I walked to the grocery store today. While I was there, I was thinking of the reason we buy 1% milk. I like whole milk and papertigers likes nonfat. Therefore, 1%. The store was a mob scene, and almost impossible to get to even though we only live a block away. Going to, I had to run out into a four-lane street because the sidewalks are piled with 3-7 feet of snow (depending on where). I came back the long way round, via CVS and the Great Slope of Ice. It's amazing to be so near everything, yet so cut off.

When I came back, I spent some more time chipping ice off the sidewalks, with moderate success. I managed to clear the sidewalk from our building basically to the driveway. I got only a few feet chipped off below our building, though. The ice there is two inches thick and constant across the entire area. There is no place where it is melted or broken or a little damaged. It is like very slippery rock. Three feet was an accomplishment, all things considered.

Cheese Fare is coming on Sunday. papertigers is spoiling me with pizza, macaroni and cheese, Honey Bunches of Oats with pecans, and other delicacies. I am very lucky.

The photo is one that one of my godsons took of me some years ago, when they had just turned 4.

MyHeritage: Celebrity Collage - Family tree charts - Free family tree software

I'm beginning to think this winter really is the winter of 1880-81. We're expecting another big storm tomorrow - perhaps 10-14 inches of snow on top of the 2 1/2 feet that we got this weekend. I love snow, but I'm good and sick of being stuck in it. It's beginning to depress me. I'm trying hard, I really am, but I'd love to be able to be gloomy at a cafe or something.

We built a snowman yesterday. He looks splendid out there, grinning and white. He really needs a hat, but we don't have one for him, so he'll have to manage with a blue lei we got last year at the Arlington County Fair. I made snow candy today - the Laura Ingalls Wilder recipe, snow + boiled molasses and sugar. papertigers said it made her teeth ache!

The cats are loving having us home. We are tired of being here, though.

This is really gorgeous weather, from a purely aesthetic perspective. Practically speaking, of course, it's caused a lot of trouble. Many areas of our complex have lost power (entirely coincidentally, I might add - the transformers blew - but rather unfairly, too, it seems). It's very cold outside, and those people have to stay in or risk some very bad roads to keep warm. I am worried about them. I hope the hypothermia van is also doing its job, even though the roads are so treacherous. The homeless suffer so very much in this sort of weather.

We went to CVS at about 11 this morning. The clerk there had been on the job since 11 the night before. He can't get home, and no one can get there to relieve him, and there is no way for him to get any sleep (or hot tea - if we tried to bring him some, it would be freezing by the time it got to him). It's 8 p.m. now. I hope he has taken advantage of the somewhat-plowed condition of the roads. I hope someone has come to take his place at work.

I can't begin to explain how lucky I feel that we have been relatively unharmed. papertigers is a big advocate of keeping one's monkey butt home, and I guess she's right. It's no time to be out. (That said, I just took a lot of pictures to send to my nine-months'-pregnant sister in CA, who begged for some.)

The trees are laden with snow. The cars that haven't been dug out look like young mountains. Snow has even clung to the upright bars on our balcony and the bricks on the outer walls. Every path feels vaguely tunnel-like. The snow is piled well up to one's knees and (on a short person like me) past them.

I feel the beginnings of a cold coming on, but I am fighting it with tea and medication. Mostly I just feel stuffy-headed, which could just be the dry air.

Meat Fare is coming tomorrow. We had bacon this morning! What a delightful thing for one of my last meat days!

It snowed a lot last night. I finished reading The Long Winter (believe it or not, some parts of the midwest got 11 feet of snow at a time in the winter of 1880-81). I had a cup of tea. I walked to CVS and back in the dark.

Today's Metro ride was incredibly beautiful. The trees were thickly coated with snow. Everything is beautiful when covered in snow. Even barbed wire is beautiful. The barbs glisten. They are rounded out and softened. I love the contrasts between the dark tree trunks, dark signs, dark fenceposts and the whiter-than-white snow. It was gorgeous, but even as I rode, the snow was slipping off the trees and chain-link fencing. The coating of snow is gone now. Much of the snow that was on the ground is gone, too, at least downtown (there's always more at home).

I love the way snow falls. It looks like the creation of the universe - or many universes. I love the way it feels under my boots. I love walking around in the snow. The air feels gentle, somehow. I'm sure this is partly because I'm a California girl, but I'd love to hear what others think. Canada? New England? Upstate New York? Do you guys still find snow this kind of beautiful?

We're in for another big storm this weekend - 13.7 inches of snow and 26 mph winds, last I checked. If the Metro is still open and by some foul chance we do not get scooterbird and efbq's offspring for the weekend, I may want to slip off to a museum on Saturday. Let me know if you want to join me.

"Two manholes reportedly experienced explosions earlier this afternoon."

I wonder how they reported that experience?

Poll #1515953 A Bone to Pick?
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 8

Would you (under the circumstances of your choice) buy organic, herb-fed beef?

ETA Herb-fed, NOT grass-fed.

Dear San Francisco,

You might not know this, but I actually do love you. Yes, I ridicule your snobbery. "The City"? Seriously? and my favorite question ever, "Are you from Down South?" - to which I answered, "No," not knowing that we inferior Angelinos are considered to be "from Down South." I thought that was for people from Louisiana.

Still, you are a really important city to me personally, though I didn't start getting to know you until my godmother moved back to SF after my godfather's death. Here are some things I appreciate in San Francisco.

There are the big things: City Lights, Golden Gate Park, fog in the summer, hot fudge sundaes at Ghirardelli Square - these (with, apparently, the exception of the fog, which only Californians are clued in on) are famous everywhere. They are famous for a good reason: because they are excellent.

Then there are the smaller things. I love the used bookstores. I love the coffee-on-every-corner mentality; if you want to read a book but you're tired of being at home, there's always somewhere to go. I love having people speak to me in Italian, as though I could respond in Italian. I love that there are people who notice the Italian beneath the Irish. I love that the food is so good (with the exception of the Mexican food - sorry, can't beat L.A. there).

There are more personal things, too. San Francisco, you were a refuge to me when I felt hemmed in by the smalltown feel of Santa Cruz. I would drive past the sign marking the city limit and immediately feel more relaxed. You house some of my favorite people - my oldest sister and my godmother. You're small enough to feel like a community and big enough to be comfortably anonymous. That's a very hard balance to strike. You're a manageable size; one can get lost in SF, but it's hard to stay lost. Now, you're keeping me minutely updated on the progress of the Prop. 8 case ( sfgate.com , click on the tab that says "news"). You are the traditional refuge for gay people in the United States.

I love you, SF, and I miss you. I'll visit whenever I can (and thanks to my godmother for the continued offer of space and food and fun, though she lives in Sausalito now - still, I hear that the Dark Side has cookies).

Love always,

debboamerik

I went to Aunt Rochelle's* funeral today. I didn't know her well, but it was pretty heartbreaking to see my family so badly hurt. She died quite young (cancer), and she was the first of Grandma Webster's children to die. The funeral service was Cathotist (Catholic service with Baptist preacher doing the eulogy and a Baptist choir singing a couple of songs). The oddest part was when they did the sign of peace (the priest says, "Let us offer each other a sign of peace") and I heard people behind me saying, "What do we do now?" Partly in reply, I said to one, "Peace of Christ," and hugged her. She went on to say, "Peace and grace," and hug the person behind her, which works well enough. (After that, she caught that what I had initially said was "Christ," though I think grace is also an awfully nice thing to wish someone.)

papertigers's brother S. came quite a long way by public transportation to give her some love and a massage. She had put away most of the Christmas ornaments. We finished undressing the tree and the house; it is all put away now.

Later, efbq and scooterbird and their younger daughter came over with games and cake and other amusements for the injured party. They bought us a few groceries and amused us over dinner and dessert, and for the remainder of the evening. They have just left. I was sternly admonished to look after papertigers. I'm glad there are so many other people who love her.

Tired now; papertigers has already gone to bed. Good night, all.



*of my DC family, not my birth family

There is a beautiful article by Garrison Keillor (BTW, who names their kid "Garrison"? Seems cruel to me) about, of all things, baptism. Apparently, Episcopalians renounce "evil powers" instead of the devil. It starts with a bunch of reflections on political polarization and goes from there to a wider reflection on baptism more generally.

papertigers's best friend is here with her two kids: G., aged 10, and A., aged 3. This conversation just took place:

A.: "papertigers, play the thing [piano] for me, please."

papertigers: "I don't know how to play the piano, honey."

A: "You just press the things!"

I just finished this novel/series, and then tonight someone reminded me of this:

"Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government. Supreme executive power derives from a mandate from the masses, not from some farcical aquatic ceremony."

Last night, for the Festival of Water (feast of the Baptism of Christ), we ate, appropriately enough, fish.

I love having a festival in the middle of the winter that is about, of all things, water. People have such fun with it. There are blessings and splashings and laughter. I'm sorry to have missed the church service this year - but I am going to try to go when our clergy bless the Tidal Basin this month. In some countries, people dive for a submerged crucifix. Yes, dive. Outdoors, in January. Hooray!

"If you used [drug x] and suffered... death, please call the Fox Law Firm."

That would be one heck of a phone call.

After I wrote that last entry, I looked at myself in the mirror and realized what I have. I felt much, much better.

When I got home, I found all three of the items I bought with the amazon.com gift certificate I got for Christmas/Yule from melebeth. Hooray!

Miles adores his new food. I hope this means he's going to gain a little weight and the sores on his body will go away. It is really worrying.

Life is very good.

Two favorite quotes from this article: "Homosexuals can forget about human rights," and "Some of the nicest people I have ever met are gay people." It's a bigotstravaganza!

This is what we call "helping" Africans. Not paying fair prices for raw materials or ceasing to pay people to fight wars. Not providing adequate education to rural kids. No, we go in and make policy for them because we wish we could do so here, and we figure they're "primitive" enough to do what we want.

I am completely disgusted.

My original intention was to record this Christmas season in its entirety here, but that proved difficult this weekend. Yesterday, we rinsed the henna out of my hair. My hair looks amazing. It's got a rich reddish brown color instead of the dull brown that it had turned because it's been going grey for the past several years. It's also very soft. papertigers and A. were happy with their work.

We finished watching Swing Time, which contains a pretty horrifying blackface sequence. (A. and I fast-forwarded through the worst of it, but not all - F.A. retains the blackface after the performance sequence is over, since in the plot he rushes straight from the stage into a situation he's trying to avoid). After that, we picked S. up in Gaithersburg and went to the mall to get presents for A., her sister, scooterbird, and efbq. We waited to take A. with us because we wanted her to choose something for herself. Teenagers, after all...

I also had my first experience with Rita's, which was fantastic. A. chose my flavor - a mixture of black cherry ice and vanilla custard. Yum.

We then took S. to have linner with fafou and her newish girlfriend at The Cheesecake Factory. The newish girlfriend is cute and shy and has a sense of humor, and we all rather liked her. We had a relaxed and funny waitress who also made the evening fun. We took S. home after that, and scooterbird came to pick A. up and bring her home. We gave him his present at that point, which he liked, and we all opened Christmas crackers.

Today, after church, we set the house up for a small but lively group of children. Our guests were: papertigers's niece E., who is just 6; my nieces A., 12, and L., 8; my nephew D., 11; and J. (3) and H. (1), who are the daughters of some good friends of mine whom I have known for almost a decade. We gave the kids snacks - apples, carrots, spinach dip, cheese, crackers, and corn chips - and talked for a while. Then the kids got to cut out and decorate gingerbread cookies. As usual, we were left with a lot of leftover cookies; the kids always make more than they actually want to take home. They wreaked destruction in the guest room (Legos really do go everywhere) and cleaned it up very nicely. We gave them each a Christmas cracker (they swapped the toys until each kid was satisfied) and sent them home happy and tired. It was fun.

We slept late yesterday. Then we had bread pudding, watched silly TV, and took a nap before picking up A. We let A. drive us back to Wheaton and went to Starbucks and Giant. Then we headed straight to Brookside Gardens for the Garden of Lights. It was well worth the $20 per car. We saw the model trains as well as the amazing lights display. They had a thunderstorm in lights, complete with lightning flashes and a rainbow.

We went to Silver Diner for dinner and then came home and put henna in my hair while watching The Gay Divorcee and Shall We Dance (half of it; we were tired, so we went to bed while Fred and Ginger were dancing, shortly after The Way You Look Tonight).

Today, more fun!

Happy new year, everyone.

I worked today. There were few students, but I hope the ones who were in class got a lot out of it, for all that.

I've been thinking about 2009 as a year ever since melebeth mentioned something about its not being so good.

She's right. I started the year with a sprained ankle that acted like a fractured ankle. There have been health problems for me and mine - everything from cancer to bad teeth. There have been emotional upheavals. There have been family upheavals. There was even a fire.

Still, I will say that some things have gone well. I've continued to learn just how valuable my friends and (extended) family are. I've learned, too, just how strong the support of my Family-of-Choice is. papertigers and I have drawn closer together, and (not coincidentally) I have grown a lot less emotionally dependent on her. I have been lucky in many ways. I still have blessings to count when anxiety tries to keep me awake.

Tomorrow, we will continue our Christmas celebrations with scooterbird and efbq's oldest, redheaded child. (Though I suppose, at 16, she is almost not a child anymore!)

Tonight, we have a clean house and Christmas carols on the stereo, good food, and cute cats. We are going to have a quiet and relaxed New Year's celebration with just the five of us (two humans, three cats). That is my favorite way to mark the change of the year. I feel good about this. May 2010 be a year of blessings and favors, joy and goodness for everyone who is reading this.