I try to live the days and especially the night leading up to the turn of the year in a way that will give me good luck and foreshadowing for the year to come. So far, I won't call this a bust, but I am feeling so lethargic and having such a hard time finding productive work for my hands. It was hot and cloudy this morning, but now a cool rain has settled in over the Valley. I spent my morning finishing that book on death. 

This morning, I did have a funny comment on a very silly little Star Wars thing I wrote last week when I was in the depths of my time-wasting doldrums. It was from a friend I'd been close with online about 10-15 years ago when I was a big nerd and wrote a lot of that stuff. She left me a wonderful review on my recent piece and said "Welcome back?!! Unless improbably you are a stranger who happens to have almost the exact same user name and writes these characters in this particular exact way." I was touched she recognized me after so, so many years, and happy she reconnected, even if I am very different person now. She was so kind to me when I was a teenage weirdo; we even got together in person a couple times in college. It was also a very Mercury Retrograde moment. Talk about the past coming back to a person. I realized that I'm roughly the age now that she was when we first started writing together and chatting. Strange to think about. 

But I should be cleaning or getting dips ready or making shrimp étouffée for tomorrow, when surely I will be too exhausted by the sweat and jumping into an icy river to cook anything. Tonight will be a return to form: friend group party, then to the usual brewery bar (the one downtown, not the one that's closing) for another, different set of friends doing another different pair of shows. In a lot of ways, it will be like picking up with the New Year I had when 2019 was turning to 2020 before everything went off the rails for a few years. I don't know how much I care for that particular meditation, but at least these are familiar routes, and I admit, some part of me feels like it is still 2019 and the last years simply didn't happen. I reach for a picture, a particular memory, a camping trip, all thinking it was last year, and find out that it was several years ago now. I guess that's getting old. And I do feel old and a little ugly. 

Well, I won't be less glum by sitting here thinking about how quickly the time passes. In case I don't write another entry before midnight: happy new year, little blog, and kisses. I'm sure I'll have vast, wise, important things to say tomorrow after my freezing reunion with the Middle River. 

 Not the first or sadly, probably, the last bar closing night I've been to here in my little mountain town, which is so full of small bars closing down. The brewery between my favorite hike and my town is shutting down. It was one I went to often because of the hiking proximity (plus my friend was the bar manager and let my dog stand on the tables outside without fussing at me.) We all gather. We all try to send the place off with a smashy little flair that makes it less sad and all of us feel less old about how dimly we remember way back when they opened, when my friends played the first show. 

My friends are playing the final show. The crowd is drunk; I didn't realize it until the music started and everyone started looking too long at each other. I'm wearing skinny jeans and a shirt with the mouse, Stuart Little, doing a kickflip on a skateboard with the lyrics of Johnny Cash's song Hurt: a funny shirt, so a lot of people want to talk to me. A drunk old man that is familiar to me starts bumping up against my friend and I take the stool next to her to block him out with my tall body. Thank you, she whispers at me in a loud, not very discreet voice. Next, my beautiful friend, newly engaged, starts dancing with the same old man and she is so, so beautiful dancing, and he looks so happy, he is almost in tears. I realize suddenly why he is familiar: I have been to the funeral of his son after the son's unexpected, sudden death. When the dance is done, my friend's fiancé tells the old man how he's clearly won the contest of their manliness, and the whole bar laughs, like in a sitcom. 

The music shifts, accelerates. My friend the manager lets her dog off the leash to roam through the bar because who the hell cares? The bar is shutting down, the owner has stopped paying the staff and we are just handing them all wads of cash because we know they are working just for tips, being paid actually nothing. The staff are all drinking. My friend playing the violin makes "can you get me a drink please" gesture to me across the room - I pretend to not know what he is talking about. A drink? Whaaat. Wait, you want what? A drink? One of these?? I do get him a kolsch and snuggle it up dangerously next to his speaker and important wires. The music bangs on; everyone is asking for Free Bird, for the Stairway to Heaven, for something they are going to pull up on their phone, but I like the song they are playing, the one about how "I ain't ever gonna be in your way." 

 I actually have a lot to say today because it's an important day (going to finally do my cave fire behind/under the waterfall) but I just remembered an anecdote from this week that I wanted to write down because it was funny and I want to remember it. 

I was over with my friend for dog date (Monday, I think?) and she sloshed her wine a little bit accidentally into the fire. I tipped a little of mine out and joked, "pour one out for our favorite daughter!" and she said "pour one out for our... wait, uuuhhhh... WHAT?" I had no idea what to even begin to tell her. Eventually I said "well, don't worry about it, it's kind of just a stupid elf thing..." which felt so absolutely and accidentally in-character as a thing Yan would say that I almost started laughing. Thank goodness for small, stupid, interior joys in this life of endless loss and suffering. At least I still amuse myself most of the time. 

 I am typing this sitting in the sunshine on a white crushed gravel patio outside the winery downtown. I am sitting literally on the gravel because I didn't want to bother the staff by making them haul out a chair or table. The last time I was here, the owner told me that sometimes I sit outside in weather that she wouldn't consider sitting outside weather. She said it in a nice way like I was quirky, but I've noticed a lot of people who think they're quirky are actually just annoying. The gravel is cool where it touches my butt and the outside of my crossed ankles. (I am sitting criss-cross style with my long legs bent up under me.) I don't mind it. 

I spent the day (wasted the day) writing. I'm alarmed how quickly I was able to use up this week. I brought two books to read here but then I thought I might write to this first instead. I brought a book on Civil War death and that one I mentioned previously about Appalachian folk witchcraft. The witchcraft one is not very good (a little corny and so many spells for warts! Who gets so many warts that they need multiple spells?!) but the death book is excellent. I get along so well with the Gilded Years generation except when they are acting all racist and not letting their women do anything. (Which is usually.) I would have made a good shitty cavalry man in a past life and died on my back with my mouth open to the sky. Maybe someone would have come along and taken one of those early black and white Civil War battlefield photographs of me.

I dreamed I was writing a porn fic thing about a whale man with a giant penis. (I'm still a freak, after all.) Then I had one of my significant ones full of the past and conversations that I revise and revise in my dreaming mind until they feel real, and the sense of them and the presences in them last for days. It's funny how much reality I give to these dreams, like they are true psychic nighttime meetings with my past, whereas the one I had immediately afterward about attending a bilingual picnic with my most annoying coworkers will be disregarded. (Although, hey, at least I am kind of sorta dreaming in Spanish, even if most of the dream was me not really knowing Spanish.)

There are a truly stunning amount of mediocre white couples downtown right now, pointing at things, peering in windows, crossing the street and then crossing back. Very judgemental of me, huh? Mediocre. I'm the very essence of the word. I'm down here too, drinking my second glass of very dark red wine and eating a chocolate bar for lunch.

The year rubs down to the last little nub, doesn't it? So many people are probably just the same as me, wandering through this blank winter sun afternoon stupor with their puff jackets, using up the last days of the year, wondering where they will be this time next year and what they will have lost, thinking oh, wherever you are I hope you are well.

 Okay, okay, okay. Reset. Do productive things. Make productive plans. I should go for a run instead of languishing around my house like a ghost. I should go get the groceries. I could even sweep the broken pieces of vine off my porch and clean up everything that blew into the yard after the high winds. Is it payday yet? I want, I want, I want. 

Oh, I wanted to save my birthday flash flood fire on here so I always remember it. 

 Even thirtysix.

 Home again. "Home." I waffle between loathing this house now (how ugly the layout, the way the narrow clunky design seems to attract clutter and dirt) and crying over the plants I will leave, the bright windows I love, the memories here. I remember the day we moved in here. My friends helping me with the plants. Right now, the crows are yelling for breakfast. While I was gone, the neighbor has started feeding them - something I feel mixed about. I'm glad they're being fed. I'm glad it means she and her husband probably don't mind them sitting outside the house, screaming constantly, shitting on their cars. I'm glad to think someone will tend to them when I'm gone. But a little part of me - the worst, worst part of me - is slightly jealous. Isn't that ugly? 

I can see the neighbors - actually, both sets of them - saying goodbye to relatives who have clearly been visiting for Christmas. The last week of 2022. It feels like the Sunday evening of the year and I have the Sunday scaries. 

At least I'm going up to Harrisonburg with some friends for the day. I don't know that I feel social, but I guess I have to do something. I don't want to spend my week spinning my wheels. 

 Happy Christmas. Today will make 25 fires, but who is still counting them? (Me, I am. Always, always.)

 Today was so cold. As I was walking out to the big rock on the property, the leaves froze under my boots. When I got to the giant rock, I found an overhang shelter underneath it that I never noticed before. I squirmed up under it, felt the water drip from the ceiling. 

And I did make another fire even though I finished my 22... It was a good one: sturdy, hot, wind-fed.

God, what a mess I am. I feel so soft, dreamy, sentimental, and nostalgic. The way that in this life, even absence can be a kind of interaction. The way nothing ever really goes away. 

 

My twenty second fire was made alone in the pouring cold rain on the roots of a sycamore tree in my parent's backyard, at dark, while the creek flash flooded. I actually have a very good picture: the flood water in the dark looks like another type of gray fire.

I felt something powerful as I stood there, genuinely pleased at my own ability, the concoction of fat wood and birthday crepe paper needed to start a little blaze in such elements felt dear to me and smelled good. It wasn't at all release, even if I put the pieces of the fire one by one into the blown out water and watched the night turn blacker and blacker with each vanished flame. 

Then I walked home through the water-gorged, coyote-rich woods. 

Like an answer to something I called, I had such dreams. 

 Who needs a house, anyway?

 20 days, 20 fires. Two more to go, although the weather will complicate my plans to have the final fire under a particular iced-over waterfall I love. I'll have to come back and do that after the holiday. I should have that entire week between Christmas and New Year off, and nothing quite to do with it. That makes me a little sad, although I'm sure I'll waste up the time pretty good and maybe even get into the woods. The weather will be shockingly cold. I'm worried about the house (aw, I'm worried about the house, she whined again and again - but in this way, I mean the pipes freezing, the cats being cold, etc.). I'm worried about the house in the traditional way too; the email is off to the landlords with the list of demands. Whenever I ask for something like that, I have a vague feeling that I'm going to be screamed down.  

Mmm. It's amazing how good a dream can be sometimes. I woke up from one of those old fashioned ones last night and now all the feelings of it are with me during the day like a little light. I have so much to do today, particularly shifting my travel plans forward, and all I want to do is sit around and think. 

I'll leave this post with one mediation that I have been pushing around my brain over the weekend and into this week, swirling around the last dregs of the year. It's amazing the way that the nature of existence is the relentlessness of life and the way it attracts more life to itself. I could be corny: looking at my friends this weekend, surrounded by beautiful children that weren't there a few years ago. The empty spaces get filled in so rapidly. You get older and life picks up more and more life, like one of those big rolly ball things in that weird Japanese video game. (This is meant to make you laugh, I know it's dumb comparison, but that is how I see it in my mind's eye.) But even my stupid extra cat that attached herself to my household. You're feeding crows one day, and next you're feeding crows, blue jays, wrens, and a big titty squirrel with no tail that will eat out of your hand. I cut back my boxwood and everything living rushes up toward the light. 

 I'm trying to be philosophical about my snapped branches on the butterfly bush; after all, I will have to say goodbye to all of this garden when/if the house deal falls through. The thing did need to be trimmed back. I put up suet; way up high where Trash can't reach it, but still in the view of my window by my workspace. The wrens have found it and I like to watch them enjoying it. They're so fluffy this time of year.

This weekend is birthday festivities out at the villa, but I don't feel very celebratory. It will be cold, and colder next week. I'm worried it will be too chilly for the outdoor woods things planned, especially with kids coming. But I also can't just stay in bed all day like I want to. At least I'm pretty much done with my Christmas shopping.  I usually get sick right around Christmas, so I have that to look forward to. 

I took the afternoon off simply because I wanted an excuse not to go to my team Christmas party, but now I don't know what I want to do instead. I need to go run now that the ice has cleared out, but that won't take me all afternoon. I guess I should do some more cleaning and maybe listen to this book about a 15th century executioner. I could go downtown and walk around or post up to read somewhere, but I'm trying to be better about drinking less, and I know I'd probably want to sit in a winery or something. I still need to work in my fire for today. 

 Me thinking about the house so hard that I cry-barf.

 I like the feeling of a day before a winter storm, even if I'm concerned about my top heavy butterfly bushes and the poor old trees in the graveyard getting through a quarter inch of ice. I have new candles if the power goes out; some of my lights are battery operated. The sky is perfectly white and still. The birds are very active; my crows are even pushier than usual as they beg for snacks. 

It's the 14th, so that means I've had 14 fires and have 8 more to go. I told myself "write about something happier" for this post because I really have been in a funk about the house, and this is my happier thing. It's a nice meditation. The fires are beautiful and they are warm. 

 I get up. I look critically at my stomach in the mirror, actually liking it this morning, and then put on my running clothes. I won't run for another several hours but it helps me stay on track to have them on. No weaseling out of it, although really, my run is something I look forward to every day. 

The coffee machine went off at 5:30 am when the dog was barking, so by 8 it's already tepid in the carafe. I pour it into a Pyrex measuring cup, microwave, then pour it into a little blue mug I bought for Yan's kit almost a decade ago. I plug in the lights, let the cat out of the basement, feed the other cat, and walk the dog under the flat, white, opaque sky that somehow gives me comfort. 

I feel depressed this week. A bad time to decide to strictly cut back on my drinking, although arguably that actually makes it a good time re: the depressant effects of alcohol. I feel generally unhealthy, like things are wrong with me below the surface - secret broken things, ruined things inside. I know that this is not normal, that this is a mania that I have developed in my middle 30s: that I am secretly, unknowingly very ill and about to die, and sometimes I truly believe it. It makes me dread going to the doctor's even for something little, because I am surely about to find out at any second that I have some terminal, self-inflected disease. My dad is the same way, which is not reassuring. 

I am sad about the house. I find myself tearing up about it at odd points in the day: stupid, stupid, stupid. My friend has taken the inspection report and made a beautiful list unpacking every single thing, describing the action to be taken, the estimate price, what the landlord should do to make the contract, what can be done without a huge expense. I should feel so grateful for this, but I feel stuck and helpless and anxious instead. I sit at my desk and drink bitter tea and cry about this. I think about my poor sad burnt up attic and have to go outside and stand in the yard to stop weeping. 

 Sometimes it's really about putting a bag of popcorn in the microwave before you watch something totally dumb. 

 Well, my indecision about what to do this weekend was pretty clarified when one of the friends I hung out with briefly last night tested positive for Covid this morning. I'm not terribly concerned - I have my booster and we were sitting pretty far apart from each other - but it does resolve my plans. Instead of Hilltop, downtown reading, and any more populated hike, it was out to Falls Hollow on the graveyard loop. I gathered beautiful pieces of hemlock, pine, and fern to make a wreath for the front door. 

Happily (or unhappily, for them) the friends I wanted to hang out with this weekend were also equally exposed, so I can take dinner over tonight and get the dogs together, maybe play in the hot tub. I have several nice lamb chops and I thought about cooking up a Moroccan thing - maybe some cous cous with olives, dates, and carrots. 

But for now, I might relax and read on the porch or work on my wreath. 

 All right, all right. I'll stop with my dramatics over the house for a minute. Fire last night (the one for my twenty-two December fires, not the spectral ghost of the one that previously ravaged my roof and attic) was a tiny candle in one of my black legends lanterns. I carried it all over Staunton in the soft rain. 

So let me see, what else. It's all cold and cloudy today, and a threat of rain/snow is complicating my hiking plans for tomorrow. This afternoon will be my typical bell ringing thing; hopefully the rain will hold off for that at least. In lieu of a hike, I'm not sure what I'm doing tomorrow. Maybe I'll walk downtown and visit the Christmas market. I could take a book and curl up in one of the wineries downtown. I have this new one that's about Appalachian folk magic (prepare for me to get even more annoying than usual on this thing about it!). 

At work, the release is about to go out and then I swear to god, I'm going to do absolutely nothing for the rest of the year. "Must be nice." It is! This year has been my worst here, maybe my worst at any job I've ever had, including when I was the world's worst server at a horrible chain seafood restaurant in NoVa.  

 The foundation and the roof. The two pieces that make a house. Weird what a hundred year old house keeps and weird what it lingers on.

Hey, just asking, can you tell me a little bit about what happened with the fire? 

 This home inspection is into hour four, and spoiler alert, it's not going well. 

 Ahh, sad day. Cold rain. My friend came over in the middle of the day and cried on my couch because she'd had to put down her cat - the one she'd had since she was 21, who had been a friend to her in lonely months since her divorce. I cried too - over the last year, I'd been watching the old cat on the regular when she had to travel for work. He was a nice old boy and seemed gently fond of me, even though my main job while watching him was to give him an insulin shot twice a day. Then, my best bud at work found out her mom had passed - while she was on camera during our meeting. Awful news, and such cruel timing. It's been a day for trying to say "I'm sorry, I'm hurting for you" in so many ways when in reality, my words are such weak little things. I think I'll go curl up.

 This morning is such a perfect frosty cold morning: everything is silvered over and smells like woodsmoke. (Although it may be the end of my late season greens. Well, they put up such a valiant fight and gave me so many beautiful salads.) The bells from downtown seem to travel much more clearly in the cold air, or maybe it's that they have their Christmas programing running so that they play bell-versions of Christmas hymns that stand out more than the usual recording. I remember climbing the tower in Granada to see the real (and ancient) bells at one of the cathedrals, rushing down the tight spiral stairs to not be so close to them when they started clanging on the quarter hour. They were so old and had been used so many times that the steps had soft, smooth divots in them from the feet of hundreds upon hundreds of years of people going up and down them.

This week is going to be bonkers. Tonight is quiet and relaxing, and then after that I have something every single day and evening, plus the release at work. It's going to be quite a tangle if I end up needing to work late any of those days. I also have the house inspector coming this week, which gives me a mingled feeling of excitement and dread. This could really be the point where the wheels fall off of this whole thing. Yesterday, I spent hours peeling vines out of my siding, breathing in the dust and pulverized nests of a dozen generations of birds. Still, by Saturday, there will be a clearer picture of everything - and maybe then I can finally think about relaxing. (Ha.) 

Four

 

Fire report: tealight, breakfast.  

Nice little day out at Augusta Springs. It's wild to watch my friends' kids grow up and turn into little people - much wilder still to realize that they like mushrooms, bugs, snakes, and ice cold spring water. In the spring pool, we noticed a banded water snake, and it was fun to pull up my sleeve and show V the banded water snake I have tattooed down my arm now and compare the pattern. I love how much she wasn't afraid of the (live) snake and how she wanted it to come back after the snake had given us a good assessment and then gone back into his hole. I'm grateful to V's mom for raising a daughter who isn't afraid of snakes and bugs; even more grateful to her for being one out of about two people in the world who were nice to me when my life fell apart. 

But I do love Augusta Springs. The light through the swampy pines was shaky as I remember. I was thinking about certain high ridges up at the top, half-decayed stumps with shale disintegrating out, spring peepers. I met myself there in a certain way.

 I think I'm going to try to have a fire every day until the solstice as a meditative exercise. It can be a big one or just a candle. I like the idea of being purposeful about light right now. 

Good fire last night out back with the sky all black and gold and a little pink to the west, even after it was fully dark. December is a little month of fires. And it's finally glugg season, finally cold enough that the heat of the drink feels good on your hands.

What's going on this weekend? I think tonight is a birthday thing downtown for a friend; it seems like so many of my friends have birthdays this month and last. I'm cold just thinking about it. Then tomorrow I think a hike with some friends and their kiddo. I'm a little worried about the weather... might be too rainy for a small person to enjoy. 

I feel sleepy today and a little listless. I have calls to make, work things to finalize, a run to run, but I kind of just want to do nothing and sit around and read weird porn fanfic. I should get up and do something. I should throw the pumpkins off the porch or work some more at ripping down the vine. 

 Ha, reminder that posting whole lyrics I like attract bots. Still - complete bangers. Oh, hello December! Rabbit rabbit, etc.

How this whole year has flown by. It was a big year, though, with a lot in it. I traveled a lot; San Francisco seems like a lifetime ago, and Spain like a dream. I hiked a little bit; I camped even less. I ran my five miles, five days a week, in the graveyard and didn't really push myself. The house saga is still unfolding, but could be one of those life events things. I suppose a lot could still happen in a month. My wretched birthday is coming up. My typical Christmas sickness.

I don't not feel depressed, but it feels different right now. Granted, the way that disease moves, it could all change tomorrow and I might shouldn't jinx myself. I guess I feel very thoughtful and a little keyed in. I had a dream last night that has become recurring over the last couple years. In it, I'm pulling out giant pieces of glass from under the skin of my hands. There's always more and more of it, piece after piece, and as I remove them, my skin looks like a burst blister, a flap of skin where something should be. It hurts, but it's satisfying. I don't actually have a big theory for what, if anything, this dream represents about my life or mind. 

 What a day, huh? I didn't sleep well; something seems to be badly wrong with Bailey and she spends most of the nights now screaming and howling. The vet tomorrow for sure. I also had bad dreams and managed to somehow open my shampoo in such a way that a big drop of it glurped up and landed directly in my eyeball. My eye is... burned? Or something. And it's been bothering me all day. 

Work was shitty, the grits were ruined, and the land lady texted again with more house developments. I wish I was a smarter person and knew more about buying a house. I really don't know shit. There might even be a closing date now, but I just feel slightly panicked like there's so much more I need to understand first. I'm falling down a hill of dumbness and just hoping I don't hit a rock. I want to be at the point where this feeling exciting, proud, and thrilling, but I think I'm still eying up the drop. 

Well. I made shrimp fajitas for dinner. I spent most of this evening trying to clean up the awful mess I'd made of the spare room downstairs over the last camping trip, food stores, Christmas decorations, and my general clutter. But now I just want to curl up on the couch with the dog and watch something stupid on TV. I hope I'm sent a good dream tonight. The cat is outside, begging to come in. 

 Tonight, I'm making soup. It's easy to be grateful for the little twinkling lights I've strung up everywhere. Do I write about food too much? Do I write about it not enough? 

I thought I heard a whippoorwill this evening through the bare walls of my uninsulated kitchen. It wasn't one, of course, but it reminded me of deep, sweet summer, the sound of a night bird, a field maybe, or maybe just the hay-sweet smell, and fireflies starting to lift up. It's hard to imagine that now in the very start of the dark, bleak cold season, but I could feel it almost exactly in memory, you know? Maybe that's the thing to keep in mind. That there are happy, beautiful things, and even if I can't touch them now, they'll be here again.

 I read a few of the older entries in this blog last night because I was bored and kind of drunk and it was strange. It feels like I was a better writer back then - more articulate, and more of myself came through. Sure, some of it was dumb stuff (I sure still write dumb stuff) but the level of detail and richness of it seemed different from now, when half the time I'm just talking about my stupid crows. Still, it gave me again a feeling about how much writing this thing is important to me. Having a record of myself at, say, 2015 that feels so different from just ...oh no, that was actually 7 years ago?! But I also think I've written the same stories in here literally dozens of times. It'd be funny and probably a little sad to go back and see how those things subtly shifted over the years. 

I had one of my "I still work at the coffee shop" dreams last night. I love them so much. I always think if I ever really lost my footing, I'd go back and do that again. In the dream, I'm just doing a normal shift: making people tea, restocking things from the back, wiping counters, being nice and cheerful. This one had a weird, bad twist at the end where my mom came into the coffee shop and told me that my dad had died. I'm sure it's because I was just up seeing them, and there are bad family health things going on. (That for once, don't actually impact my dad, but still.) 

Well, speaking of that, it was actually a nice visit. We were sitting out by the fire and distantly, a big pile of emergency vehicles were going somewhere, making the typical racket. Just like domestic dogs will sometimes do, the coyotes heard them and started answering, but in their wild, beautiful, terrifying coyote voices. They were just across the creek. I loved hearing them, but then, it did upset the dogs. Sven acting like the big man about it as if I didn't watch him completely flatten himself to the ground in terror that time they buzzed our campsite at Elkhorn. 

I have a little bit of a headache today because I boiled myself like a human potato in the hot tub after getting back yesterday and didn't drink any water. (Surely it's because of that, and not because of the aforementioned "kinda drunk." No, I really wasn't that bad.) But! I'm really excited to hit my run. Probably it's warm enough that I can break out the shorts. 

 A man and his wife walking by apologized as they moved around me and my murder of 12 or so as I fed them their thanksgiving dinner, and the man called out "I love crows, they're so..." and here he paused for a moment to think of the word and then told me "...sacred."

I felt a little bit inwardly sneering; it was a corny thing to say. But I was the one handing out chunks of chicken fat, dressed in harem pants, a long green apron, and hiking boots. And don't I feel the same way about the crows? What other word would I have for the feeling I get when they come to me? How special I feel, how blessed when their wings just brush my hair or I feel them inside my shadow, turn, and there they are. I'm really the crazy one here.

I can suddenly define the feeling: a little bit lonely.

 - chicken, roast

- cabbage, apple, and sausage stuffing

-mashed potatoes

-shitake mushroom gravy

-weird heirloom sweet potato, roasted

-creamed kale

-bitter herb salad

-bread and cheese

...listening to the Mumford and sons, which even though they suck, the first album is full of bangers and makes me feel like I'm 26 again. 

 Is it vacation mode, yet? Well, maybe holiday mode, not vacation. After all the release bullshit, I'm relieved to have the extra long weekend away from work, although the next four days have their own responsibilities and a few stresses, like family things that always tend to accumulate. As ever, a pervasive busy-ness. From my window at my desk, I can see my neighbor working in her yard and it makes me feel some mixture of jealous and guilty - I should be doing that, and will I ever have all the time I want to put into this place, to make it better, and will I ever know exactly how? 

At least tomorrow will be fun. I'm looking forward to getting up early and cooking the whole dinner. Later, winesgiving and not having to host it for a change. I should write myself a list of things not to say or think after I have 15 glasses of wine with my friends. 

My personality feels a bit dry this week. I want to post photos of the woods with vague text underneath. I want to read something, shut up my brain instead of being funny and thoughtful. At least there's a fire in my future in the next 3 hours. 

I'm gonna make a chicken instead of turkey. Everyone complains about turkey in a universal way that people also complain about the weather - "who actually even likes turkey?" - and I've even said it this week, a platitude to mouth like "how is it already November" and "cold enough for you?" (Of course it is.) I don't think that turkey is good, but I actually do like it, if that makes any sense. It's blandishness (yes I'm inventing words now) is somehow appealing with the other flavors. I think I like Thanksgiving because all those sides and traditional things I grew up eating a lot of, but I don't make them now, so it's a fun excuse to cook. My extended family was big on the "Sunday dinner" type meal with a protein, mashed potatoes, gravy, sides... I didn't like stuffing growing up, but I do like it now, partially because I think I make it better than I had growing up. That reminds me, I should take out the sausage. 

Well, what else for now? The crows are extra in my business with the cold weather. I've been reading this terrible book about the Shenadoah park murders in 1996 - by which I mean, listening to it on my run - and it's shaking me up a little bit, partially because White Oak Canyon and Dark Hollow Falls and all those trails around where it happened are well known to me. It's all about backpacking and women's safety in wilderness areas, which is something I think a lot about and maybe a reason I should have not started this book. Anyway, I was listening to it, feeding the crows like I normally do and this woman scared me so much by suddenly appearing in my route and wanting to talk about the crows. This interest in the crows from strangers happens a lot (and generally, women aren't serial killers) - but she really startled me and then she just wouldn't stop talking and asking questions. I went wide around to avoid her on my next lap. That's something I appreciate about running in the graveyard - I can usually see who is around long before I encounter them on my route. (When I'm not distracted by serial murder of course.) 

Okay, time to go wash my hair before I get it perfectly perfumed with backyard fire smoke at dog date. I should come up with some "grateful fors." You know, it's a generally good idea. 

 All of the sudden, it became winter. The air stings my face when I run, the Trash cat gets put inside during the early evenings. I'm sure those who love the cold are feeling pleased and maybe happy, but to me, it feels like my world is smaller, more limited. I want to sit on the porch, or prowl around my garden. It's not that I can't do these things, it's just that they take so much more energy and preparation. Last night, at friend's party, I crouched in my big jacket feeding small sticks to a bright green fire. It was good up until I realized I was cold in that way that goes as deep as your bones. I was also just tired, you know?

The cabin last weekend with friends was great, of course. Hard to complain about a hot tub in the middle of nowhere. It was a portable one my friend brought, so it required lugging so many buckets of water up from the pump. It made me glad that I wasn't really the old timey woman I enjoy pretending myself as out there when I'm lighting the stove. Afterward, my chest and arms hurt, so the hot water was welcome. There were deer all around - moving seen and unseen through the woods. 

Today, I have to drive out of town briefly to feed a friend's cat, then it will be the farmer's market and some time downtown. I have the heat absolutely cranking. I wish I could get outside tomorrow and wonder if I can drag my friends to the villa. This week was another shitstorm at work, and I'm hoping that the next week will be easier with the holidays and everything. I also hope I'll have a chance to write more. 

 The rain is coming down in tropical gouts. I move around my house in the dark, picking up this thing and that thing, moving pieces around. I'm glad it will be the cabin this weekend instead of camping in all this vast wetness. The way woods out here can hold onto water; you understand so much more deeply the fact that these are deciduous rainforests. Last night, hiking out toward the waterfall at Falls Hollow, the woods held onto the darkness that way too, seeping up and around me like a rising tide. In the half-light, the rocks looked like everything but rocks. 

I'm looking forward to seeing the little calfpasture river where it goes up near Daddy's Run, and actually recently read that there was a burial mound on the pastureland across the river. It probably explains the small scalloped bowls of rock that have accumulated on the cabin porch over years of people finding them and picking them up, as well as the blue chert partial arrowhead that was there, but has since disappeared. I'm going to pack a dress to cook in when I'm fixing up venison on the 1920s cast iron stove. Sven and Bean will be happy to see each other, and I've packed them nice big marrow bones because I love those boys so, so much. 

Kooser poem for just this particular moon I watched come up in November merely an hour ago:

 The thing that I never count on during these weeks I work all these extra hours is how burned out I feel in the middle of them, like my brain has reached its rather limited capacity. Today is one of those cold, dry winter-feeling days that feel almost colorless, but a lot of that is probably me being a husk right now. At least the cold makes it easier to sleep. 

 Two items left on my release news and then all I have to do is all the bug fixes. But it's after 9, I've been working straight since 7:45 am, I have to get up early tomorrow to meet with my India team, and this baby (me) is tired. 

Election day. I remember this one back in 2016. Sven had been adopted for a month; it was the first time he'd ever seen me cry and he curled up against my body like he was frightened. Today is strange. I had to cut around a candidate I knew personally as a friend (and now loathe) on my way to the polls. Both the women I voted for Congress and for my local city council have been to my house and complimented my garden. It feels very, very interpersonal - even if politics have been personal for me for a long time, since one side seems to think I should have less rights than a corpse. 

Augh. Okay. Okay. Enough about that. I'm already so tired.  

I was freezing, exhausted, and then I put on my fuzzy elk socks and felt so much better. How is everything so much better when your feet are warm? I was going to clean up around the house tonight but guhh, I'm just so worn out. I'm trying to get out ahead of everything because this weekend, I'm hoping to be at the cabin, and not stuck here working. My friend sent this in the morning from the cabin trip at the same time last year; she took it standing in the water as well (though it was November) and I liked it so much, I wanted to save it somewhere where I wouldn't forget, or accidentally delete it off my phone to make up space.

I see at this time last year, the leaves were already all down. 

 God, I've been so tired today. I don't think I deserve to feel this bad, except for the fact that it continues to be hot and daylight savings always messes with me. I hope I sleep better tonight. I hope I sleep at all.

Up to Hburg this afternoon to get my Costco run and this and that errand. I saw a good-looking young couple having very obvious sex in a most-deserted parking lot - her up on top, facing him, in the front seat of the truck - and thought about being young and turned on and wild. I went into the store and bought candles that smelled like "lodge" and "tobacco" as well as a particular pan for my dad's Christmas present, and when I came back out they were still going at it. The drive home on 81 was particularly dark with just a smear of sunset over the mountains. 

 I woke up in the middle of the night so hot that I had to open the window. It was such a relief to feel the cool, rain-smelling air coming in, though now I feel bleary and confused about what time it is. Rain off and on today. As Wright wrote it, "part of the rain has fallen and the rest is yet to fall." (I'm paraphrasing, he probably said it better.) I can already hear the crows outside yelling for food in my front yard - I guess it's still 9am to them and so that's about the time. There are oyster mushrooms to be picked in the graveyard. I've made a half dozen salads with all the greens that are thriving in my garden in this strange heat. 

I woke up to a recruiter reply to a linked in series of exchanges - looks like an interview Monday. It's nice to be looking for work casually while I have a job, although my job is about to be hell for the next several weeks as I try to wrap up two back to back major releases. Ugh, who wants to think about that, though? It's bad enough that tomorrow is Monday.

This morning is a show for a friend of a friend who got into a particular public altercation over Halloween with a loathed public figure. The friend's band got a lot of backlash and boycotting from the right-leaning community, so it'll be nice to go and show some support. The confrontation itself has lived rent-free in my head ever since it happened because it's so hilariously like a parks and rec bit: the friend, dressed as a cat, yelled at the mayor, who was dressed as Ms Potts the Teapot from Beauty and the Beast. Chaos ensued - including a former councilman getting involved (who was dressed at the time as US Grant). You just can't make that kind of small town drama up. 

I do love this weird town. A neighbor died last week - not someone I knew well, but a nice old man who always waved at me from his porch when I ran by - and it was touching seeing the whole neighborhood come out for the funeral. (He was buried across the street from his house, in the cemetery, next to his wife. I think you could do worse in life than to be buried across the street from your little house next to your wife.) Even some dogs that the guy apparently liked got to come. It turned out he had been some kind of firechief so the whole department came out in their dress blues and their massive truck that's the size of two tractor trailers. (Respectful awooga to them.) But there was such a big neighborhood community feeling about it all. It feels good to belong in a place like this. 

Creamy sky, hot weather again. I'll go sit on the porch. 

I was out picking arugula in my garden for a salad with dinner, and the local tween contingent passing by asked me what I was cooking tonight and enthusiastically wished me a great day. Perhaps my candy bar game made me some positive new alliances. The crows have been extra needy today, chatting and begging more than normal, even though the weather is quite fine for November. (Rabbit, rabbit.) The leaves smell good and spicy in the heat. 

Tonight, I'm cleaning the house, which is officially a fucking bitch. But it's gotten to the point where it's not just embarrassing, it looks like a crazy person's house. Too much chaos with the trip to Spain followed by camping and hauling out a bunch of grimy, leafy gear and piling it around the house. But what's that? I'm writing in my blog instead of cleaning it right now and it's almost eight? Awful. Okay, okay. More later.

 What Halloween kid was the best?! The little boy who saw Trash and exclaimed, "I didn't know cats could trick-or-treat!!" The two doors down neighbor's two year old who was dressed as a giant avocado and got overwhelmed so he went toddling away back toward his house as fast as his little legs could carry him? The same neighbor's 13 year old daughter who was left home to pass out candy being deemed too old for trick-or-treats, but who snuck over to the porch and asked "Could I please trick-or-treat here just really quick?" (I gave her as much candy as she could carry; it's hard growing up and people deciding you're too old for stuff you still love!) Or maybe it was the little tiny boy who just showed up at 9:50pm on a Monday night in the pouring rain after the lights were out and when I gave him the rest of the candy, he yelled "WOW!" I love this stupid holiday. I love this neighborhood and this house. I love that the house loan just came back approved at a gigantic interest rate. 

 A perfectly dreary, spooky, rainy little Halloween. I went for a run and my crows were out in force. They seem to like the wet weather, or maybe the fact that the graveyard is so quiet on stormy days. My winter oyster mushrooms are popping up again, which is nice to see. I think I'll give them a couple days and then harvest some. I have really nice butter and I bet they'd be good fried up and put on a nice piece of meat.

I was having such a nice time on my run in the pouring rain that I was startled when the lady who runs the graveyard pulled up and asked if I needed a ride home. I was briefly confused and then she was like "oh wait. You're out here on PURPOSE?" But what is life without an occasional rainy run? It will soon be too cold to do it. Running in the snow is fun but difficult, and sometimes it's falling too hard and gets in my eyes. I had this moment coming back from Elkhorn, seeing the piles of nicely cut and stacked wood and the little cabins with smoke coming from the chimney where I felt excited and happy for winter, not horribly depressed about it. But I'm in an odd little mood these days. 

Tonight I'm really looking forward to handing out candy; I'm hoping the rain doesn't spoil everything. I want to put on all the string lights and fill the yard with candles. I don't think I'll dress up (as a practicing witch, my culture is not a costume! Just kidding, it totally is.) but pretty much most of the stuff I wear could pass as a costume so maybe I'll put on one of my witchier things. 

 Well, I absolutely butchered the soup, but otherwise, I felt happy as a little trout out in the cold, bright woods this weekend. I think the problem was the big cast iron cauldron I used; it's new (okay, it's probably older than I am, but new to me) and though of course I had washed it out, I think it still had a really gross sooty flavor sticking onto it. I actually took my time cleaning it and oiling it after that mess, and when I made a side dish of polenta grits later in the camp, the flavor was really good, so hopefully that will be the resolution of that.

Otherwise, the woods were golden, the sky was creamy, and I liked to wander off into the woods and listen to the quiet. The leaves were falling in a way that sounded almost like rain, but it was quite dry. It was one of those camping trips where it actually felt good to sleep, in spite of my mismatched mess of blankets and underweather sleeping bag and big heavy hog dog. Last night, everyone went to bed but I was still really awake, so I sat up by the fire, reading my dumb poetry book by candle light, listening to the woods: the clicking of the leaves falling around me, the soft sounds of the low fire, distant coyotes, my friends quietly fucking in their tent a little ways away from me, occasionally an owl. The last time I was camping in October like that, I remember seeing so many stars fall - flashes of light like lightning over the mountain. Last year, I wrote a very overwrought poem about it. 

You'd think I'd be tired of the woods, but of course I'm not. I should be at home cleaning my porch for the trick-or-treaters, but I think I'll go out to the villa a little bit. I haven't gotten tired of the falling leaves or the color, and I'm dreamy lately, soft and full of feelings. 

 Oh, a two post day. But I need to write about something else to see how I feel about it. So I had to go through all my costuming stuff, thinking of a particular skirt I wanted to dig out. It all smells like legends and makes me feel all kinds of big emotional things of which I could ramble on about a long time. But here's the funny thing though: I found my old in character journal that I kept during the first few years of larp and then, after, "donated" to the INC library when we had such things in the later part of the game. I hadn't looked at it since the end of the game some... god, 7 years ago? And beyond the happy memories of those first years, I noticed since its time in the "public library" of the game, people had obviously gone through the journal and written things on the last pages I'd left blank. Drawings of my character, funny little messages, doodles. 

And then, on the very last page, out of any other context, just the scrawled word "CUNT"

I admit, I laughed. That word, that one that's supposed wound so viciously, so specifically female, so pointed and aimed. I wonder who it was, which one of the people who came to the final years of the game wrote it and why. The joke is on them a bit - I like that word. I eat that word for fucking breakfast. And really, it's not exactly news to me. Cool story, bro, tell me something I don't know. Did the person think anyone can feel worse about me than I do?

But I suppose maybe I am a little bit upset because I closed the journal without ripping out the page, put it carefully back among my blue armor, leather pieces, scraps of fur, and came upstairs to write this. 

 Hard not to feel light and optimistic with these gorgeous fall mornings. Though I still can't drink a lot of it, I've rediscovered how much I love a cup of hot coffee, especially on one my front porch with the light warm in my hair and the graveyard practically glowing with all the fall color. 

This weekend contains a rare gift these days: Elkhorn. I'm going to put on my raggy larp skirt, put down a rug, and use my giant cast iron cauldron to make a beef stew all afternoon tomorrow. I wonder if the creeks will be flowing again. They get so still in late August, and we haven't really had the rain. It will be cold; I'll bundle up. 

Things with the house are progressing suddenly quite quickly. I'm trying not to get too excited. The next step is the home inspection; a lot could go wrong there. I'm also trying not to get too deep water scared about taking on debt after spending so much of my adult life trying to get out of the ridiculous debt I got into as a seventeen year old. There's also some paranoid, feral part of my brain that is deliriously ready to be legally tied to a place. No one can make me leave. I won't be homeless if my life totally falls apart again. My home won't get sold out from under me. Ehh, it might collapse out from under me, or catch on fire, but... 

But let's not think about that right now. It's exciting to look around the house and imagine projects. All it takes is infinite quantities of my time and money!

Oh, here's something to write about: did some time travel last night going to Chappie's bar for the last time to get my mug back, since they're closing. That mug has haunted me; a beautiful dark forest green with a wyvern built into the side by my friend who is an art historian...probably almost ten years ago, now? At least 8. Back when I went to the bar there a lot, it made sense to keep it there, but then the owners started saying a lot of really upsetting political bullshit, getting drunk all the time and running off his mouth about women and queers and stuff, and it got less fun to hang out there. I really wanted my mug back, but I didn't want to go in and ask for it. "Hey, I'm never coming here again, can I have my property back? It's special to me." I guess another person would have just said that. But anyway, now that they're closing I got it back, and I was able to scrub off the name of whoever had obviously been using it in my absence. It's funny that I had been so delicate about the situation, and in the meantime they had literally written over my name. Fuckers.

The night felt like my past somehow, though. Walking around downtown in the cold, all the tourists gone, the leaves swirling around and making a clatter. I got home and dreamed more detailed, textured dreams full of scents and feelings.

 

 There are honeybees all over the tattered remains of my garden. I guess they're fueling up while they can for one last seasonal hurrah. It was a beautiful morning - all wet and foggy, with the colors in the trees very, very bright. A good day for running, too. I think I'm slightly faster now that the temperatures have dropped. It feels good, though my legs are sore. 

Since Spain, I've been having the most intense dreams. They feel so textured and realistic, even moreso than usual. I dreamt about running into someone by a creek and it wasn't just how real the creek is, the way the light plays on it, the rocks below the clear water and the dappled way they look, it was the aspects of the presence of the person - the feeling of a shirt, a smell, a particular unique way of feeling around them. That's a simple example of what I mean, but it is striking. It has such a lingering effect.

I'm bad today and just playing around with my stories instead of accomplishing much. I should at least get something done around the house if I don't want to be good at work, but I'm not doing that either. 

 When the poet Lorca fled to Granada, he thought he would be safe there, but he was betrayed by friends and murdered by fascists. While I guess it's not different than any of the histories I live alongside, it seems like every historical site or exhibit in Spain ends something like that. Don't you love to see the white lime cave home that line the cliffside? This is the spring, this is where they grew herbs, this is where the animals lived in a cave adjacent to the living quarters so that they helped to keep the cave complex warm in the mountain winters. And then, invariably, the last exhibit is how the people were rounded up and shot in the early 20th century. Spain has a dark history, like everyone else, but maybe with so much of it being recent, it all feels much fresher.

I found Granada to be a beautiful city: a city of fog, tea shops, and night-blooming jasmine. I bought jewel green harem pants in the street. I covered my shoulders and tattoos and paid coins to light candles in the cathedral. I climbed up inside the Alhambra and dreamed castle city dreams afterward. The bars were very good. They have "authentic" tapas culture there - allegedly the last place in the world to do so. You order a drink; they bring you a little unique snack. Another drink, a different snack. And the bars compete to have a different or better style, and therefore encourage patrons to linger specifically at their particular bar. There was a lot of odd prawn potato salads, little elaborate sliders with lamb, little meatballs, slices of ham and cheese... The wine was good and very cheap. Thick, dark-dark reds. 

Flying is one of those unpleasant surprises of things that get harder as you get older. I've never really particularly liked it, but now I seem to have the extra new side effect of it making me violently ill afterward. I suppose it's motion sickness. Always interesting to land in a new place, disoriented and jet lagged, and then spend the next six hours puking my brains out. It's a dismaying development since all I really want to do with the rest of my life is wander around and look at the world. 

Well, I stumble, barfily, out of the desert of the Sierra Nevada and emerge back here in the mountains of Virginia into the most incandescently beautiful fall.

Madrid is a city of balconies. People are always hanging off of theirs: smoking a cigarette and looking gorgeous. Mine is off a floor to ceiling window ledge, so it's only about the span of my foot and three stories up. Standing out on it to look over the rooftops makes me feel dizzy and weak in the legs. But it's very nice to open up the big windows and sit just inside of it, drinking a glass of cava.

 I've been to now six different European nations and learned to take for granted that everyone would speak perfect English, even in tiny Greek villages full of shepherds. Not so here. It's not just that my eight years of Spanish in school and back of the house restaurant work has ill-prepared me, it's that they think I'm actually French - a new layer of complication. 

 I left my pale blue scarf in the Whiskey Jar downtown. How many of my scarves will restaurants in that town take from me? I suppose I should be happy that it was as gentle with me as it was as I skittered around the outskirts. The winery ruins were beautiful by moonlight. I didn't dance at the wedding; I hung on the wall and swished my long dress around barrels and tables, drank glasses of strawberry-colored sparkling wine. In the morning, I walked around Whole Food with this idea that I wanted something, but I wouldn't know it until I saw it, and not finding it, I frantically bought coffee, pieces of cheese, fancy fresh squeezed orange juice and then rushed home across the mountain. The woods were waiting for me: dark and golden and fragrant. I walked through stands of hickory, pine groves, and finally old, twisted cedar. 

And now, I'm supposed to be packing but instead I'll go for a long run. I have a busy afternoon of meetings and more vet shit and then finally I can put on my apron and make one last nice meal before I leave my kitchen for the foreseeable future. 

It was worth being alive to see the night creep into the woods off the Middle River last night. This time of year, the light changes color in such a strange, new way. The trees glow and the air looks almost purple. And the dark comes on with such determination. As I was driving home, the glint of small pieces of glass along the road almost looked like eyeshine: green and bright in my headlights. 

I mentioned the leech and the arrowhead sifting I'd done out there, but not what I found. All my effort produced a couple pieces of nice red jasper, a piece of ceramic that I actually think might be woodfire/Native made - I see a lot of 19th century ceramic out there too, but this was unique, and a small worked piece. Not a proper point, just a flake with some chipping in it. I brought these things out of the river and put them in nooks in the giant bar Jay's made out of all these old, weird pieces of wood. I've felt less inclined to take artifacts I find away from the place I found them. I try to have a more catch and release sense of these things. 

Last night, I made this really good sheet pan baked meal thing. It's kind of like that feta block cherry tomato bake that all the kids on tiktok were doing back a couple months ago, but with cherry tomatoes, Kalamata olives, red onion, broccoli, garlic, and blocks of feta all tossed in the oven with olive oil at 400 until it bakes together. When it was done, I threw it in a skillet with some cooked orzo and tossed it all together with more olive oil and lemon juice. It takes just like this weird deep dish everything pizza from South Boston (that I think even burned down because of course it did) - all this cheesy veggie Italian flavor. 

I have so much to do but I feel pretty useless today. I desperately need to pack and in lieu of packing, I should clean my house, and in lieu of cleaning my house, I should get ahead at work since I'll be out for the next two weeks. But I'm actually just sitting at my computer eating leftover orzo and trying to decide if I want to watch the stupid Clone Wars cartoon sometime. 

 I actually just remembered I wanted to write about a dream I had last night. What's this preoccupation with dreams, anyway? Isn't it so boring? I don't know; I guess it is kind of stupid. But in some ways, they feel like portals to meaning, lifetimes I won't live, being able to touch people who have gone away, or access to things I've lost or that have simply past on, like a field I remember from childhood that is now a development. Entry back to that world is important to me.

But anyway. Last night struck me as odd not because of some vague earlier part about going up a mountain with a lot of strange imagery and significance, but later in the dream. In the latter part of it, I was living on my old house on Beverly and I was still in grad school. This professor I knew in real life came to a party and was acting somewhat badly - showed up drunk, larger than life and loud, was generous to excess with nice wine and his time, but making people uncomfortable. I had this feeling of being flattered he had come but also wanting him to leave. An overstayed welcome. In real life, he had been a prize fighter once - he had huge fists. People would say "fists like hams" in a novel, but they weren't anything like that. Boxy, hard, powerful. Nothing like ham. He was an old man with white hair, a barrel chest, and very red face. I remember he had a weird thing he liked to talk about, how he wrote every single thing that had ever happened to him his whole life in these composition notebooks and that he had closets full of them at his home. He said he could open up a book for a year, say 1967, and read everything that had happened to him and know exactly the person he was during that year. Does this interest me because of my own compulsive diary keeping? 

He died the year after I graduated; he fell down the stairs in his home in a medical event. They didn't find him right away. I got the sense he was an isolated person. I honestly haven't thought of him much since then. We were never close; to be honest, at the time, his brusqueness scared me. I craved warmth, attention, compliments from my teachers - the assurance that I was special and talented like the little narcissist you know I actually am. I don't feel sentimental toward him now because of the dream. But it made me think about something I read once about how a person actually dies twice: once, when you stop breathing, and a second time, the last time a living person says your name. But what about the last time someone dreams about you? If the man were still alive, I think he literally wouldn't remember my name. But here he is, lodged in my subconscious. Showing up at my shitty, imaginary house parties. 

Anyway. I'm going to the villa to run around the dogs. Hopefully I don't get any fucking leeches this time. 

 It looks nice out today. Fall, powder blue sky. The last of the pollinators moving over the last of my late season blooms. I looked out the window and thought that I was in a good mood, so I wanted to write it down in case later I wasn't.

The coffee maker broke, but I think I might have fixed it. I fixed the gas burner the other week too. It feels good to get a little bit more handy and able to do these things, especially as a potential future home owner. 

I should pack for the trip on my lunch break, but I think instead I'd like to go for a long run. I've felt so weak and sick and gross this week; it 'd be nice to do something active. I also need to figure out what I'm going to wear to this damn wedding. I think it's black tie, so I'll have to see what of my gowns might work - maybe my best man dress from the other wedding last year, or the gold/brown velvet thing. I almost bought a dress for it, but now I'm glad I didn't - I have enough expenses in the next few weeks. I did buy a really nice sage/moss green pattagucci. That seems like it's "my color" for all my outerwear these days, but I love green, so I don't mind. It's nice to have stuff match. Now all I need is one of those mammut puffy things... oh, I'm just being ridiculous; I shouldn't buy more stuff.

Here's something gross to counter all my soft silliness - so weekend before last, I was in the middle river sifting for arrowheads with some friends at the villa. We came back up to dry around the camp fire and I noticed some fresh blood on my leg where a motherfucking leech had bitten me. It immediately came off, but then the bite wouldn't stop bleeding. I was making dinner hours later and felt something wet under my foot, and it had bled through the third or fourth bandage I applied. Now it's been almost two weeks and I still have a huge mark that won't seem to heal. Seems like maybe something I should take care of before I go out of the country, but ugh. So gross. I guess given all the time I spend with my bare skin in rivers, I should be glad this is the first I've ever encountered. Still. I suppose it's gotten cool again and I'll probably forget my squeamishness by the time it gets warm enough to get back in the water next year. 

 Ugh, sick with an actual cold thing - not covid or anything dramatic, just a really, really shitty cold. I just need to get better in three days before I have to go to a massive wedding in and around Cville and then immediately fly out of the country. We'll see, I guess. No time to catch my breath. 

The library program went really well. I've read for blind people before, but this was the first time reading tarot for the deaf. It was cool to work with the ASL interpreter, cooler still to have my first conversations with someone that way. It was a really neat experience. And there was a huge turnout, which made me feel good. 

In the graveyard, the leaves are definitely changing. There are swallowtail caterpillars all over my rue. My parents were in town last weekend; my dad somehow managed to win over my crows in two hours when I was downtown with my mom. 

I had a dream last night that I was walking through this unfamiliar city - somewhere in Europe, a tangle of little shops - with my friend Jill from college. It was a strange dream - we were talking about missed people and I felt like I wanted to confide with her about something, a missing space, an ache, a loss - but then I started to wake up and remembered myself even in the space of the dream. I guess that all sounds vague and foolish, but it's stuck with me over this cloudy, vague nothingness of a day. 

 Rabbit, rabbit, October.

 I feel a little overemotional this week. I've cried three times today:

1. because someone (who I don't even know!) in a meeting started crying
2. because I saw a video of a guy rescuing a cat from the hurricane on twitter
3. because I read a new poem I really liked by a poet who once picked my poem to win an award

....4. right now again thinking about the cat video. 

Tuesday, my team went to the arboretum up in Harrisonburg for a tour. The director of the program said that their most requested thing that's put into their anonymous suggestion box was "a place in the arboretum to have sex." I bought ghost ferns, maidenhair ferns, and lime green queen ferns at the plant sale. Today I put them into my yard, and I'm just about to go teach tarot to a group of teenagers at a library program I'm running. Aughhh. My heart, my heart. 

 Happy equinox to all who celebrate. It was like turning a switch this morning, feeling the wind blow cold from the west and send dozens of yellow walnut leaves twirling and dancing into the yard. Everything - the overgrown pumpkin patch with their misshapen, rotten-tooth colored gourds, the unmown lawn, the dead sunflowers stalks teeming with goldfinch - suddenly looked soft and sleepy, seasonal, and not just overgrown and shabby. 

I had become perfectly content with my life of doing the bare minimum while I trolled linkedin for new jobs but unexpectedly this week, the source of all my problems at work was abruptly fired. Nobody knows what happened. It's hard to not feel relieved and like the tension is suddenly gone. I know that it's not really like that; the new manager's methods were terrible, but her ideas were coming from the new VP who is still at the company and still planning to do the nonsense that had me looking for new work in the first place. All that said, I do feel like I can finally take a breath. I have some time. I can really look and not feel like I have to take the first thing that comes along simply to get away from a terrible situation. 

Got my booster today, which will hopefully help me not get covid reading tarot downtown at the wizarding festival this weekend and later, traveling. I didn't have a tattoo sleeve the last time I got booster which is bizarre to me - I got so much ink so quickly - so I asked the guy to stab me on my other arm. He accidentally got too deep into the muscle which involuntarily twitched, making the needle jump, which really hurt! I was distracted by this and didn't notice until afterward that he had decided to put the shot directly into my world serpent tattoo ring on that arm. He had so much other space to stick it! Oh well. 

It's strange to feel so touched and in love with this particular change of the season, and then to think in just a few weeks I'll be in a desert. 

 Oh how completely lovely it is to sit outside on my porch, a jar of flowers on my front table, a little ugly cat in my lap, and write in the morning. And how the little ugly cat reaches her terrible claws and mouth up  and savagely bites and claws the undersides of my wrists as I type! What a world. 

 September! Bright skies, cold mornings, and finally appropriate weather to make the shit I love to cook. Tonight I'm making this Moroccan shaksuka - I've been doing green shaksuka all summer with big bundles of chard, tomatillos, queso fresco, jalapenos, and smoked hot sauce dumped over it all (over rice) but I'm glad to play around with the red version. I've got a bunch of San Marzano tomatoes that I grew, plus roasted red peppers from the farmer's market, and I'm going to make these tiny little lamb meatballs to put in it and serve with flatbread and cucumber salad. Can you tell I'm writing this really hungry? 

I'm in a lot better mood since I discovered what NPR tells me is "quiet quitting" while I update my resume and look for new work. Right now, I'm over in Ali's yard letting the goofus dogs run around and play wrestlemania. Her neighbor's giant pot plants are towering over the fence, almost as tall as me. The dogs are happy; they've been good today, and it's nice to let them crash around like they like to. Bean goes home Friday night or Saturday morning. I will miss him. 

This weekend won't be too much. I want to go downtown tomorrow night and sit out in the street before they stop doing that for the season. Saturday is some farmer's market and maybe planting the half dozen pepper plants Rach dumped on my porch for some reason, then to Chris's for dinner. I always like going over there; they have such a pretty garden and the kiddo is cute. 

 It's a nice cool morning that feels finally autumnal. The red berries in the dogwood almost look like they're bleeding into the leaves around them, leeching in the color. The moon was up in the blue sky over to the west. How is this year going by so fast, but these September weeks are crawling slowly.

I feel angry all the time about work, and when I start to articulate it to myself, I just get angrier. I keep thinking this should be easy: if I'm so miserable, go. I'd make more money and every week wouldn't have some new terrible thing to dread. When I'm not angry about it, I just feel so tired. I've got to resolve something about my attitude before we get into the truly dark months and I'm trying not to sink in a puddle of terrible depression just from the season. Something to work on. 

Ugh. But all I want to do is drink like... a Legends brown ale or a shitty Octoberfest in a field while the late season sun is still warm but the air is crisp and watch the woods grow dark and purple as evening comes on. 

 Another early morning. Yesterday, the whole cemetery was covered in thick fog. No fog this morning, but a kind of haze. I can hear the cooper's hawk screaming. I was sad that they recently cut down the huge oak that the hawks have been nesting in for the past couple years, but like so many of those big, old trees, it was nearly dead. 

I'm bummed to find out that my tattoo artist is leaving town. (By town, I guess I mean the town three hours away that I keep having to drive to for work on my sleeve.) I always knew this was a likelihood; she's too talented and frankly, too young to stay in one place for long. I'm glad that I kept at it, insisted on staying in her books even when the money was tight, and got my sleeve to a good "stopping point" for now. I still wanted to add my second moth, but I can't imagine someone other than her doing it. Maybe someday. She was such a good artist and person to work with; I think it's really soured me on other experiences. At least I have a pretty much complete color sleeve of her stuff. 

It also means the money I'd had in my head as next-year tattoo work is freed up. Between the cost of the work itself and needing to drive and stay in a popular area, that's not an insubstantial amount. I feel a lot better about taking an extra trip or something. 

 I had to get up at 5 this morning because Bean was crying to go out. I stood out in the wet dark of my side yard, bleary, still wearing my sleeping things. I heard a soft sound and saw movement down the street, but it took a moment for my eyes to adjust. There were two little skunks snuffling around, dragging their beautiful fan tails. Quiet, secret things. Skunk hours. 

 Rainy labor day Monday. The Trash cat brought me one vole, one cicada, and the legs of a grass hopper this morning. It promises to be one of those days where the morning glory stay open all day instead of closing up in the heat and the sun. In my facebook inbox, I can see a long message from a childhood friend I haven't kept up with well and I can tell it's so sweet - thankfulness about our shared connection back then, how it helped her - and I can't bear to actually open it and read it, let alone reply. The last time we talked it was in the early spring of last year and I just sat on the video call and sobbed without being able to tell her any of it. I'm sure she thinks I'm insane. 

I'm enjoying to dogsit Bean, actually. I had worried it would be something of a chaotic mess, but he's adjusted really well to the routines. It's still so overwhelming to go from such a manageable number of pets to suddenly ... six?? But I think Curtis and Victoria have agreed to take the backyard feral cats, so that's good. Now I just need to get them transported up there in the waning weekends of this month. 

 In the story of Patroclus no one survives, not even Achilles who was nearly a god. I used to say that poem to myself almost every day. I had it out of an anthology, but last year, I realized there was a whole book of poems about the Iliad and read them all on a plane as I flew over the Mediterranean. It's the season for poems that I love and talk and talk about and say quietly to myself in my spare moments. 

Mmm, I have a headache. I mixed too many different types of alcohol last night - local beer with its unfiltered funk, herby Aperol, and the homemade lemoncello, the lingering bitterness of the lemon peel. I want to work in the garden today after the show. I need to call my mom. I should start getting ready for the tarot workshop I'm doing at the library at the end of the month. I haven't taught anything since 2011. (I probably haven't learned anything since then too.) 

I kept thinking there was something else I needed to say here today. Maybe it will still come to me.  

 Sometimes when I write into this thing it feels like a letter to someone. To who? To myself? To my fake best self? To God? I don't believe in God. I remember this tweet I saw: you're in her DMs, I'm the nebulous "you" she addresses in her poems. I relate to that. 

Drove up to Elkton today, toward the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe pass on 33. The brewery was cute. There was a perfect rail line next to it in such a way that you could be completely at ease, enjoying your mediocre brew on the patio and then, out of the literal blue, a giant train could come thundering through. It was so loud that no one could talk, that the whole place rattled. I grew up in a train town too. I grew up hearing that regular iron thunderstorm every night and loving it. It felt secure; it felt like home.

And to you? Does it ever feel like that to you?

 

 How am I so depressed and exhausted this early into the darker months? It's just after 8:30 and I'm climbing into bed. Today, I tried to make myself a salad for lunch and through a freak accident, ended up sending my sharpest kitchen knife through my wrist, glancing off bone, miraculously avoiding my narrow blue veins. I dreamed that I was in my beautiful cemetery, running, and I went to finish but the gates to the exit were closed up tight against me and I was trapped with the dead. f it keeps up like this, I'll probably be dust by November. I'm in a very bad mood. 

At least running is good. Not that I have much to show for it with work being as shitty as it is and a thousand other things interrupting my planned runs. This evening, my boss texted me "are you okay?" and I realized I forgot to control my face again in a meeting. I have really got to be better about that; I can hate this job all I want but if I don't keep it up while I find another one I'll end up homeless in addition to depressed, and wouldn't that be a cute anecdote for my enemies? 

 A week of lovely weather. It was even cold when my team and I went out to our creek cleanup day and started raining by the end of it. Still, it was quite a success. I've been making a team to clean up that same stretch of Lewis creek for 4-5 years - and this was the first year I could tell the creek was noticeably more cheerful and less trashy for our efforts. Tons of frogs, fish, beautiful cardinal flowers blooming... it was nice to see one thing made better in this life of endless worsening. 

Hard to believe that summer is dying all around me. The first trees in the graveyard have their hints of color; the crows are massing up, conspiring, surely getting ready for the Unseelie to take control back over the hidden courts. A coworker told me that everyone on my team thinks I'm about to quit. Is it possible I've lost my ability to look blankly placid in a meeting? 

At least there's always taking a long break to go buy plants. I think I'll put in my greens bed now that a couple of my heirloom tomatoes have kicked it. Tonight should be soothing in that way - gardening in the cool as the twilight creeps in earlier and earlier. 

 Hello there. Listless today and a little sad. I have my river cleanup with the team I put together later, but I can't seem to muster much endorphins for it or anything. I'm sitting on the porch watching the hummingbirds start drama with each other. I keep thinking I should get up and do something, but I can't think of what. I wonder if the rain will hold off. It's a cool day for wading into a river, but I suppose someone has got to do it. 

 It's easy to love this world when the weather is as nice as it is today. I made bright, colorful jars of pickled yellow squash, red onion, jalapeno, tomatillo, and cucumbers and homemade lemoncello that will be ready in a week or two. 

God, my brain is so cliché sometimes. Last night, the dream conversation was literally set on a stairway. As in the saying "stairway conversations" or l'esprit de l'escalier - as in, things you meant to say but only came up with later. Still, the feeling has stayed with me all day and created a strange mood: a mellow, strangely calming presence. The last few weeks I feel so keyed in. 

Timely, as work has been atrocious this week. I resolved to find something new when I was in a fury about it last night, but this morning, of course, my lead and PMs have been very placating. I just need a break from it, a long weekend or something. Maybe I'll take Monday off as a personal day or something. 

It was one of those cool, rainy mornings where the Morning Glory stay blooming well past the usual time of day. Supposedly, the weather is going to become cool and sublime this weekend. Maybe I'll even get out and hike. I want to go to the farmer's market and buy a big cup of lemonade with ice and wear a straw hat and a skirt and drink it down until it's bitter and watery. 

Sometimes I look back on this blog and feel like my entries used to be so much better, with richer details and more life to them. Even when I was writing something dumb, it was more kinetic and interesting. These days, I often feel stupider, more inclined to make dumb mistakes, and overall less creative. I wonder if I'm just old and tired, or if it's a Covid thing. I leave my house less; I talk to less people and see less things every day than I used to. 

And maybe some of it is whatever long effects I might have from the really bad bout of Covid I had back in April. In the last month, my hair has been falling out. Well, not like falling out in chunks, but when I brush it or run my hands through it, I end up with a handful of shed hair instead of one or two pieces. It still looks normal, but it was freaking me out. I finally looked it up and apparently it's associated with having a super high fever for multiple days, like happened exactly to me when I had it. It sets in a few months afterward because of some kind of chemical effect that body trauma has on a hair level, similar to how POW sometimes have their hair turn white because of body response to torture. Thankfully, this minor version is supposed to go away in a couple months, and it's not like I don't have hair to spare. I was relieved to have an answer to why it was happening, but it also spooked me a little bit, thinking about what a big impact that actually had on my body even if I feel mostly normal now, if stupider. 

I had a beautiful weekend in the woods. I don't think I've been to the site in over a year, maybe even back to when we first took Bean there as a puppy, although now I'm second guessing that. I have a vague memory of going to it last year and finding a cardinal flower on the bank that had grown there every year, but also, a yellow jacket nest  - which of course, I took as a sign and omen. The general static of anger in the universe toward me. The curse. 

The yellow jackets were gone this time, but there were cardinal flowers. I tried to take that sign as a generous one, but who can say? If any universal spite was lessened toward me, would I even know it? It was raining in the beautiful, dreamy way that it does out there sometimes. That always makes the veil between sleep, life, past, present, and future feel thin. The whole weekend and now, continuing into this week I have been absolutely brimming with dreams. Last night, I even dreamed about the first dog we had when I was a baby: an English bulldog named Brittany. I dream the usual things too - always the conversations. 

If yellow jackets were a recurring theme last summer, this summer might be water: finding it, submerging myself in it. If the weekend before last was swimming with the snakes, last weekend was the reservoir. It's further down the dirt road past the real lake - a huge concrete dam that rises abruptly up out of the woods. It's dangerous to swim too near to the dam itself because of the pumps and currents, but further in, there was a kind of beach under some ancient, towering rock structure. The water was so warm - almost hot, unusual for that area - and maybe it was my imagination, but I could feel something pulling at me, plucking me deeper toward the middle where the current was. When the storm came, it was nice to climb up under the natural cliff shelter the towering rocks created. I think it must be very primordial: something about my hunter gatherer brain that liked being up under a rock shelter that surely people have used on this continent for thousands of years, looking at the storm but safely out of it. The reservoir of course wasn't there, but those overhang shelters are all over Appalachia and it's a good bet they were used. 

 Here I am, totally jinxing myself, but I just had such a good run. Full sun, 89 degrees, and August humidity, but it was the first time in a month or two that I've run like I know I can, where it feels good and powerful and strong. It's been so long since I thought "okay, a little faster" and felt my body respond to it like it knew what it was doing, not this little sad hobbling hopskiplimp step I've been doing with this energy. Ahhh! I don't know. I'm happy!

 This week. Ugh, take me to the woods. I just want to cook over a fire and lie down in a creek. It's strange that this weekend will be just about the first time I've done that proper this entire year. My life seems smaller sometimes for that. 

Well, at least I'll have dog date tonight as a midweek break from the inanities of my job. There's nothing about it that's even annoying enough in an interesting way to write out for posterity; it's all just so stupid and broken and lacking in leadership and process. I know I'm slipping behind, things I should be keeping on top of better, but it's so hard to care.

At least running is going a little better - knock on wood. I've managed 5 miles every day this week with no major blowouts. I think all it took was breaking down and asking my obnoxious, fitness-obsessed uncle about it over the weekend. (Who had no meaningful advice about what the actual injury could be except to give me a 40-minute lecture about how I was getting old. Perhaps my legs thought I'd suffered enough.)

Here was a funny thing, though - when I was a teenager in high school, I used to write a lot of fanfiction. I have been a little obsessed with Star Wars again since watching Kenobi, and I tore through two of the novels this week alone between runs, dog walks, and cleaning. One of the novels was so much like the silly plot in one of my fanfics from literally my senior year of high school that I went back and found the secret place on the internet where it's still up. I hadn't updated the story since 2005, and didn't remember it being at all popular when I was active in the community. But I had the nicest fucking reviews? A lot of them from long, long after I stopped writing/updating. The most recent one was from 2016 and it started out "I know you'll never read this and you're obviously not working on this story anymore, but..." and went on to be just so sweet. 

It was extra nice because frankly speaking, re-reading the story, it was objectively terrible. But I was such a kid. Of course it was bad. 

 Well, I wanted to write more about the snake hole. This week, the burnout is a lot, even after such a perfect experience over the weekend. I do keep dreaming about the snakes as some kind of leftover evolutionary energy around being so close to so many of them. I also had a bee dream, but not so much like all the awful yellowjacket ones I was having last year. More like what actually happened with the honeybees in the graveyard. But don't I talk about bees too much? 

It's raining and I'm tired. I was just about to try a run, but it was like the weather was holding its breath, waiting for that exact minute to let it out. This weekend, I'm going home to see my folks. I haven't been in a little while, mostly because I was a little exhausted from so much back-to-back family stuff over the spring. It will be nice to go down to the creek and maybe put my feet in, to walk around my parents yard in the full prettiness of summer, to drink wine out with my mom and listen to the coyotes talking.

Today was the day I somehow knew it was time to go get the bees. The alive ones are still safe and happy - even thriving - in their new home. But the 30 or so that died when the hive got fried by lightning and were still sitting dead and cooked, stingers out, in the struck maple log out in the graveyard... it just felt like time. Stinging insects are supposed to make good protection jars, and honeybees especially. Lightning-touched elements are supposed to be especially, wildly potent in spell craft. When I asked a witch community about it, they said it was a once in a lifetime kind of spell chance.  

I do feel comfortable working in Thornrose - balanced, at home, at peace. A tradition when harvesting anything out of a cemetery, or even passing through one, is to leave offerings of food, coin, flowers, or drink and cleanse yourself. When I read that, I panicked initially, thinking of how often I had taken things from there: a handful of yellow meadowlark feathers, a flush of edible mushrooms, violets to flavor and color a batch of mead, countless armfuls of deadfall firewood and cedar starter, a big weird green caterpillar, a perfectly blue eggshell - up until I remembered that I go there literally every day and offer 15-30 crows equivalent sized portions of meat, nuts, egg, and cheese. I bet I'm actually pretty covered in terms of offerings. Even so, I brought rose wine and black sunflowers from my garden and whispered "thank you" foolishly into the rain while I used tweezers to carefully place scorched honeybees into vials. I got two vials: more than I could use to make the most scorching, potent spell I've ever cast for a lifetime, so I'm going to give the second vial away to my local witch community. I know it's stupid, but when I was sawing off some of the wood, my saw got so, so, so hot. Logically, I understand it was the friction, but it still burned my fingers, and made me think of the remembered lightning the wood still held onto. The whole while I walked home, the patch of them at my waist seemed to smolder against me. 

I bet it's fine if I don't cleanse myself in any ritual way after coming out of the cemetery. I don't mind the way the ghosts cling to me, anymore than I mind my curses trailing along behind my steps, slowing my run. 

I gave myself permission not to go running today and instead enjoy the moody, cool rain after so much dry heat. (But wait, you say? I have an injury and shouldn't be running anyway, especially because I made incremental progress yesterday and shouldn't push it? Ahh, bad, bad. I'm always so bad.) I did collect my first harvest from the garden that could be considered an armload. Cherokee purple and pink Brandywines. Could anyone ask for anything better?

Gosh, it got so late, but I still have so much I want to say and write in here. Okay, tomorrow probably, because I still want to talk about the snake hole. 

 

Middle July: the hot underbelly of the year. The dry heat is making me feel so soft and quiet and think-y. I've been dreaming a lot; I have long, strange conversations in my sleep. I feel weirdly connected to the different pieces of my life, keyed into things in a way that has been otherwise hard to link up to. More like myself? Or remote? It's hard to know Having a running injury usually brings back in a lot of the static that a good hard run will clear out. Maybe I'm just in a weird place for it all.

Yesterday, I had a moment taking the dog out for his last, late night bathroom break. My little cat came, of course, and I was standing in my sideyard, barefooted, with my silly animals around me. The night sky looked almost dusty from the heat, but there was a breeze blowing, and it felt like sinking into a hot tub: that feeling of intense warmth but movement and current around my body. I thought about a thousand other times I looked up at this exact sky, and if anyone I knew was also looking up at it at just that moment. 

Roo and I used to have a thing we would say to each other when we were lonely weirdoes in middle school - same sun, same moon! - to orient ourselves and feel less alone. (Of course, it had to be the sun and moon as opposed to the same, certain stars because we were in opposing hemispheres and the sun or moon weren't usually out at the same time.) It's a very old, fond thought that I'm sure a million of other human beings across time have had.