stonepicnicking_okapi

1. I survived the wedding. It was okay. Me going to a wedding is a bit like a closet vegetarian going to a slaughterhouse, but it wasn't bad or cringe or anything. Just not my thing. And I had to listen to a lot of emotions expressed.

I got my client, his walker, and his wheelchair into his car (someone else got him into his suit) and drove 45 minutes. It was a very small event, maybe 20 people and a drive for 30 minutes to a sit-down dinner at a restaurant afterwards.

The one complaint I have is that the venue and the restaurant were very IN-accessible for the handicapped, bordering on anti-ADA compliant, I think. So it was a lot of awkwardness and hoisting and body mechanics and mobility device logistics.

And we went home early so I didn't get any cake! Damn. That was the only part I was looking forward to.

But the shoes I bought for the occasion worked like a charm. More dressy than sneakers but functional.

2. Xmas is here. I work tomorrow (Christmas Eve) but not Christmas Day but I am back at it on Friday so not much of a holiday. No rest for the wicked. No working New Year's Day either, woo-hoo.

3. Today was the last day of school for the boys. That means I don't have to pack lunchboxes for 10 days. Yay!

I am feeling much better this afternoon. Yesterday I was miserable. This morning I was still not great, but every hour seemed to return me a little more to the living.

I made too many cards! Here are two that didn't make it into circulation this year.

1. I am sick. Just a cold but it's still not fun. I am still working, trying to muster my strength for that.

2. Yesterday I completed 12 workouts of at least 30 minutes at the Y during the month of December (so 12 workouts in 16 days, not bad) and so I earned this T-shirt.



3. All my Xmas cards and gifts are in the mail as of today (20 total). I hope they reach their destinations. I am receiving yours, too. So thank you to anyone who's sent them my way. I will send individual thanks when I have more than one brain cell to rub together.

4. My next challenge is taking air force guy to his granddaughter's wedding and reception on Sunday. I hate weddings but I will be happy of the extra hours come payday.

5. I feel like I have the best collection of Christmas detective/mystery short story anthologies in the English language.



Here is an audiobook version of one of these anthologies. Listen before the copyright fascists at Youtube strike it down.

1. learn to hem pants
2. go to a new grocery store
3. attend a jhope concert in Brooklyn
4. make an essential oil spray
5. submit an application for a job
6. interview for a job
7. participate in a fic exchange
8. read a manga
9. go to Costco
10. work!
11. eat at a new restaurant
12. explore a trail at a new state park
13. try a new craft
14. play new board games
15. try new recipe
16. play a sport
17. accept a new client
18. try a new bathroom appliance
19. go to someone's house for dinner
20. try a new fruit
21. attend a puzzle swap
22. use a cricut

I thought I was going to default on this (I still may) but I am trying. Thank goodness for libraries. I went to two different events at two different libraries. First, a puzzle swap which was HUGE and second, a class for making a holiday garland using a cricut, a machine I had known about from the aisle at Michael's but never really known what it was.

from Duke Ellington's Jazz Nutcracker

Chicago and December By W. S. Di Piero

Trying to find my roost
one lidded, late afternoon,
the consolation of color
worked up like neediness,
like craving chocolate,
I’m at Art Institute favorites:
Velasquez’s “Servant,”
her bashful attention fixed
to place things just right,
Beckmann’s “Self-Portrait,”
whose fishy fingers seem
never to do a day’s work,
the great stone lions outside
monumentally pissed
by jumbo wreaths and ribbons
municipal good cheer
yoked around their heads.
Mealy mist. Furred air.
I walk north across
the river, Christmas lights
crushed on skyscraper glass,
bling stringing Michigan Ave.,
sunlight’s last-gasp sighing
through the artless fog.
Vague fatigued promise hangs
in the low darkened sky
when bunched scrawny starlings
rattle up from trees,
switchback and snag
like tossed rags dressing
the bare wintering branches,
black-on-black shining,
and I’m in a moment
more like a fore-moment:
from the sidewalk, watching them
poised without purpose,
I feel lifted inside the common
hazards and orders of things
when from their stillness,
the formal, aimless, not-waiting birds
erupt again, clap, elated weather-
making wing-clouds changing,
smithereened back and forth,
now already gone to follow
the river’s running course.

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I think this is what is referred to as Velasquez’s “Servant.” Max Beckmann has done more than a few self-portraits.

Wednesday's word is...

...consanguinity [kon-sang-gwin-i-tee]

noun

1. relationship by descent from a common ancestor; kinship (affinity).

2. close relationship or connection.

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This was the word of the day for dictionary.com a few days ago, and it was new to me.

example:

The findings, now published in Genetics in Medicine OPEN, revealed a correlation between occurrences of complex genetic disorders in those families with increased levels of consanguinity when compared to unaffected populations. from Science Daily

Upstairs neighbors are noisy. So are my sons. I am using this to drown out both! It's a good channel if you like no-lyrics background music.