I was waiting for the rain to let up, the weather reports said it was "overcast" but if anything, it just kept raining harder. Eventually, I just had to make a run for the bus, and I was soaked when I got to the stop. As I waiting under the building awning, I noticed the woman several feet away, underdressed, bare-legged, flip-flops, also soaked, with some belongings in a garbage sack. I wondered if I should offer something, but I didn't really have anything. She caught the first bus at any rate.
The concert/dinner went well, though I kept having coughing fits; I always have trouble taking in breath after I have a cold, possibly a temporary form of asthma.
People hung out after the event was over, and helped clean up, including dishes. Someone offered me a ride, so I left. The rain began to let up. The clouds breaking up enough to reveal the sudden appearance of a bright, waxing, rising moon. We drove along the perimeter of the lake, site of the earlier pathway of lights that the neighborhood does every December, the light now extinguished, the crowds, dispersed.
Back home, one of my housemates has been making the house into a home, and continued that earlier in the evening, so I came home into a more pleasant living room, and they'd hung up some Christmas swag I'd made earlier but hadn't gotten around to hanging. It makes me happy in a way that has eluded me before, perhaps it's the motivation...hard to explain, like it's for everyone, not just for their own benefit? It's nice. (I don't really know who's doing it, though I could make a guess.)
Every time my mind wandered to "what ifs?" and "whys?", I stopped my thoughts and reminded myself that being here wasn't some substitute for anything else, not a distraction. I was exactly where I wanted to be.
Saturday, December 14, 2019
Eleven Days Until Christmas
I have a gig later this afternoon, and I should be there to help set up, but after running errands for the past couple of hours, I find I need a nap.
The days have been grey, cool, dark, damp. One of the market vendors thought it might clear up in a bit, and commented on looking forward to the winter solstice, to celebrate the brightening of days, if even in the smallest of increments. I was thinking a similar thing earlier in the morning. But as the morning progressed into early afternoon, the clouds thickened up and a light mist began to fall. I found I was taking shelter under a tree while waiting for a bus home that I'd written about sheltering under on another occasion. It's an old spruce tree with a wide and thick canopy that blocks the rain. A bit later, on the bus, the mists had turned to showers that looked a bit icy as they hit the windshield. I think it's let up again. Outside the window the mostly bare willow holds onto a few remaining leaves, their golden hue the only brightness against a monochrome sky.
I was sick for half of the week. Probably just a bad cold, but it hit at the same time as a stomache virus, and I was brutally sick on Wednesday. Didn't eat for two days, barely slept, though I tried to lay in the same position for about 16 hours, though the raging headache had mostly subsided by Thursday morning. I did a load of laundry on Thursday, that's about what I had the energy for. Went back to work on Friday, but my heart was racing, and a colleague suggested I should go to the doctor. I went at lunch, the nearest clinic where I have always found the doctors to be invariably kind. She told me to go home and go to bed. Not because I was still sick, just exhausted. I went home, a giant stuffed T-Rex guarding my work station in my absence, just because it was silly, and it stands at the right height to look over the counter.
The bright side about being sick (as usual), is that it's a bit of a forced elimination diet, and it really calms down the arthritis symptoms. Aside from the coughing fits, and sore abs (and still being tired), physically, I feel good.
The Saturday Market was quiet when I first walked through. I walked southward to run some other errands and look for Christmas gifts, the first block, every shop closed, but by the time I passed through the second one, small crowds waited outside the doors to be let in, and when I walked back through on my way home, every restaurant was full with a Saturday lunch crowd. And while I stopped by a lot of booths, when I got home, I found the only food I'd gotten around to purchasing some apples, a bag of kale, and a couple of ripe truffles. (I bought water bottles, too, they were on sale for $5.00.)
I feel on the mend. I lasted two hours without blowing my nose, in the cold no less. My speaking voice has dropped into a lower register, but I think I can still sing.
Outside, birds flock through the sky, and the winter-blooming plums break-out in spring-like pale pink, a brightener for the human heart in the darkest part of winter. Somewhere beyond the envelope of clouds, it's snowing, and the next time the skies clear, the mountains will be white in the distance in all directions. Until then, we practice the rituals that pass us from one season into the next.
The days have been grey, cool, dark, damp. One of the market vendors thought it might clear up in a bit, and commented on looking forward to the winter solstice, to celebrate the brightening of days, if even in the smallest of increments. I was thinking a similar thing earlier in the morning. But as the morning progressed into early afternoon, the clouds thickened up and a light mist began to fall. I found I was taking shelter under a tree while waiting for a bus home that I'd written about sheltering under on another occasion. It's an old spruce tree with a wide and thick canopy that blocks the rain. A bit later, on the bus, the mists had turned to showers that looked a bit icy as they hit the windshield. I think it's let up again. Outside the window the mostly bare willow holds onto a few remaining leaves, their golden hue the only brightness against a monochrome sky.
I was sick for half of the week. Probably just a bad cold, but it hit at the same time as a stomache virus, and I was brutally sick on Wednesday. Didn't eat for two days, barely slept, though I tried to lay in the same position for about 16 hours, though the raging headache had mostly subsided by Thursday morning. I did a load of laundry on Thursday, that's about what I had the energy for. Went back to work on Friday, but my heart was racing, and a colleague suggested I should go to the doctor. I went at lunch, the nearest clinic where I have always found the doctors to be invariably kind. She told me to go home and go to bed. Not because I was still sick, just exhausted. I went home, a giant stuffed T-Rex guarding my work station in my absence, just because it was silly, and it stands at the right height to look over the counter.
The bright side about being sick (as usual), is that it's a bit of a forced elimination diet, and it really calms down the arthritis symptoms. Aside from the coughing fits, and sore abs (and still being tired), physically, I feel good.
The Saturday Market was quiet when I first walked through. I walked southward to run some other errands and look for Christmas gifts, the first block, every shop closed, but by the time I passed through the second one, small crowds waited outside the doors to be let in, and when I walked back through on my way home, every restaurant was full with a Saturday lunch crowd. And while I stopped by a lot of booths, when I got home, I found the only food I'd gotten around to purchasing some apples, a bag of kale, and a couple of ripe truffles. (I bought water bottles, too, they were on sale for $5.00.)
I feel on the mend. I lasted two hours without blowing my nose, in the cold no less. My speaking voice has dropped into a lower register, but I think I can still sing.
Outside, birds flock through the sky, and the winter-blooming plums break-out in spring-like pale pink, a brightener for the human heart in the darkest part of winter. Somewhere beyond the envelope of clouds, it's snowing, and the next time the skies clear, the mountains will be white in the distance in all directions. Until then, we practice the rituals that pass us from one season into the next.
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