While I Was Away....

Actually, I can't say much about what happened while I was away from Illinois, because I took a break from the world, in the Western North Carolina mountains, without the internet, the news, dependable phone service and most foreknowledge about anything affecting daily life, like the weather. My husband said I guess we'll have to look out the window. Lucky for us there was a lot to see.

We drove 12 hours each way, the kids oddly disengaged in their little i-worlds, headsets blaring while they slept the lion's share of the journey each way. I seem to recall sleeping my way through most of the states east of the Mississippi on our family trips. For a few nervous hundred miles or so, our Student Driver daughter with 15 hours behind the wheel successfully propelled us down the highway at 70 miles an hour while I tried to go to a happy place in my head and hope for luck.

We were lucky, all around.

We left a half day earlier than we planned and got in just ahead of a winter storm that would have made the trip a nightmare. But we were hunkered down by the time the rain turned to snow, grateful to be back in the hills for some family down time.

While we were away from North Carolina, a screech owl decided to make our doorway his home. Owls are pretty messy house guests, especially since they barf up the pieces that don't digest. Apparently this one didn't mind the tinsel that was supposed to scare him away. Fortunately our very interested dog and a lot of flash photography got him to move along to somewhere less civilized.

We spent a lot of time lounging in front of the fireplace, napping and trying not to obsess on the spotty cell service, internet withdrawal and mere basic cable. We roughed it. We played dominoes, read books and competed in hilarious rounds of Balderdash. The kids are pretty good bullshitters, so it was a lot of fun. We ate well. Very well. We hiked with the dog, even in the snow. Just the old people, though, teenagers don't seem to want to get up early and hike in the cold. But that was the best part. North Carolina was transported into a fairy land between three and five thousand feet up into the hills. It was magical.

We got extremely lucky driving around on the roads too. Not a speck of trouble. Salt trucks and plows did their jobs well. We saw one accident coming and going, on the interstate, with insane backups for miles, but in the other direction both times, and it looked as though no one was seriously injured. Lucky.

It's disconcerting, sometimes, taking the same trip over and over each year, everyone older and the kids so nearly grown. It's particularly frustrating to pay for a place like this that we only visit once or twice a year now, since the teenagers aren't as portable as they were ten or eleven years ago. We bought this place back when the business was good and the economy was functional, right after 9/11, when we felt a need to hunker down for vacations somewhere closer to the rest of our families. It's funny, though, we rarely manage to drive any further east to see them, and they rarely manage to drive west to see us. Life is busy and complicated, for everyone. We have tried to sell this place over the years, but as you can well imagine, no one is buying, at least not for the price we paid, so we hang on to it, hope the market rebounds someday and count our blessings that we can still make the payments and the trip. It's a blessing and a curse.  My husband and I like to imagine ourselves retired here, someday, sooner rather than later. We talked this time about how many more times both kids will make this trip with us. Not many, for certain. My son is eager to be on his own, be left alone, to be out from under our wings. It will happen soon enough. I'm trying not to hold too tight to anyone or anything, but just let it all happen and soak it in while it is here. To be present. Not my best skill set, but so much easier when you step back from the world for a bit.

I knew that the first time my parents brought me to these hills when I was a child that I would be back. I feel like I was born in the wrong geography, I'm not a flat lander, I can't be. The hills sing to my eyes and clear my head. Maybe it's the thin air. I'm already planning some time back in the mountains this summer, regardless of who wants to come with me. The dog is always up for a road trip, and he's as quiet in the car as the teenagers. Plus he's the reason I take those refreshing walks.

This trip was particularly scenic and lovely, thanks to the snow. Funny we had to drive so far south to get a white Christmas. My drive back north today through the sunshine, snow covered trees and rocky passes was a gift. Our hikes through the fresh snow snapped me back with such clarity to my college hikes in hills of West Virginia, where I used to think sleeping in a tent on the snow was the perfect getaway. These days, I need a firm mattress, a warm shower and a nice fire for my getaway to be perfect. And some nice wine and good company. This year I got everything I needed.


Hope your Holidays were relaxing and lovely to look at too.

xo

Christmas Eve

Christmas will arrive whether I'm ready for it or not.

Thank goodness my kids are older and there's little pressure to make magic happen.

This year I'm letting Mother Nature make the magic.

Funny, I kept seeing hearts in the snow crystals.

Tucker didn't see the snow, just the squirrels.

We had a fine time crunching about in the cold.

I have to remind myself to get outside on these wintry days -

fresh air and exploring are great therapy.

Happy Holidays!

Winter Solstice

Well, it's here. The longest night of the year. And our first snow storm. The latest on record they say.

It was a bitch to drive around in with the wind gusting and the defroster on its last legs, and 5 sweaty volleyball players fogging up the windows. But I was glad to be the one driving, as the usual carpool drivers are so young. The deal is I get the sketchy weather days. I prefer it that way, control freak and all.

It sure was good to get home and eat steaming bowls of tomato and chicken rice soup and crusty bread.

Mr. Tucker didn't linger outside long. Maybe he's forgotten how fun snow can be.

Or maybe he just misses his furry coat!

I was planning a bonfire to burn some crap from this year and to celebrate the solstice. It seemed like a great idea when the weather was in the 40's. Tonight, not so much.

No worries. I don't need much of an excuse to have a fire, and I don't expect this to last.

Oh, and about the end of the world crap? It's already tomorrow in Australia and they're fine. This whole end of the world hoopla is so Y2K. Yawn.

Stay warm, and enjoy the extra seconds of daylight that will slowly and surely return to our lives.

minutiae

Minutiae. I had to look up how to spell that.

My life is overwhelmed with that stuff right now, teeny tiny details. It's making my brain hurt.

I just cleaned up my email inbox, because I had 658 unread emails in there, not counting the spam, mostly crap from companies I shop online with or somebody trying to sell me something or updates from websites I belong to. I rue the day when I let my personal email become my everything email. I spent as much time setting up new preferences and unsubscribing to crap as I did cleaning up that darn inbox. It was crazy. But that clean little nothing next to the word INBOX makes me happier than anything I've done all week. Month.

Because I'm a readaholic and an information hoarder, I still have hundreds of unread emails, but they're the ones like longreads or delancey place, which give me excerpts of books to read which come in real handy when I have my iphone but not my kindle or a book and I'm sitting and waiting somewhere. I probably have a lifetime's worth, but can't bring myself to miss reading them someday. But I stuck them in a folder so they're not mocking me in my inbox. It was getting real hard to find the important stuff.

Like the bazillion emails it is taking to begin this business venture my husband talked me into. He went through a massive shakeup at his company, one result being a niche opening up just perfect for a woman owned business run by me to swoop in and start selling shit I know next to nothing about to people I've never met. So far, not so bad, but it's been almost two decades since I've had my head inside government contracts and regulations and it's a wonder to me that anything, anywhere ever, ever gets accomplished.

Long story short, I'm selling specialty chemicals to people who make them into products to sell to end users. Not such a stretch, since my husband has been formulating and manufacturing and selling this stuff for 20 years, and I've been using many of them for that long. I am, if nothing else, a loyal customer of the no frills, environmentally friendly wholesale stuff we, now I, sell. But using a chemical product is a long way from selling it, that's the big thing the minutiae is teaching me.

I've had my head inside web site setup, accounting software, contracts, proposals and the neverending mystery that is running a business in Illinois. I've learned more than my brain can hold and there's so much more to go. I'm not good at being a patient learner, and I'm finding that the after 50 brain is a lot more stubborn than the younger model.

So much minutiae. The devil's in the details, that's for sure. My husband loves to say you have to be sure you're sure because otherwise that's how astronauts end up getting killed. I think watching Apollo 13 got that stuck in his head, the excruciating attention to detail - physics and a ton of math - that let us put people in space and then bring them back safely. Screw up something miniscule, like the freezing temperature of an o-ring on a seal somewhere, and the Challenger disaster is the result. So I'm not putting anybody into space, but I'm trying to keep customers happy and regulatory agencies satisfied and make some money and I'm still in my learning curve and  even on my shittiest days I tell myself that at least I didn't kill any astronauts. Ha.

And that's why, today, with paperwork piled up like crazy and so much stuff to do, that I instead spent almost two hours cleaning up my email accounts. The good news is I've got the business emails running through the company web site and now that I've learned how to work it, they don't mingle in my crazy life inbox anymore. One small victory for me.

Here's a tiny question  - is anybody else missing the dashboard/new post links that used to be on the top of the page in blogger? They come, they go. For the life of me, I don't know why they disappear, or how they decide to come back and I feel stupid bumbling around trying to find my news feed or write a new post. Not that I've been writing that much lately, but still.

Well this is certainly a long post to talk about the minute details of my day.  I feel like my blog is a dusty nick knack on the shelf of my life, and I am a little guilty about that. I do what I can. Even if it's checking in with some minutiae. I still can't remember how to spell that and I've typed it what - 5 times? My brain isn't interested in that detail. Thank goodness nobody's life depends on it.

Hope all your little details are going just fine.

Bunch of Nothing

Oh, I'm the worst blogger ever.

I think about posting, but haven't had much worth saying about my life. I've just been living it.

Been cooking, cleaning, doing the mom stuff, overcompensated at Thanksgiving and made three times more food than we needed, and just this weekend threw out all the leftovers nobody ate, feeling a little more than wasteful. But it was nice to have the four of us under one roof again.

Tried to ignore the consumer-fest onslaught all week, only got caught up in a little of it. Everybody I love has everything they need, and outside of etsy or home-made, dang near everything comes from China, which makes me very sad.

Been spending hours - HOURS - on Pinterest, looking for pictures of simple, lovely Holiday  decor, mostly involving pinecones, white candles and burlap ribbon. I'm going to have a brown Christmas this year, none of that bright green and red stuff I have boxed up in the basement. Maybe a little silver and gold here and there, but simple.

This is what I did with the fireplace this year, using my mother-in-law's winter watercolors for a starting point and adding in some stuff from around the house.

Brought home some lovely bromeliads and poinsettias from the hardware store.

Found this lone little vinca flower on the south side of the house. Latest bloom I've ever seen.

Found this in my yard, blown in by the wind no doubt.

Found this leaf from Dad's Redbud tree, hiding in a sea of brown leaves. 

Threw out all the pumpkins and fall colors from the front door and tried with mixed results to do my own Pinteresting stuff. Still fussing with those flowerpots.

Still fussing with the grapevine wreaths I'm trying to make, because I've never made one and my yard is full of vines. Trying to decide if the snowflake shaped pinecone wreath is worth getting out my glue gun to make. Glue guns and I don't really get along well. But I have a bucket of pine cones just waiting for something to become. We'll see.

Never lacking good company. Vigilant company. Company who needs to lose about five pounds of fur, so I can stop picking up handfuls of leaves and detritus off the floor daily.

This weekend has been unusually mild, and today is filled with beautiful sunshine and 60 degrees. I've spent most of my day playing outside and it was good for what ailed me, which is mostly crappy sleep and creaky bones. I'm doing my best to be a grateful person and to remind myself that in 19 days, the darkness will grow shorter, the days longer and I can do this, get through another midwestern winter unscathed. 

That's all the news for now. It's been a lovely diversion and sanity saver to have your blogs to entertain and enlighten me. If I haven't thanked you lately, thank you. 

xo