December 16, 2007

9:38 p.m.

Birthday Week

A quiet day at home. We got only a portion of the predicted sleet and rain, but enough to make staying home a good idea. I shoveled a bit of the mountain left by the plow -- he delivers it exactly where I usually park, so after each storm I have a few feet less to go back into. Now everything has frozen over.

I got plastic on exactly one window -- the double sided tape doesn't like paint that isn't flat, so I have to just about threaten it with voodoo to make it stay put -- and will have to do the rest tomorrow. I can feel the cold air drifting in. But I was doing that in between installing Windows on my Mac, and some other things, so I'll finish insulating tomorrow.

What an exciting birthday, you say. It was. I did exactly as I pleased (except for the shoveling). I made an excellent chicken stew, watched part of a movie, made a few phone calls. Aubrey did call, I think after he'd gotten to the venue in Northampton. Amazingly, the gig was still on. He was hoping I'd come up; I told him I had been planning on it except for the weather. It's nearly 2 hours away and I don't have snow tires on yet. It was nice to talk to him, but he was his usual A.D.D. self. It's not that he's not present, but talking to him is sometimes like chasing a butterfly. He kept asking me if I was okay, was I doing all right, how was everything. I told him it was a quiet, introspective winter, and he said it was for him, too.

Rose called to wish me felicitations, and Wes left me a little giftie on the stairs last night which I found when I got home late. I got emails from a couple of good friends, one of whom promised a package would come tomorrow. I put off just about all my work. I didn't work out. I did take the bin of summer clothes downstairs to the scary dirt basement, and brought up the second space heater and my box of meagre Christmas decorations. I used to have two nutcrackers, and now only one is in the box. I can't imagine what happened to the other one.

Rose and Marc have a tree up, so fragrant it's intoxicating. I went downstairs to ask something of Sunny, and they also have a tree. I'm longing for one. Even a fake one. I'd rather have the livingness and the scent of a real tree, but then I'd have to get a stand and a skirt and... and then kill a tree and dispose of it later. Although any tree I got would probably otherwise go to someone else if I didn't buy it, and it's not like I'd be sacrificing an extra tree, eh? I don't even have any decorations. I don't know, maybe I'll make it a project this week to look for one. For some reason it seems important.

When I went downstairs to Sunny's, we were talking about the heat and the gas bills and she was surprised that it went up so much. She had made cookies, and gave me some. A few minutes later I came back down with some chicken stew but they didn't respond to repeated knocks, even though I heard them talking within, in another room. I think they don't hear sometimes. I didn't want to really bang on the door so I brought the stew back upstairs.

I forgot to turn the heat down last night, so today I didn't put it up at all.

As part of my birthday celebration I am now picking the raisins out of a hunk of pannetone bread and leaving the shreds of bread behind. This is accompanied by a 2005 Charles Shaw Cabernet Sauvignon from Trader Joe's, otherwise known as "Two Buck Chuck" even though it's $2.99, making it closer to a three buck chuck. This is a very serviceable wine, not sold in Connecticut because the TJ's here don't have the license. I sometimes can pick up a few when I'm in Boston visiting Dar.

And Dar has been shoveling. At least he's out of a show now. He sent me a picture on my phone of a very, very small snowman someone had made -- looked like about 8" tall.

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After our two-day rehearsal I went to Rose's and spent four hours or so cleaning their house. I'm not very fast, but I do pay attention to detail. It had been a long time since I'd methodically done a whole house, so I kept having to stop and remind myself of the order of things. Always dust first, then vacuum. Mop last, and keep separate rags for the sanitary and unsanitary places. Rose didn't tell Marc that she was paying me, but slipped some bills into my pocket when he wasn't looking. He, meanwhile, spent the whole afternoon working on the CD we made for our niece and configuring what will be Dar's computer. I kept pausing to play with cats. When it was all done I helped Rose trim the cats' toenails (I hold and distract, she trims) and Linus got his asthma puffer. They're so mellow and good about it. I stayed for dinner and we talked a lot about Dad and the circumstances of his decline, probably because of going through all these pictures.

The storm held off.

I awoke from an weird dream about Aubrey at around a quarter to six this morning, as the sleet was whispering against the windows.