Category Archives: Weather, Seasons, & Celebrations

Gifts From The Fairies

I just came upstairs from turning on the dryer, and I discovered a beautiful birch-bark crescent moon hung on my front door where the harvest Indian corn originally was. I have no idea where it came from; one of my visitors over the past couple of days must have hung it there, or the upstairs neighbours, or even HRH without telling me. Or maybe it was fairies. Whoever put it there, it’s absolutely beautiful, and I love it completely.

I think I’ll find some red and green ribbon and sift the tiny jingle bells out of my sewing box to add to it, in order to make it even more Yule-specific for this season.

Monday Morning

I love how the quality of light changes once there’s snow on the ground. I know I’m still in the honeymoon period with winter, and I fully intend to enjoy it until I get fed up come mid-January.

That Yule thing is finally starting to feel real. I should schedule a shopping trip sometime in the next couple of weeks to pick up the few gifts on my list. Shopping for presents has never been a huge thing for me, and it’s even less so the older I get. Liam is covered, most parental unit gifts are orderable on-line internet, and HRH and I tend to blank out on gifts for one another no matter what the occasion, so we’ve reached a point where we don’t stress about it. Don’t misunderstand me: scoring the perfect gift for the spouse is awesome, and when we can we do it, but generally money or circumstances or lack of inspiration lead us to not-gifting one another. It’s okay by us. We have more fun decorating and cooking anyhow.

The winter boots and the ski jacket we introduced this morning are cool in Liam’s books. Also, the new winter hat I got him (sort of a blue corduroy ball cap lined in mock shearling with earflaps that velcro under the chin so that he can’t pull it off) is a big hit. He won’t keep mittens on to save his life either, so I’m going to get a metre of polar fleece and sew two long rectangle sock-like things to pull up all the way over his arms, possibly with a strip on each of them to tie them together behind his back to further foil his Houdini inclinations. The ski jacket is part of a two-piece snowsuit, which will be great for playing but for car trips is really excessive; the problem is, the ski jacket on its own is a bit short for the trips between the house and the car. Sometimes it feels like there is no way to win, but as this snowsuit was secondhand I’m not complaining. I’ll keep my eyes open for a longer winter coat, but at least it isn’t pressing.

New words so far today: “window” and “camera”. We’re working on “snowman”. And the boy has decided that pulling a scarf on (anyone’s scarf, which means I see him draping my lace one around his neck sometimes) and holding out a pair of someone’s gloves for them to put on is a good way to tell us that it’s time to go out.

Nixie has taken to curling up on my desk just to the left of my keyboard, with her head on the corner. Good company for the last day of tweaking ESTC. (Insert nail-biting here.)

Let It, Etcetera

Big, fluffy snowflakes. Yes. Bring it on.

Liam and HRH and I put on sweaters and scarves and hats and went out into the backyard when it began this morning. Liam was mildly bewildered for a short while, trying to take the snowflakes out of the air. Then we let him walk around on the frozen grass, and he got it. And he got it in spades when he and I went for a forty-five-minute walk afterwards and came home covered in snow, with red noses and fingers (because of course the concept of leaving mittens on is foreign to him) and the wheels of the stroller jammed with packed snow from driving through two inches of the accumulated stuff.

New words today: “snow” and “cold”, naturally. He repeated the former often while plastered against the front windows, watching the fluffy flakes fall.

Tomorrow: The new snowsuit and winter boots. We’ll see how exciting winter is then.

Oh, The Weather Outside Is Frightful…

What do you do on the first really miserable day of the winter season, when there’s an ice storm happening outside?

You make tents inside, of course.

Liam didn’t understand what to do at first; he kept trying to pull the top down to lie on it. But when he finally understood, he loved it. He keeps trying to drag everyone into it, parents and cats alike.

Thoughts on a Grey Day

It has taken me over an hour to realise that I have been working with no music on. All that time instead, I had the new Loreena McKennitt album running through my brain. Actually setting it to play in the real world frees my brain RAM up to do other things, like, oh, work properly.

Coming to the end of the time I have in which to touch it up, I find that ESTC is much better than I remember it, and yet still so very far from being the very serious spiritual self-examination I originally envisioned it being. In actual execution it became a more practical collection of information and exercises designed to sort out how one feels about various aspects of pregnancy within a Pagan spiritual context, and while it’s very good, it’s not what I wanted it to be. Apples and oranges, really, and I’m very proud of what it is, but I do feel a bit wistful about the book that never was. Silly Imp would likely tell me that the book-that-isn’t is still in me to write after a few more years of thought and introspection, and she’s probably right.

Things are being cancelled left, right, and centre today thanks to the dreadful weather. Both HRH and Liam are home, which is doing nothing for the absolute silence and solitary feeling I need to work. I love them both, but Liam is crazy due to those lower canines, and I pick up on that as well as the frustration HRH feels when he deals with Liam in a mood like this. Plus with my office right next to the living room, well, it feels like we’re all in the same room a lot of the time. It’s days like this when I wish I had a writing haven at the bottom of the garden, something like a one-room tiny cottage with excellent insulation and an electric kettle with which to boil water for tea. (And an awesome sound system. It could double as a cello practice studio.)

It being December first, I opened this year’s new Christmas CD and put it on. Sarah McLachlan’s Wintersong: very pleasant. Lots of piano.

Break’s over.

What I Read This November

His Majesty’s Dragon – Naomi Novak
Fragile Things – Neil Gaiman
The Right Attitude to Rain – Alexander McCall Smith
A Cold Treachery – Charles Todd
The Mislaid Magician – Patricia C. Wrede and Caroline Stevermer
Friends, Lovers, Chocolate – Alexander McCall Smith
Saint Peter’s Fair – Ellis Peters
Firestorm – Rachel Caine

Also, I finally finished Poison Study.

Is that all? It seems to me that there ought to be more books listed there.

The General Novemberity Wearing Me Down

Matthew Cheney made me laugh today.

If you write about the weather, use as many adjectives as you can, or else your nouns will wilt and become adverbs.

Some coaches insist adverbs are stronger than nouns, but an independent panel of statisticians has proved otherwise. Despite appearances, though, statisticians don’t like nouns so much as they adore conjunctions.

The whole list of deliberately obtuse writing rules can be found here. And I found them via Justine.

Liam had a terrifying asthma attack late Wednesday night, triggered by a coughing fit in bed. The coughs compounded, and his bronchial tubes constricted, and then he started crying because he was upset and scared, and the whole thing just snowballed and got worse and worse. We finally got a shot of his inhaler contents into him after a struggle, which was surprising on its own because he usually loves his little mask, but he was having so much trouble breathing because he was coughing and crying that he wouldn’t let us put the mask up to his face. It took a while to get him to calm down enough to even give him a single breath of the medication, and then he still sounded awful all night. I lay awake all night listening to him over the monitor, and dealt with anxiety attacks the likes of which I haven’t had in about eight years, sourced only partially by the worry about the decision to not take him to the hospital. I hate this time of year. It’s wet, and damp, and there isn’t enough sunlight, and this year seems worse than others, somehow. I got quite ill the next morning, which didn’t help. HRH stayed home because neither Liam nor I were going to be able to handle the day otherwise, neither of us being very user-friendly or even available at times. I felt much better by the end of the afternoon. And I even made cookies, lovely excellent cookies from a newly tweaked recipe, which very closely resemble cookies from a long-gone bakery I used to visit now and again. (Basic shortbread ingredients and proprotions, being sure to use icing sugar instead of granulated, add one egg, plus loads of chocolate chips; chill for two hours; roll and bake. Once the fuses in the oven have been replaced, that is. You mightn’t need to do that last bit.)

But I had a wonderful, wonderful night of sleep last night, and a lovely outing this morning. I was dropped off at daycare with Liam and spent some time playing with him, his caregiver, and one of the other kids. I’ve missed this, since HRH has taken over the boy-chauffeuring job. I got to see Liam open the rabbit’s cage and lean in gently to kiss him, and Boo reach his fuzzy little nose up to kiss him gently back, several times. It was exquisitely cute, and did wonders to soothe the soul of Novemberity/sick/bad sleep ravages. Then I took the metro back and walked to the mall, picked up some sweaters for me and new PJs for the boy, and bussed home. The weather may be overcast but it’s so lovely and warm. It was a good day for an outing.

Since I’ve had the whole day to myself on Liam’s daycare days I’ve been trying to work as soon as he leaves, and this week has proven to me that I shouldn’t even sit down at the computer until after lunch. If I do, then the morning gets wasted anyhow, and I feel upset because I haven’t accomplished any work and half the day is gone. Well, at least I gave it a chance. From now on, the morning is for music and reading and walks. The afternoon is for work. If that’s how my brain has to separate things, then that’s how it’s going to happen. I get exactly the same amount of work done if I sit here for eight hours or three, so why force myself to be here for those first five if I can put them to other practical use?

Now I have web work to do.