O tannenbaum

Today was the day! Ol was out with friends, Tom was in WV, and Jack was being Grinchy, so I went and picked our tree out by myself. Doing so was so delightful that I gave the teenager who helped me a big tip. The tree is a concolor fir (never heard of it before, but I like its needles), and although it’s not as tall as those we usually get, it’s trunk is quite wide. To fit it in our stand, I had to rev up my chainsaw and trim a good inch and a half. I forgot how therapeutic and fun my chainsaw is.

Anyway, Jack came out and said, “I can’t believe you went without me. I really did want to go. I was just trying to be annoying.”

Well, buddy, you were.

Chastened, he helped me me carry it in, and I started in on the lights. In my opinion, a great tree has tiny white lights, tons of them, and a metric ton of colorful ornaments. Like, the tree should look tastefully bedazzled from every perspective. Today, I had a good bit of my last light strand left so dragged over a house plant and lit it too.

Ol wasn’t home yet so I couldn’t decorate much more or he would be positively outraged. My friend Katherine brings neat ornaments from far-flung places, so I put ones from Laos and China on the plant, added an okra-pod angel, and sat on my hands until I’d picked up Ol.

Ol bought Nutmeg and Ruth a present and wrapped it today so we’d have a first gift.

Once home, we turned on Christmas music and got busy. It was as wonderful as ever.

Aren’t the Enenamen fabulous? A marketer for Fleet had some real fun one day. Can you imagine being the one to create caped enema superheroes? I am so glad my dad gave these to me. The big red ball is from Tiffany, the cardinal (and the other two on the tree) are memories of Nanny and other beloved relatives who are no longer with us, and I do like to keep support for causes going year round, so let’s hear it for PRIDE and women’s rights. Also, London and New York.

a firetruck given to Jack by Mom and Dad when J was little; more PRIDE; John Deer tractor; You Are My Sunshine painted by my great aunt; Baby Yoda; Northwestern (my alma mater); the blue and white Amsterdam city scape I bought when Tom and I lived there way the heck back in 2004.

Liberty Leading the People! a homemade wreath! wine grapes! teardrops I’d given to Nanny and then got back after she died! Statue of Liberty! a sword!

Oliver did a beautiful job decorating our mantel and really, much of the first floor. And on their way back in town, Mom and Dad swung by and hung a few ornaments too. A lovely afternoon.

Goats and boosters and December

I got my Covid booster today, y’all, and I am grateful AF. I stuck with Moderna, and my body is again letting me know that it does not like anything about this virus. Hooboy, I do not feel good. I have a blinding headache, some nausea, fatigue, and my arm is sore. Better than my response to Dose 2, same’ish as Dose 1. The pharmacist said that he thinks everyone will need a 4th shot roughly six months after their 3rd. You have to wonder when/if we’ll manage to get this pandemic under control. Thank you anti-vaxxers and conspiracy loons who aren’t doing your part. All the rest of us are thrilled to still be decidedly not back to normal.

And today there was another school shooting! And SCOTUS will probably uphold Mississippi’s abortion ban, thereby overturning Roe! And Lauren Boebert attacked Ilhan Omar with hideous Islamophobia and now Rep Omar received an incredibly gruesome death threat! It goes on and on, but I’ll stop there and switch to some exciting news.

We bought four of the lawnmower goats and absolutely love them. This is Lefty, a sweetie who had listeria and only turned in left circles for a while.

Lefty

And this is Apple, so named because she is extremely aggressive when we give the goats apples as treats. The woman we bought the goats from thinks Apple is pregnant. The father? Stinky Billy!

Apple

This is Jemima, so named because I have always wanted a pet named Jemima. Word on the street is that Jemima is also pregnant (also Billy), and I will tell you that she is really starting to look it.

Jemima

And lastly is Rambo, a dear castrated male.

Rambo

We get to see them again on Friday, and I can’t wait. During our last visit, we started introducing grain and hay to supplement their diet over the winter. They were EXTREMELY excited, and at one point, three of them had their heads crammed into one bucket of grain. Because of this ridiculousness, I went to Tractor Supply and bought four buckets that can be hung over gate rails and also one salt block. At one point, three of them were licking the salt block like it was the most sublime meal in the world, and later, despite each having his/her own grain pail, they continued to butt and play musical chairs with the buckets. They are very amusing.

The thought of baby goats at Christmas (purportedly they are due around Christmas) is almost more than I can bear. What is more darling than a baby goat?

Tomorrow is December 1, and I swear it was just December 1, 2020, but here we are. I am the most joyous, enthused fan of Christmas and started decorating the day after Thanksgiving. It is my hope that I feel totally fine tomorrow so that the boys and I can go get a tree and get busy with our lights and ornaments.

I treasure my boxes of ornaments. Some were Nanny’s, and I am always struck how fragile yet strong they are, what to have lasted all these decades despite being the thinnest sheet of glass. Mom and Dad and Tom’s mom have given us many, too. First home, baby’s first Christmas, one from the Obama presidency, felt enemas (the Fleet’s Enenamen) given to my Dad by a pharma rep one year (Dad was a GI), at least a dozen tributes to New York, souvenirs from trips abroad, treasures crafted by Jack and Oliver’s tiny fingers over their early years, others from Tom’s and my childhoods.

As we hang each ornament, we share its story, its history, its provenance. Some are cheap, one was a gift from Tiffany, some are ugly, many are stunning. They track interests and dates and they allow us to connect in memory and nostalgia. Trimming our tree each year is one of my favorite activities. Here’s to feeling good tomorrow and heading to the tree stand!

And in the meantime, Happy Hanukkah to all celebrating. Chag Sameach!

Stories

I knew nothing about Dune and so didn’t have any expectations upon seeing Part 1 of the film several weeks back. While I dislike much about pandemic life, certain things are absolutely better now: curbside pickup, and the ability to stream movies as soon as they’re released, for example.

Anyway, Ol was with friends for the weekend, and Jack stayed here to attend some school events, so Tom and I found ourselves alone in WV and tired after a day of work. I’d had some wine and couldn’t have cared less what we watched —if I’m by myself, I never turn on the TV so am both behind and infinitely flexible— and Tom suggested Dune. Sure. We set a fire in the cast iron stove and settled in.

I love Star Wars and Harry Potter but dislike Star Trek and Lord of the Rings. Where would Dune fall on the sci fi/fantasy spectrum? Squarely on the dystopian, polyglot, strong women, naive-handsome hero side of things as it turns out so, I was hooked.

I’ve since seen it 2.5 more times, including, today, on the big screen.

Is it an epic work for the ages? Jesus, I don’t know, and I’m not sure I care. But did it speak to me? 100%. I loved the crafty, powerful shadow-walker women of the Bene Gesserit who look like pissed-off Italian widows (ps: Charlotte Rampling could pretend to be a daft penguin and I’d love her); Rebecca Ferguson’s quite fierceness and her stiff-jointed sign language; every bit of Timothée Chalamet and his interrupted adolescence (and marvelous head of hair); the endless dunes; the integrity and courage of some; and, as in Star Wars, the variety of language and the fact that most seem able to understand all.

I don’t know about y’all, but in my opinion, shit is bad in the world. Like, really bad. If you made me tell my honest opinion on staying at or below a rise of 1.5 degrees Celsius and American democracy, I’d answer that at this point, both are pipe dream relics of a bygone era. No one in power is taking climate change as seriously as Greta, Bill McKibben, Paul Nicklen, and Cristina Mittermeier are (or Al Gore and Rachel Carson were generations ago) which means all their big talk is, as Greta says, “blah, blah, blah",” and if you can’t even enforce Congressional subpoenas, keep judges from overtly preferencing murderers, convince elected politicians to protect voting rights, or keep science and fact from being optional, well, you’re in bad shape.

At this point, we don’t deserve to have much. We are an arrogant, ignorant country, and it is heartbreaking, scary, and ugly. I say that as someone has fought constantly since early 2016 but with increasingly fading hope. The fire that propelled me for so long still burns, but it is a tired flicker now, worn by injustice, Covid, and the fact that trump will probably run again in ‘24.

So, post-apocalyptic sand worlds and worms and no water in 10191? Give it to me. Lest you think this is my only escapist activity, I am also reading Endurance, the incredible yet horrifying recounting of Ernest Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition that commenced in 1914. Hoo boy, I doubt I’d be any sort of hero in either tale, but I can definitely appreciate the stronger among us. And meanwhile, I continue to delight in the possibility of two of our goats being pregnant and in helping idealistic young people go to college. I tell you, it’s all a bit of kosher LSD.

But really, is that so wrong? Why not indulge ourselves for a few hours each day around the times we try so hard to hold everything else together? We are long into a pandemic that isn’t ending, the world is burning, white Republican lawbreakers seem impervious to consequences, there is a national mental health crisis in our young people, Facebook is Meta (eye roll that strains), and winter is coming.

Stories help us understand, process, navigate, and leave behind even momentarily the tough parts of life; the losses, disappointments, worries, unknowns, horror. Stories can help us feel less alone, give us hope, enliven our imaginations and dreams, inspire us. And so for now, I’ll take Shackleton and Paul Atreides and my goats and all who keep fighting with courage and faith. I’ll take and relish the moments of pure distraction and otherwise keeping donating and parenting and doing what I can, and I’ll start reading Dune to tide myself over to the 2023 release of Part 2.