s no-light/no-love/no-hope/November, eternally grey and inconstant in temperature. I have no energy, and food holds no attraction. I restored my higher dose of fibro meds last night to help me sleep. (Yes, my doctor okayed it.) The main goal is just getting through the day. The secondary goal is to keep writing, because if I stop at this time of year it’s very, very difficult to get going again. Associated with that secondary goal is the handing work in on deadline. Other things are constantly being shuffled to the next day’s to-do list, and I’m not beating myself up about it. People will understand. And if they don’t, well then, I refuse to beat myself up about that either.

The logical part of me (taste that irony!) is pointing out that the SAD season is beginning, and on top of that it’s the traditionally dead or absent part of the spiritual year when the energy slows almost to a standstill, turning in on itself in to lie fallow and rebuild strength. Come Yule I know things will pick up. But solstice is six weeks away, and the pain is happening now.

Lest We Forget

I honour the men and women who volunteer or whose job it is to go out and risk their lives in confrontations beyond what most of us can envision. I honour their commitment and courage. I honour our peacekeepers too, the people who go to other countries to help rebuild after times of turmoil. And support staff — doctors, drivers, cooks, all those people who are necessary to the machine of war and who rarely get recognition for being in danger as well. And those left at home, who carry the double burden of hope and dread for their loved ones.

There has to be a better way to solve problems than going to war. But even when someone figures it out, I’ll keep on saying thank you to all those individuals who gave lives, limbs, time, and innocence to the wars. I honour and respect their personal decisions, even if I disagree with the governmental decisions that created the need for them.