RockCrag of Ember
Nov. 16th, 2020 10:21 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ismoSometimes my life just doesn't seem interesting enough to be recorded. Or, to be more accurate, my interior life, while always excessively complicated and various, is not fit for public consumption, while my exterior life seems quite lacking in visible accomplishments. I'm like a philosophical snail--a cosmos spins within its tiny mind, like its whorled shell, but in linear terms, it moves very very slowly. Or, to quote an unfinished poem I wrote about apples a long time ago, "A sky turned inward distills universes within this flecky skin."
I found the lentil soup that I put in the freezer and was afraid was not good any more. I boiled it again just to make sure, but it is good. I made some toasted cheese to go with it and we had some for lunch. The Sparrowhawk very sweetly said it was the nicest lunch he'd had in days. I partially occupied myself today with finally sending out the Secret Santa assignments to the kids. This is always extra pesky! At least the Lovely Friend has consented to join in, so there's an even number of people. However, no one can have their spouse as a gifting object, and no one can have themselves, and no one should have the same person as last year. They also can't have the same people they think they had last year, even if that was actually the year before . . . . If I were a math pro, this would be simplicity itself, but I always make little rosters with a pencil, draw lines, get frustrated, drop my pencil down between the couch cushions, etc. etc. I usually have to find my notebook from last November and look up what I did then, which facilitates more rumination about the past. So this year, I did a reset by putting little slips of paper in the Sparrowhawk's Stormy Kromer hat and made him pull them out at random. I still had to do it over again, but it was more fun this way. Then I take blank cards and cut out tiny pictures of Christmassy kinds of things, and make a mini-collage suitable to each kid, and write the Secret inside, and mail them. I could, of course, just send an email. But not everything can be instantaneous transmission. Slow Life is more fun sometimes--says the philosophical snail.
I continued reading research for the Edgar Rice Burroughs story I've been invited to write. After dinner, the Sparrowhawk and I watched the Hallmark Christmas movie in which our son-in-law Kansas plays the male lead's dad. He's a very nice dad, but like all actors who are better than their material, he seems too big for the part--as if something dramatic should happen in which HE would be the main character. He also has scary blue eyes and every time he looks at the camera, they go ZING and there's a bit of a shock. Aliens walk among us! But on the down low . . . in a small town in Wisconsin . . . a Wisconsin of the mind that is actually in Utah . . . Hallmark Christmas can be disquieting if you think about it too much.
I found the lentil soup that I put in the freezer and was afraid was not good any more. I boiled it again just to make sure, but it is good. I made some toasted cheese to go with it and we had some for lunch. The Sparrowhawk very sweetly said it was the nicest lunch he'd had in days. I partially occupied myself today with finally sending out the Secret Santa assignments to the kids. This is always extra pesky! At least the Lovely Friend has consented to join in, so there's an even number of people. However, no one can have their spouse as a gifting object, and no one can have themselves, and no one should have the same person as last year. They also can't have the same people they think they had last year, even if that was actually the year before . . . . If I were a math pro, this would be simplicity itself, but I always make little rosters with a pencil, draw lines, get frustrated, drop my pencil down between the couch cushions, etc. etc. I usually have to find my notebook from last November and look up what I did then, which facilitates more rumination about the past. So this year, I did a reset by putting little slips of paper in the Sparrowhawk's Stormy Kromer hat and made him pull them out at random. I still had to do it over again, but it was more fun this way. Then I take blank cards and cut out tiny pictures of Christmassy kinds of things, and make a mini-collage suitable to each kid, and write the Secret inside, and mail them. I could, of course, just send an email. But not everything can be instantaneous transmission. Slow Life is more fun sometimes--says the philosophical snail.
I continued reading research for the Edgar Rice Burroughs story I've been invited to write. After dinner, the Sparrowhawk and I watched the Hallmark Christmas movie in which our son-in-law Kansas plays the male lead's dad. He's a very nice dad, but like all actors who are better than their material, he seems too big for the part--as if something dramatic should happen in which HE would be the main character. He also has scary blue eyes and every time he looks at the camera, they go ZING and there's a bit of a shock. Aliens walk among us! But on the down low . . . in a small town in Wisconsin . . . a Wisconsin of the mind that is actually in Utah . . . Hallmark Christmas can be disquieting if you think about it too much.
