Still feeling under the weather and exhausted, tangled up with fever dreams and memories and thinking about the new year. Is it always true that if I have a week off just to rest and do nothing that it will line up for the exact week I'm sick, or broken, or half-mad? I have a superstition where everything you do on New Year's eve will come back to you in the subsequent year. In some way, I think I fucked up 2020 on 2019 NYE being a drunk dumbass and acting shitty. In a different way, NYE 2020 into 2021 held some foreshadowing of the year that would come. 

But there's more to this year than that, certainly. There were beautiful and good things too, and things I want to remember. I restarted this blog for especially that reason. And for the greater idea of it all. 

I want to write about that a little bit. But maybe later when I'm feeling a little stronger. I still have a few days before the new year. In my old livejournal (and probably in the early days of this) I used to do end of year recaps, like literally go month by month. Can you imagine remembering your life so specifically as you did when you were young? It feels so... let me see... almost presumptuous? I think that's always been the issue with keeping journals, especially online ones, that I've struggled with. It's just for me, but who the fuck could possibly care that I'm remembering these things? Do I imbue them with meaning because I write them down? Do I remember them better, or avoid them the way that I do the early chapters of this blog, when I was so full of spit and life and want and rage and earnest candor? 

The weather says that rain is coming. Absurdly, after a day or two of no appetite, I want to eat something pickle-y or spicy. I felt a little nuts not being able to go for runs, first with all the Christmas fuss and then being sick, but I managed to go for a three mile walk and listen to my dumb book. The crows missed me, and strangely, the ugly little feral cats I need to get fixed in the new year. I made a little fire in the yard, and as soon as it was perfectly blazing, the rain started.

 Feeling a little off today even though I tested negative last night as a routine after seeing family this weekend. I hope it's just sleeping in the dry air, still shaking a little mold out of my lungs from sorting the Legends stuff in my parents basement, and maybe being a little run down after a couple days of doing too much. 

Earlier today, I hiked the tunnel between Crozet and the Waynesboro side of Afton. I haven't been there since it was a sketchy ruin that locals hiked/trespassed into. Back then, you had to scramble through pitch darkness until you got to a tunnel that was a hands-and-knees crawling situation. Of course, this was ages ago, back in 2012 or 2014. Today, the tunnel was still soaking wet and dark, but with little bobbing lights of other people's phones twinkling on and off ahead and behind. The openings to either side still looked like perfect white keyholes in the darkness, just like I remember. 

I had a Legends dream last night, I'm sure because of sorting through the remaining NPC shack in Manassas. That made me happy, even though it was just a silly old thing - playing Yan, cooking over a fire, collecting firewood. I woke up this morning and the light was all white and cloudy. I'm getting a little bit better at the cappuccino maker. 

Is this just depression, or am I exhausted because I feel under the weather? I'm trying to stay up past 9, which seems a little pathetic. Maybe the best thing would be to curl up and try to fall asleep to something dumb on the tv. 

 When I come here to write my thoughts after a few days, so much emotion bubbles up from under my surfaces. What do I want to talk about? What do I want to keep? Is it this particular feeling, this lovely, almost purring desire to hurt myself near the anniversary of trying to kill myself last year? Or is it something else? Something better from this year? A positive feeling from the last few days? Something encouraging? A let down? A fucking bird I noticed? Something I cooked? It reminds me a little bit of when I was in therapy earlier this year, and when asked anything, I'd just start crying, even if it wasn't the kind of question to be crying about. And then, having to be apologizing for the stupid crying. 

Almost every time in the last year at my parents house there have been coyotes. Coyotes stopping to look back at the end of the driveway. Coyotes ripping up the back of a feral cat no one seems to like, but that my mother feeds. (The cat is actually okay.) The first night I was there, the coyotes woke me up in the middle of the night around 4am. They didn't sound anything like the other times I've heard them - they seemed almost mournful, grieving, and bizarre. Every interpretation - that it was not the wild, almost insane joy of their breeding season, that they were cold, that they somehow knew that the back property is about to be developed and they will shortly have no home - was more depressing than the last. Sven woke up too and moaned and growled softly. He's a little afraid of coyotes ever since that time at Elkhorn. 

I didn't sleep well much in that place. I dreamt, I woke, I slept and fell back into the same dream. I woke up again and fingered myself back to sleep. I woke up hot and tired, puffy like I had been crying even though I hadn't been. 

Manassas is a chewed-up piece of gum that has lost all the flavor. It's deeply depressing. Everything is so ripped out and replaced with some kind of tired cardboard duplex version of itself, some kind of incredibly tiresome thing that it actually becomes literally exhausting to have to look at. You want to let your eyes slide into a kind of tired unfocus and move over the landscape of strip malls and chain stores, feeling utterly nothing. Sometimes I try to tell people how it used to look before, in the Manassas of my childhood, and I feel almost insane, like the way I feel when I try to tell people about interacting with my crows. Like it sounds fake and made-up, something with the polish of a little exaggeration in it. 

Did you know there was a fox that used to follow me around and I would bring it cheese? There was a gentleness to the landscape once. At dusk, particularly in the deep summer, the air softened. The shape of the trees smudged like charcoal smeared behind the bramble at the edge of the fields: barberry, blackberry, catbrier, and honeysuckle. Purple, dark, and gray, filtered gold. I believed the woods there smoked, the same way the trees of the Blue Ridge mountains exhale isoprene. They were somehow possessed of a sticky loveliness. And they were mine. 

And, well, who cares, huh? I feel mean, low, and peculiar. 

 Well, the car dealership I bought a used Toyota from 5 years ago sent me a nice birthday message, but my mom sure did not. I shouldn't have been using the internet to terrorize myself so much last night, so this is not a surprise, but I feel incredibly depressed. 

 Here's something absolutely wonderful that I learned today: the Chesapeake Bay was actually created by a bolide meteor strike and the subsequent crater a bunch of millions of years ago! Apparently it caused a tsunami so large and deep that it touched the Blue Ridge mountains. As a result as the meteor, a bunch of molten sand got blasted up into the atmosphere where it turned to glass as it cooled and fell to earth in beautiful droplet formations called tektite. It looks slightly like obsidian and can come in all kinds of colors: black, green, and amber. There are two known places where this stuff rained down - called "strewnfields" - one in Georgia, and one in Texas. A couple pieces of it made its way into Native artifacts like scrapers and arrowheads. I think that's so fascinating. I grew up on a creek that hit the Chesapeake and never knew that was what had caused it, or that there were pieces of the ancient seabed in molten glass form strewn across the southeast. 

I also didn't know what bolide was - apparently it's a super bright classification of meteor. I think I might have seen one out at Elkhorn once - a flash that lit up the mountains when there was no storm and the sky was clear. Speaking of lesser meteors, I saw a beautiful green falling start last weekend, seemingly right below the full moon which was unusual. It must have been intense to be visible while the moon was full and so bright. 

I think I'm finished up for the year at work, or at least I'd better be. I'm taking Sven over to run around with Bean tonight because he's been such a restless brat today and I want to wear him out so I can get some cleaning done tonight without him following me around groaning and moaning. I tried to take him on my run earlier since he seemed so bored, and he was awful. A florist in the graveyard saw him rolling around and ignoring my commands and thought it was so funny she came over and gave me a treat to give him later. Then he wouldn't walk or run until he had eaten the treat. Then he literally lay on the ground and refused to move, under the mistaken impression that the lady (who had left her van and was putting arrangements on the graves) was going to come back and give him more treats. Awful. A brat! 

Tomorrow is my birthday. I want to write something about that, and maybe I will later, but right now I need to chop and roast butternut squash, vacuum the carpet, grab a shower, and you know what? Have a glass of prosecco. 

 Fucking off today and doing a whole heap of nothing. Well, by nothing I mean planning a oneshot larp, cleaning the house, finishing my Christmas shopping, going to Costco, and visiting with a friend. But it's nice to take a personal day, especially after back-to-back weeks of work madness. I think I'll work tomorrow and then call it for the year. I'm burned out to the point that I'm starting to do a bad job, and I don't ever want to do a bad job. 

Hiked up by Dowell's Draft last night - the closest I've been to Elkhorn in six months. It was pretty up there, but I was miserably underdressed and caught a chill. I normally can't stand the light this time of year, the crazy off angle of the sun through the trees, but after the sun set behind the mountains, the woods were beautiful: luminous and dark and cold. There was a lot of reindeer moss all over the ground and as the light failed, they seemed bright, like patches of phosphorous. There were deer hides hanging in the trees where some hunters had field-dressed them. It was eerie, quiet, and so lovely. I've missed that place. 

 I did something nice for myself and bought a beautiful new bird feeder to hang outside my home office window and it's so nice! I can watch the little feathered lizards fight with each other and scatter seed all over my once beautiful porch! The chickadees look like caped villains. It makes me very happy. 

It's funny how bossy and bratty they are with each other, even (especially!) birds of the same species who are almost certainly family groups. My crows are exceptionally polite with each other and seem to have a very deliberate hierarchy even about who gets particularly special treats like chicken and who should just limit themselves to peanuts. When I give them eggs, the one who knows how to crack them works on it while the others patiently wait, and then they all take turns dipping into it. 

Well, after another week of working nights and barely getting to exercise, the last release is almost out the door. I have some kind of horrible scheduled fun with my team tomorrow, and then I'm planning to do a lot of blowing off of work until it's time to be done for the year. 

I need to clean the pumpkins off the porch, sweep up the leaves, and get the last of my Christmas stuff up and looking okay. I was also thinking of going to TJ Maxx to buy my team socks for our holiday thing tomorrow. However - on my second straight week of working into the 11pm hours with no help or support from my teammates who signed off at 4 - maybe I am less inclined to play Santa Claus. I'm also wondering how festive we will all be feeling since our holiday gettogether will be right after our retro for what was arguably the worst release I've ever been a part of where half my team just literally hadn't done their work until the day off. Fun and festive!

My release 2.0 went out this afternoon, and my PM told me to "sign off and literally go have a drink" so I got about three dusky miles of running in the graveyard, with the moon rising overhead in a very pretty way. It'll be full in Gemini on Saturday. The sky got bright and pink and backlit a gorgeous sparrow hawk as the sun was setting. She was perched on one of the dead dogwoods, but when she saw me so close and looking at her, she flew off into the pines. My crows are usually long past in their roost this late in the evening, but one single crow came down right almost on top of me in the darkness and scared me so bad that I yelped out loud. 

 Hanged Man today. I liked drawing my card yesterday, so I thought I'd do it again and that might give me something to talk to myself about. Self-sacrifice, surrender, being stuck in time or a situation. I expect that's something about the fact that I'm stuck in exact same situation at work as last week - too much to do, more so than anyone else on my team, and more crap just being added and added to my plate. I have one break today and that's to volunteer with the bell ringing for the kid's Christmas toy drive the SA does every year in the community. Then it will be back at it. 

I suppose that's what evenings are for, right? More work! But I'm pissed that this is cutting into my chances to run during the nice weather this week. Hopefully things will settle down next week and I can do some slacking. 

 A little soft and sad today. I had a dream that's stuck with me most of the day and given me a little wistful, melancholy feeling. The dream's energy being so close, it's easy to touch those emotions about it.

I think I'm a little upset at my mom. I don't really do much with tarot anymore, but on a whim, I drew a card today and it really resonated- the empress in reverse. Classic mommy issues. Her father is dying, and I know I need to be patient with her as she's dealing with that, but I have a few things from this year that I can't quite let go of that seem to come out in the worst ways of micro-bad-behaviors from me. 

A frequent one is how often she goes on and on about how worried she is about my tremendously successful, perfect brother and how, by contrast, she doesn't worry about me at all. (She literally says this to me.) I'm the child that always lands on her feet. She even told me last visit "You were so upset this winter and now it's like nothing happened, you're totally fine," which is the stupidest thing I've ever heard and so like, willfully ignorant of my life or emotional space. I don't want her to spend all her life angsting about me the way she does my brother, and I'm proud that I'm a capable person who keeps moving forward and doesn't just stop functioning when things are hard. But damn, that does sting a bit. 

Anyway, enough gloom and doom from me for now. I went on a long run and tried to catch up at work a bit.  Showered, fed the dog. I picked a few of my graveyard oyster mushrooms for the spicy Korean soup I'm making tonight, although I think I need to go out for some kimchi and I might as well get groceries if I'm doing that. Well, well. These small chapters. 

 A nice weekend so far. Got out to the villa for a bit even if it wasn't camping, built a little fire and cooked sausage and haloumi cheese, and let the dogs run. It was warm and the wind was swirling around, picking up the leaves and putting them down. In my head, I knew the atmospheric energy that was creating such a creamy, cloudy sky and warm breeze had killed a lot of people west of the Appalachians, but it was hard to hold in my head when being buffeted around so pleasurably by it. 

The villa is coming along nicely. Jay put up some plastic windows up in the rooftop part, and when the rain came in the structure was perfectly ample for the usual suspects to crowd in and avoid the damp. Sarah's boyfriend's dog came along - a big, beautiful white direwolf-looking thing that Bean was very afraid of. (Sven took one look and then tried to hump her head.) But Bean ran and and then watched from the ridgetops. Finally he got the courage to come down after he saw her and Sven playing, but every time he would get too close to her, he'd run over to me and hide between my feet. I found it pretty flattering from a shy dog, especially choosing me over his mom, but it was likely just because he knew I'd put up with his crybaby bullshit and Ali wouldn't. 

Last night there was caroling outside at Redbeard. To speak more of small things, my neighbors had brought the boys down and one of them was being irritable and upset about the boring singing. I was hanging out under the heat panels drinking mulled wine and my neighbor brought the kid having a melt down over to sit there too. He parked the kid beside me and said "okay, tell Jess if you need anything. Jess is your new mommy now" and went off to get back to the singing and his own beer. It was pretty funny. So in some ways, I have been an island to tiny fussy things (well, Bean is now horse-sized) having meltdowns this weekend. 

Let me see - what else? I made nice fake crabcakes out of the lion's mane mushroom Jay found the other weekend. I was pretty skeptical, but they were amazing. The texture was exactly like crab, except not so fishy, which I appreciated after my several mulled wines and Redbeard high octane dubiously-accurate percentage stouts last night. Tonight I'm going to try making a Caesar with homemade dressing and farmer's market kale plus some grilled chicken. I want something tangy and fresh after eating so heavily this weekend. Sausage with fennel at the villa, and Matt making insane sous vide steaks on Friday night. 

My hard work week seemed to have a pretty happy ending: my boss gave me a spontaneous 5% raise and mailed me little Moroccan copper string lights as a gift.  

 Whew, what a week. Worked late every night and last night was especially nuts. Worked until six, then really quickly threw together chicken and dumplings for a surprise birthday dinner party I'd agreed to do before work went to shit, hosted the dinner party until 10, then got back online and worked until almost midnight. 

I can objectively realize that is insane and that maybe I did that thing where I bit off way more than I needed to (maybe? huh? yeah? think so?) but it also felt... not like being depressed? So I'm glad I didn't cancel it when I realized everything was going to be nuts. I guess I'm complaining, but I like being the kind of woman who is handling a demanding job in software all day and can take an hour break to whip together a nice meal for some friends and then get back at it. Well, at least it's a lot better than falling asleep on the couch at 7pm to Game of Thrones with my dog - which is the actual kind of woman I've been lately.

I saw a tweet earlier talking about when people just up and go offline at the end of December. I'm not going offline, but it will be nice to have a little time off. I wish I could do something outside. I feel run down from work and I want a mental break. I want to work on my dumb story, build fires, go for long runs. 

 Well, no snow, but kind of a pretty, cozy day with a soft white snowcloud sky and a bite in the air that feels very seasonal. I put on all the nice lights and lit my candles and it's very soft and pleasant - a backdrop at odds with my totally nuts, frustrating workday! 

Well, at least I managed to have a good chat with my crows, and also I saw the old man I always used to talk to in the graveyard. I hadn't seen him in a couple months which was unusual for us, as we used to pass each other and chat pretty much daily. He said that he was wondering where I was and thought I might have stopped running every day because I'd gotten pregnant - according to him, I was the right age to do so. I didn't take offense at that though; it just seemed like an old man thing to wonder. I didn't tell him that for my part, I'd wondered if he'd died and felt sad about it. All that said, I don't know how he's missed seeing me because I'm there every day, same as I've always been. The crows sure know when I dang show up.

Ordered in tonight, but I've liked fucking around with my New York Times cooking subscription. I recently experimented with a really good seared scallop recipe with pan-roasted tomatoes and cream - I'd never normally think about doing a sauce with scallops, but it was absurdly good, kind of closer to Tikka masala sauce than to a pasta. I've been really into cooking savory, spicy things this winter and have been experimenting some with Korean cooking - bibimbap, kimchi fried rice, and on the menu later this week, this spicy dark red kimchi soup with noodles. 

Speaking of work (well, I was a couple paragraphs ago) I'm wondering how well it's working out with this new friendship I have with my boss. My only actual work friend is off on some kind of mental health disability leave, and now my boss, I think sensing our mutual loneliness about aforementioned work friend's abrupt departure, has been talking to me in a really personal way. Like telling me really negative stuff about her other interactions at work and blowing off steam. I want to have that kind of relationship with her, but I also find it a little jarring and kind of like uncertain like walking on bad ice. But maybe I'm making too much out of nothing. 

Thought about camping the villa this weekend, but the weather looks stormy. I haven't had almost any camps or woods time this year, and it disappoints me more than I can say.

Brrr. It's a chilly night here all of a sudden, the wind whipping around the house and howling in such a dramatic way. 20 degrees cooler tomorrow. I'm sure it will be hard to sleep. The breeze earlier on my run burnt my cheeks and made them all red and hot. 

I had a pretty good day, but I'm tired and a little down now - I don't know why. Maybe just tired after a big weekend, lots of complicated dreams, or the continuing shittyness at work. I watched a hawk take down a pigeon when I was out down by Newtown. That's probably it. I'll write more - something better - later, but for right now that might just be all I have. 

 Just a quick entry while I eat my lunch (wild rice, kale) so I keep up with my posting momentum and my general desire to actually write down my thoughts instead of turning into an automaton. I expect I won't have time later since I'm going to Costco and then making a fairly complicated dinner (steak and mushroom pie) and hosting Travis before the wineries tomorrow. 

It's another nice, unseasonable day. At this rate, my body will never get used to the cold! I went for another short run; these release weeks don't lend themselves to my exercise routines. But I fed the crows, did some planks, and visited with my oyster mushrooms. They'll probably be ready to pick for vegetable soup on Sunday, although they really need a bit of rain. 

I finished the Sally Rooney novel Beautiful World...etc on my run. I was trying to think about what I liked about it, but I kept just coming back to "the people in her novels are terrible and treat each other badly and aren't likeable and remind me of all the worst people I met in my MFA program" but I really enjoy it. I think it made me a better writer. I feel like even just reading back over these posts the last couple months, my observations are a little clearer and more coherent. Although they really took a dip earlier this year, and they are nowhere near as good as they were when I wrote in this thing all the time. Ahh, well. I think it's like exercise - it gets harder as you get older, but especially when you don't do it as often. Says the girl who can barely plank for a minute now and could do five minutes steady this time last year. 

Okay, hurrying off. Busy little Friday. Wines to buy, dogs to exercise, lights to hang, things to cook. 

Hello again. Nice day today with a big blue sky and totally mild temperatures for December. I was so looking forward to running in it, but only got about three miles (and those broken up by frequent stops by the crows!) before I got pulled into work shit again. I've been really busy at my job: the usual year end release and then another release for a new product I'm the sole tech writer on. It's nice to feel useful though and to have work that is important and high visibility. That said, I'm having the typical thing with a big deadline where despite the stress and pressure to get it done, literally everything else in the world sounds more interesting than working on it right now. But that's a good feeling too.

I feel winter depressed, but kind of in a cute traditional way, where I drink too much wine while watching Game of Thrones with my dog at night instead of being productive, and don't make any attempt at maintaining my appearance. I need to decorate my disgusting house and make things look festive and full of light. I just get so sleepy and listless when it gets dark. I'm very solar sensitive and it feels a little bit like when you put a towel over a birdcage (or an alligator's eyes) and they just go to sleep. 

Oh well. Not my most interesting blog post, but I was proud of writing something every day for a while and want to get back into that habit.