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.