Warm/Safe

Last week, my furnace broke and the house was an icebox for 24 hours. On New Year's Eve morning, there was nothing to do but watch, cheek in palm, as a dude replaced the furnace igniter and then asked me for hundreds of dollars.

Aaaanyway, the whole thing rekindled my love for my wood stove—its steady warmth and friendly, flickering light—which precipitated a peculiar childhood memory: how Little Me used to crawl beneath our kitchen wood stove (like the one below) in the afternoons after ski class, curling up there beside the cats with a baggy full of Cheezits. If I hadn't peed my pants that day, I'd still be in my long underwear. If I had (too often!), I'd be in my blue velour sweat suit. Either way, it was fucking heaven under there. Womb like. The warmest place in the house.

Big Me would kill to have a cozy, safe place of this caliber to curl up now and then.

2014 To-Dos

  Be calm: Can I get my wasted-angst numbers down to almost zero? Despite life?

Rebuild my kitchen: Cut open. Tear down. Sand. Repaint. Install. Make new. Or at least a LITTLE more like the photo below.

Eat more vegetables: Got this cool cookbook from my mommy—a vegetable-based recipe for every single day of the year. Seasonal and stuff. No excuses now.

Portugal: As in, go there.

Seasonal Movement

Hi friends. Tomorrow's the winter solstice, did you know? Longest, darkest night of the year. It's an auspicious time—a nice little turning point. Over the last months, see, the year was turned toward darkness. Now, it'll be turned toward light. Because I don't want to celebrate consumerism or religion, I try to make everything—my feasts, my libations, my friendly gatherings, my journeys homeward to family, my green tree branches and my white twinkling lights—all about that.

The Cold Report

A week's worth of the very cold.

Drafty 1900s-era home made warm with firewood, extra layers, and the presence of furry, red-blooded animals.

Clear, bone-chilling nights all wild with stars.

Grey's Anatomy.

Skating indoors, sipping whiskeys on Fremont Street, crawling into bed at 10 p.m.

Bright white morning light filling the bedroom. Small fire to heat the house. Watching from the bathroom window as the dog has a moment with the new snow—snarfing into it, pouncing, peeling out with extreme joy.

Coffee at the kitchen table. Raisin toast with butter.

A long walk to work through white, blustery streets. Colored lights in everyone's windows. The fact of the year's end crackling in the air, and a recollection of something someone said recently—how you don't HAVE to take stock every year if you don't want to. A firm decision to not take stock this year.

Prayer Among Friends

 

“Among other wonders of our lives, we are alive with one another, we walk here in the light of this unlikely world that isn’t ours for long.” — John Daniel, “A Prayer Among Friends”