The Ink-Pot and the Palette

After the little flurry of family angst yesterday, Christmas Day turned out to be perfectly splendid. The oh-so-casual beef dinner at Xmas-Sister's house was not only delicious (seriously, the best beef I've eaten in a long time, and home-grown green beans, plus mashed Yukon gold potatoes and a really good key lime cheesecake of which I had a sliver), but entirely relaxed and enjoyable, AND attended by all available local family members.

( Technical difficulties )

I was dropping off the Zipcar by 6:50, so No-Xmas Sister and I went to have a look at some pretty Christmas lights...

( Pretty Christmas Lights )

...and then I came home. I found a Hacker's Diet-compliant weight-loss tracking app for Android, and have been fiddling with it happily like a happy weight-losing geek all evening.

And to top it all off, I did not overeat today one bit. \o/

I want so badly to bitch about my job. Norm is driving me batshit. There is too much detail. I'm making my own life miserable by resisting it, fighting it, swearing at it, and sighing a lot.

I'll chalk my despairing hatred and anger today up to the holiday and the stresses of major lifestyle change (that cutting of 40% of my accustomed caloric intake that I've recently undertaken) as well as to the job itself.

Today, I had the sense to get up and leave before I actually raised my voice. If the leaving was more of a flounce, well, fuck, I'm only human. I conceived an urgent and immediate need for two jars of Marmite, which can only be found at World Market.

World Market is situated in a non-bike-friendly part of the city center, considerably up-slope from the World's Tallest Basement, and I worked off a lot of steam just navigating there and back.

Now I have Marmite, an extra hour of exercise that let me indulge in some delicious chocolate, and the happy prospect of a) Norm being on vacation the rest of the week and b) ME BEING ON VACATION NEXT WEEK.

Here is an odd photograph wot I took this morning.


Reflection

It doesn't feel like Christmas. My family and I have agreed to limit gift-giving, so I've had almost no exposure to holiday retail--though I did brave Trader Joe's this morning for some cookie ingredients. In my new job, a disparate team of employees and consultants banded together just a few weeks ago for a one-year project, and nobody has had the time or the familiarity for an office party.

There's no space in my living room for a Christmas tree. I have lights up around my porch already, all year long. And the weather is just gray and rainy. And besides, I've been arm-wrestling with demons for possession of my soul fighting depression for a while, and the whole Christmas thing has seemed a bit...extraneous.

But lo! (I can say "lo" because it's Christmas Eve) there are signs of victory. I went to the nearly-deserted Portland Nursery yesterday with my sis and bought trees!

I haven't had the slightest interest in my garden for well over a year, and if you'd asked me in the last few months, I'd've said, "Screw it. Tear it out and put in lawn and barkdust," so this urge to buy trees seemed like a return to the land of the living-on-earth.

And what's more, today I planted them. I got out there between rain showers in my grubby clothes and bandanna and the ugliest shoes ever to attract spiders in a shed over long periods of disuse, and I played in the mud.

I planted a persimmon and an apricot. Tall sticks, the both of them, but with little bud nodules all up and down their twigs, and the promise of round orange fruits some summer--this coming one, or the one after.

Afterwards, with compost and bark dust layered around, and the mud sprayed off my shovel, and the buckets put away and the plant tags saved (Prunus armeniaca, Diospyros kaki), I came in and threw my muddy clothes into the washer. I love that part. I showered, had a cup of tea, and then set about baking cookies.

To all my LJ friends, the joy of the season and a wish for peace and tranquility in the new year.