Between Holidays

Another of my favorite times:  the week between X-mas and the New Year.  All is so quiet.  As if the world were breathing a deep sigh and snuggling up with some hot cider beside a fire.  All the frantic pre-holiday rushing about is over (mostly; witness the brawl in the Mall of the Americas [so aptly named] the day after Christmas) and folks can relax.  Even those working are on light duty this one week of the year.  Lovely.

The fog has been back intermittently over the past week.  There’s a forecast of rain (no kidding, in late December!) for the next couple days and that should open up our visibility a bit.  As it is now, I can barely discern the houses across the street.  Very Currier and Ives.

My sister sent us a couple of amaryllis for the holidays.  Once I figured out there was something under the dirt in the planter and got some water on them, they sent large shoots up, very quickly.  I’m looking forward to their giant flowers.  I’ve never had amaryllis, but love really big gaudy blossoms, so I’m impatient for these to bloom.  In spring the bazillion irises we have all over our yard erupt in deep, flashy colors, but in the winter we’ve had to go without.  Now we’ll have some color in the house for a while.  Such a treat!

There’s an odd bird that just showed up on my office window trellis.  Don’t have the bird book out and this one is totally new to me.  Larger than the usual sparrows and finches and darker.  A solitary visitor, seemingly uninterested in the seeds in the feeder.  As quickly as it arrived, it’s gone.  Have to get the book and try to id this guy. 

Well, that’s all for now. 

The Solstice

I guess I’m not so good at this blog thing.  It’s been a few weeks since I’ve last posted.  I don’t see the sense in diary blogging.  Posting the quotidian details of my repetitive daily routines.  So, I’ll post when I feel like writing something other than the clipping of toe nails, going out to eat or taking a shower.

On the eve of the official start day of winter, the snow is coming down with enough volume our snow shoveling neighbor may actually have to make a visit to our driveway.  Until today the snow has been easily swept off the sidewalks and driveway with a broom, but on this solstice eve, accumulation may actually occur.

We’ve had at a couple weeks of foggy days.  Occasionally, the fog would burn off in the late afternoon, giving us an hour or so of much-needed sunshine.  But on most days it’s been with us all day long.  I’m hopeful this snow will leave us with some sunny days behind it, ridding the valley of the fog.  Our area has lots of ancient volcanoes, inactive for ages, but there’s still enough magma close to the surface to provide numerous hot springs.  One source of our winter fog.  The wetlands surrounding town also add to the winter mists.  Low pressure that brings the snow also lets steam around us evaporate more efficiently, thus scouring out the valley’s air.  At least that’s my hope this morning.

This is the time of year when I most miss Hawaii.  My partner and I lived there for five years, more than a quarter-century ago.  When the holidays come around I am reminded of the Makahiki season in Hawaii.  There, before European and American colonization, the four months from November through February were a time when all the usually strictly enforced oligarchic taboos were lifted and there was extensive partying.  The violently imposed hierarchy was diminished and everyone was allowed to relax their usual guardedness with one another.  While I don’t admire the old Hawaiian monarchy at all, nor its sexism and racism, I enjoy the idea of extending the holidays over a whole third of the year. 

In the US it’s only the rich who are afforded the luxury of real rest, relaxation and recreation.  Working for all but two weeks a year is the norm for most folks, with millions having no time off at all.  Many who have their precious two weeks usually lack the resources to travel or recreate.  And so often those two weeks disappear one day at a time into doctor’s appointments, staying home with a sick child, etc.  In my job I talk to dozens of women every work day.  Most of them seem so tired and depressed.  Worn out with worry, work and loss of dreams.  At this ‘happiest’ time of the year (or so the seasonal songs proclaim) they’re really dragging.  Worried about everybody else:  the spouse, the kids, their elderly parents.  They tell me about their illnesses, colds, joint pain, ‘fibromyalgia’, depression and how it all gets worse this time of year.  Some comment on the fact that Christmas falls on a weekend this year, so no time off.   I wish I had a magic wand.  To grant them some respite from the ‘holidays’. 

On that sour seasonal note, I’ll end this post.

        

Big Winds

Big winds, some type 2 hurricane strength, swept across most of the state late last week, uprooting decades old conifers and other trees and leaving much devastation in their wake.  We were fortunate they didn’t make it all the way up to our northeastern edge of the Great Salt Lake.  But, just 15 miles to our south in Ogden, roofs were de-shingled, and cars and houses squashed by trees other flying debris. 

The winds ushered in frigid temperatures, but cleared out the usually gray, polluted winter air along the Wasatch Front south of here.  Our northern sky is a wedgewood blue with not a single cloud in sight.  The winds are still with us, but not in force, just enough to bend the treetops westerly, away from the canyon’s mouth.

My life partner will have completed 72 years on the planet next week.  Seems impossible that he’s accumulated so much time.  He’s so active and remains so young looking.  In any event, I’m trying to think of some way of celebrating this milestone.  For him, a good meal out with friends and family is a favorite, so that’ll probably be the best thing to do. 

Another work day is getting underway, so I’ll sign off.