Greyfox is trying something new this holiday season.  He has rented table space in a small mall-sort-of-place to hawk his wares.  Previously, winter income was limited to a few gun shows, until it warms up enough to reopen his roadside stand.  The "bazaar" or "crafts festival" is on the upper floor over an upscale cookware store, a used bookstore, and a Japanese restaurant.  Traffic is sparse and business is slow up there.

The sellers are all women except for the Old Fart and an even older fart who does wood-turning, making ballpoint pens.  Every evening I have been hearing reports rants about Greyfox's days there.  Most of the venom focuses on one woman, a knitter -- whom he calls, "Madame Defarge,"  but there's a moderate amount of animosity left over for some of the other elderly ladies up there with whom she sits and knits and natters.

He describes these crafters as "rich white women," and calls them, collectively, "the old biddies."  Having come from a long line of dirt farmers, when I think of a flock of biddies, the picture that comes to mind is chickens, sweet little hens pecking at the corn I have tossed to them.  I love biddies.  Biddies provide eggs and fried chicken.  Biddies are nice, but what Greyfox is thinking when he speaks of those old biddies is not nice.

 

A feud developed during the first day of the festival  It started over Christmas music.  In general, Greyfox does not like despises and detests Christmas music.  Christmas itself holds sad and traumatic memories for him.  Evidently, he can tolerate a few old carols such as O Holy Night, but he cringes at anything even remotely like Frosty the Snowman, I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas, or Granny Got Run Over by a Reindeer.  Each evening for a week now, I have listened with amusement as he tells me with horror how many times each of those songs played on the mini-mall's PA system and/or the boombox upstairs.

I honestly cannot remember all the details of the daily blow-by-blows, and wouldn't subject you to them if I did.  The general gist of the whole conflict is that she wants the volume high and he wants it down or off.  Each of them has at various times complained to the management about the PA and gone behind the other's back to adjust the volume of the boombox.  Greyfox has been getting increasingly worked up over it, and I have been doing my job, reminding him to be more inner-directed, tolerant, and loving, and to look for things to enjoy and appreciate.

Talking it out each night seems to give him some relief, but each succeeding day spent with the music and Madame Defarge sets him off again.  Last night he started head-tripping about various forms of revenge upon her.  I let his imagination run free for a while, until his fantasies went beyond pranks into crime and mayhem.  To one of his particularly egregious schemes, I responded, "That kind of thing could come back on you."

He paused, agreed, and then started saying something to the effect that it wouldn't be worth going to jail for.  I said I had been thinking more about his Karma.  I gotta give him credit for quick wit.  He came back with, "That's okay, you've got enough good Karma for both of us."  I'm not exactly a slouch in the comeback department, either.  I responded, "Whoa!  Wait a minute there!  I'm not taking on your Karma for you.  Maybe I should take out one of those legal ads like guys do when they're getting a divorce:  'To whom it may concern:  I will not be responsible for anyone's karmic debts but my own.'"

Doug was unenthusiastic about the project until he saw the results and recognized some of the old decorations.  We have not had a tree for about twenty years, and I had thought long and hard about it before taking on the task this year.  I have to stand on my bed to reach the "tree".  It is tiring, and when I took a break to write this, it was because I had been getting too fatigued to go on.  I'm rested now, ready to go finish the job.

I had frankly questioned the value of even doing it, given the big cost in personal energy and subsequent deficits in function.  I vowed to go easy, and this morning I did all the unpacking, sorting and attaching of hooks in a leisurely fashion while sitting down.  I knew it was all worth it when I saw Doug's smiles as he looked at the old ornaments.  Doug's laughter each time Koji moves now, since I hung a rope of bells around his neck, is as much music to my ears as the dingalings of our Jingle Dog.

Photos to follow, I suppose.

Cast of characters:

• "I" or "me":  your unlikely heroine

• Doug:  the son of my middle years, younger than several of my grandchildren, willful by nature, having ADHD, and trained by his mother to question authority and speak his mind
• Greyfox:  shaman, ArmsMerchant, my Old Fart, soulmate, lawfully wedded spouse, unindicted co-conspirator and partner in crime, reared to believe that children should defer to their elders and never call attention to themselves

[I'm condensing the backstory, but the morbidly curious can find more details than any sane person would want, in a mess of links at the bottom of this entry.]* 

I knew even before I met Greyfox that his personality harbored some psychopathology.  He wrote to me, as a mail-order psychic, for counsel and advice, and there was evidence of his pathology in his letters, in addition to what I understood intuitively in my professional capacity.

I wasn't seeking entanglements, had been married more times than I had ever wanted to be, and never wanted to do it again.  I have never shied away from taking on a professional challenge, and that was how I viewed him at first -- until it became evident that the two of us had karmic ties going back thousands of years.  We had related to each other just about every way people can:  we had been each other's parents, siblings, students, teachers, lovers, killers and victims, and had saved each other's scantily armored asses multiple times as buddies in the Roman Legions.

The attraction was rapid, mutual, and compelling.  The sexual chemistry was overwhelming even before we met in person, and he said he loved my son without ever meeting him.  I doubted the credibility of that, but gave him the benefit of the doubt.  Once we had met, and I saw how generous and affectionate he was with me and Doug, I wanted to be with him badly enough to allow him, against my better judgment, to persuade me to marry him, contingent on his promise to transcend his drug addictions, and to obtain a divorce if I ever asked for it.  When he couldn't talk me into moving into his urban East Coast environment, he took early retirement from his well-paid state job and followed me back home to Alaska.

Here, off the grid, without a regular income or civilized amenities, he was miserable, and focused all that misery on Doug and me.  According to him, my kid was insufferable, and I was responsible for all his (Greyfox's) mistakes and troubles.  I had cost him "a million dollars" with that early retirement and ruined his life.  Each time I would ask him why he didn't go back home, he'd say he had burned his bridges, the state had a hiring freeze, and he was stuck in this hopeless situation.

I was pretty smart, somewhat savvy, and also awfully naive in some ways.  I'd had enough psychological training and experience working in the counseling field, and in psychotherapy myself, that I could identify a lot of his behavior as pathological.  That didn't bother me much.  I had been thinking of myself as a healer for a couple of decades by then, and was willing to work with him on his emotional healing.

Any time I would indicate that he was saying or doing something pathological, it would set him off into a rage.  Where I was most naive was in the specific diagnosis of narcissistic personality disorder.  When we met, he had love-bombed me, idealized me, and stuck me on a pedestal on which I never felt comfortable, but he would discount my every attempt to point out the reality of who and what I am.  That idolization of new associates is typical of NPD, just as is the subsequent devaluation when someone challenges the pathological narcissist's fantasy world.  He started treating me like shit, and treated Doug even worse than he treated me.

He "punished" me by withholding sex and affection, and by sneaking drugs.  He claimed, when I confronted him with his lies and broken promises, that "everyone" lies, manipulates, and uses promises to get what they want.  He said that he had thought I was lying or exaggerating when I told him of the hardships of our life here and other personal truths.  He went through a series of escalating alcohol binges, and compelled me to send Doug to live with his Dad.  After Doug begged to come back to get away from his dad's abuse, Greyfox moved into a little travel trailer in our yard and kicked the drinking up another notch.

Doug and I went away for a winter, and I was hoping that Greyfox would be gone by springtime when we planned to return.  His sickness from the drug abuse, and an explosion and small fire he caused that winter, put him on the wagon for a while and getting along here on his own in our absence made him welcome our return.  Actually, he was never really the same man after that winter, but he was still a liar, a sadist, an addict, and a miserable human being.

I kept doing what I could to help him, confronting his pathological bullshit, urging him to leave, divorce me, and leave me in peace, being true to myself and my responsibilities, telling the truth and getting punished for it.  We had a few minor breakthroughs from time to time when he'd come out sick and contrite from some especially bad binges.  During one of those binges, I wrestled a gun away from him when he threatened to shoot me.  A few moments later after he passed out, and I was standing there envisioning Fox flambé, I wrestled with myself and succeeded in not igniting the alcohol I'd poured all over him.

Another time, after he had refused to help me with a weekend of distant work because (he claimed) he couldn't spare the time away from his own work here, he spent the weekend drinking instead of working.  He was arrested after a neighbor called the troopers to report that Greyfox was wandering naked in the neighborhood, brandishing a handgun.  Next day when he regained consciousness, he reached a friend by phone, who relayed a message to me at the festival where I was doing readings that weekend.  I bailed him out and his gratitude brought us a little mini-honeymoon until his NPD and his addictions took over again.

That pattern held until May 23, 2003.  That day, I saved his life again.  That time, the fact of the rescue was undeniable, unmistakable.  As he says it now, I gave him a "new life."  In the aftermath of that very close call, he diagnosed his own NPD and began working with me to transcend it.  He transcended his addictions, and went on with his emotional healing and spiritual development, with only some occasional reminders or pointers from me.  His new life, this life we share now, is truly a wonderful life.  I might well have gained as much or more than he did through my efforts.

I couldn't follow the guidelines to the letter, because, beyond all speculation, without my input, Greyfox would not be in this life at all.  I hope I have adequately addressed the spirit of the challenge.

WATER!

The thermometer was reading about sixteen degrees above zero F at around seven this morning, a couple of hours before the crack of dawn.  The warmer weather has not yet brought any new snow.  Doug went out in the dark and managed to break the ice that had the hatch of our Subaru wagon stuck shut so he could get it open for us to load in empty jugs and buckets.

As soon as it started to get light, I loaded them in while he was doing something here at the computer, before I started the car to warm it up.  Otherwise, I'd have been working in the exhaust and some of it would blow into the car while I worked.  He came out to brush the snow off the car about the same time I got in it to start it.  The combination of bumpy back road and cold-flattened radials impelled me to stop before I got to the mailboxes so Doug could do a walkaround and look for flat tires.

At the spring, there was a van in the parking area and we sat in the car to give its driver time to fill his jugs.  When I saw how badly the windows were being frosted by our breath, I suggested we wait outside.  That's when I discovered that there was no one down at the waterhole.  Apparently, it was an abandoned vehicle. 

Doug grabbed four or five empties and headed down the path to the spring while I did a complex maneuver, opening my door and standing on the sill to see if any traffic was coming, crossing the highway, and turning around in the turnout over there to pull up in front of the abandoned van and shorten the schlepping distance.  Then I ferried most of the rest of the empties down, bringing up some full ones each trip, until I ran out of breath.

Blur, our little old wagon, wallows like an overladen barge when he's carrying sixty gallons or so of water in the hatch, and my visibility was impaired by the frosty windows, but it's only about two miles and we made it okay.  Now Doug has no more excuse not to wash dishes, and I have no more anxiety about where my next pot of coffee is coming from.

I'll be back later with my entry for the new Featured Grownups challenge, inspired by It's a Wonderful Life.  I'm going to start working on it now.  Do you think that will qualify as an entry in my Christmas Countdown?   I have something else in mind anyway, just in case it doesn't.

I haven't said much about the weather lately.  I have had other things to blog about, and other people have had more interesting weather than we have, but most of all the weather has been jerking me around so much lately I haven't even wanted to think about it.  We are running low on water and need to go to the spring, and will, soon... if the weather cooperates.

The temperatures have swung from teens below zero to teens above zero and back again more times than I kept track of in the past week or so.  Each time it made an upswing, more snow fell.  Then just when the snow stopped falling and we started shoveling out and brushing off the car, it got frigid again and we would agree to put off the water run.  We have put it off just about as long as we can.  Maybe we can go when it gets light tomorrow.

Last night was one of the coldest.  I went to bed with the hot water bottle at my feet and my little blue hat on my head.  Now, it's almost as far above zero as it was below zero this morning, and it hasn't started snowing yet.  I suppose I'm not being realistic, hoping that it's not going to snow tonight.  When warmer air moves into a cold place, it drops precipitation:  elementary meteorology.  When both the cold place and the warmer air are below freezing, that precip will be snow:  elementary again.

We still have not shoveled the whole driveway or the roofs since the last three or four snowfalls.  Greyfox and Doug have told me I should not be shoveling snow, given the way my body reacted after the last couple of times I snoveled.  Doug did get the part of the driveway right around and just behind the car shoveled about two snowfalls ago, but then it was really cold, and we weren't quite out of water, so we put off the trip to the spring.

This is an old established pattern for us.  Eventually, the water supply runs too low to put it off any longer, and it is winter, or at least it looks and feels like winter, and we are in Alaska, so we gear up and go on and do it in the cold... if the car starts.  If not, he takes a bucket and the sled and calls on a neighbor who has a well.  This weekend is the Solstice.  I'm ready for days to start getting longer.   Tomorrow the sun rises at 10:23 and sets at 3:30 - five hours and seven minutes of daylight.  Yeh, I'm ready for more.

You say it, "Yo," as in "yo ho," or "yo, bro."  It is an old Latin interjection, related to "ho" (as in "ho ho ho"), and used in ancient Rome in much the same way "yo" is used even now.

Saturnalia began as an annual feast day in commemoration of the dedication of the Temple of Saturnus, a major Roman deity of agriculture and harvest, on December 17.  Then came the Opalia, on December 19, the feast day of Ops, the goddess of plenty.  After a while, the feast days sort of grew together and the party stretched out to fill the middle day.  By late in the Empire it bumped up against the Feast of Sol Invictus on December 25th, celebrating the lengthening of days after the Winter Solstice, the victory of the sun over winter's dark.

In Cicero's time, the celebration took up a week.  Augustus ordered that it be shortened to three days, then Caligula extended it to five days.  Despite official attempts to shorten the celebration, the people wanted to party.   In addition to food, drink, and merriment, Saturnalia featured role reversals.  Slaves reclined on couches and were served by their masters.  The attractions of that merrymaking for the slaves is obvious.  The Roman Patricians also found cause to enjoy the festivities as they were freed from their normal duties and mores.  Accounts that survive suggest that Saturnalia was a time of "anything goes."

One of my happiest Christmas memories is from Doug's childhood.  He was about five years old, making the memory over twenty years old now.  We spent a day together, baking and decorating cookies.  I had been up before him that morning, making pastry and rolling it out for enough pies to fill every pie pan I had.  Load after load, pies and cookies, into the oven and out onto racks, kept the house warm and fragrant all day.

It was dark that evening before we were all finished.  We loaded everything into the sled, with him tucked into the back to keep an eye on the load.  Then we pulled the sled all over the neighborhood, dropping off pies and cookies, getting glimpses of the neighbors' decorations, having cups of hot chocolate forced on us.  The cost was minimal, the process of production was pure fun, and the returns were spectacular.  I even got most of the baking pans back.

I have to watch what I eat now, for my health.  Additionally, I don't have the energy to bake all day and Doug doesn't have the will.  But I can still share some of my favorite goodies with you.  I'll alternate between recipes for sinful sweets, and some that work for me.

Preheat oven to 350 F .

Mix together:

3 eggs, slightly beaten
1 cup Karo syrup, light or dark as preferred
1 cup granulated white sugar or firmly packed brown sugar, as preferred
2 tablespoons melted butter
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

Then stir in 1 1/2 cups pecan halves or broken pecan pieces.

Pour into unbaked 9-inch pie shell and bake about 50 to 55 minutes.  Pie is done when a knife inserted halfway between center and edge comes out clean.

For that pie shell, the pastry must be tender and flaky.  Since I was 12 years old, I have been relying on the recipe in the Joy of Cooking for that.  It never fails.

I'm supposed to avoid wheat (as in the pie crust above) and sugar (as in just about every recipe for any holiday treat), but that doesn't mean I can't have pie.

Sugarless Wheat-Free Custard Pie

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Prepare the custard first:

Beat together:
2 cups milk (I use reconstituted non-fat dry milk if I don't have enough goat milk for this.)
3 eggs
1/3 cup Splenda (or sugar, if you can handle its glycemic effect and the addictive qualities of it)
1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract (avoid imitation - ethyl vanillin is nasty, toxic stuff)
1/4 teaspoon salt

Set it aside while you make the crust.

In a 9-inch pie pan, preferably a deep one, stir together with a fork:
1/2 cup garbanzo and fava bean flour (The only source I've found for this is BobsRedMill.)
1/2 cup sorghum flour
1/2 teaspoon salt

When the dry ingredients are thoroughly mixed, whisk together:
1/3 cup grapeseed oil (or your favorite vegetable oil)
1 1/2 tablespoons cold milk

Pour the liquid over the flours in the pie pan and mix lightly with a fork until all flour is moistened.  Then press the crust evenly over the sides and bottom of the pan.

Fill the finished crust with the custard mixture and bake about 1 hour at 325 F.  When it is done, the top will be browned and the center of the filling will jiggle only slightly when shaken.

---

Jelly Tarts, Jam Drops or Thumbprint Cookies

Blend until creamy:
    1/2 cup butter
    1/3 cup granulated sugar

Beat in:
    1 whole egg or 2 egg yolks
    1/2 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
    1/4 teaspoon grated lemon zest
    1 cup all-purpose white flour
    1/8 teaspoon salt
    (optional) 2 tablespoons poppy seeds

Chill dough for several hours or overnight.

Roll into 1-inch balls, dip in slightly beaten egg white, roll in chopped nuts.

Bake 5 minutes at 375°F.

Remove from oven, make thumbprints, and fill with jelly:  red cherry, golden apple, and green mint jelly for Christmas.

Return to hot oven and bake for about 8 minutes more.

---

Sugarless, Wheat-Free Holiday Cookies

Preheat oven to 400° F, 205° C.

In a large bowl, whisk together thoroughly (sift together if you're a purist or the ingredients are particularly lumpy):

3 cups garbanzo and fava bean flour (I use the combo from Bob's Red Mill.  Rice, potato, sorghum, or other combinations of flours would probably work.  If you don't have a wheat allergy, this recipe can be made using ordinary white flour.)
3 cups Splenda® non-caloric sweetener (the granular style that's meant for baking, not a gazillion little packets) -- sugar or a half and half mix of white and brown sugars may be substituted if you're neither diabetic nor addicted to sugar.  If using granulated sugar, combine it with the eggs, not with the flour.
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt

In a separate bowl, beat

4 large eggs, then add and continue beating:
1 1/2 cups vegetable oil  (I use grapeseed oil for both its flavor and the essential fatty acids to lower cholesterol.  Olive oil would be an acceptable second choice.)
1/2 cup (1 quarter-pound stick) melted butter -- NOT margarine unless it is trans-fat-free, 'cause that stuff is lethal
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1 tablespoon blackstrap molasses (optional; use it if you like the flavor, can handle the carbohydrate, and are not using brown sugar)

Have ready:

2 cups quick cooking oats (optional for those who must avoid all gluten)
1 cup chopped pecans (walnuts or almonds would be acceptable, I suppose, if nobody's allergic to them)
1 cup shredded or flaked coconut (organic unsweetened is best)
2 cups cornflakes cereal (these add a minimal amount of sugar, so dieters and diabetics need to limit their consumption or leave out the corn flakes)
1 cup raisins (optional if the calories are an issue, or substitute dried currants or cranberries)

Combine the liquid ingredients with the flours, then add the rest.  Drop generous globs onto cookie sheet.  These are "drop" style cookies, but will probably need some handling and forming to make them stick together.

Bake at 400°  (205° C) for about ten to twelve minutes.

---

Gingerbread Men

Whisk or sift together:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon ground cloves
1 teaspoon ginger
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg

Cream together in separate large bowl:

1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup granulated sugar

Stir in:

1/2 cup molasses
1 egg yolk

Add and combine dry ingredients.  Blend until smooth.  Cover and chill at least 1 hour.

Preheat oven to 350° F or 175° C. 

On a lightly floured surface, roll the dough out to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut into desired shapes with cookie cutters. Place cookies 2 inches apart on ungreased cookie sheets.

Bake for 8 to 10 minutes in the preheated oven, until firm. Remove from cookie sheets to cool on wire racks. Frost and/or decorate when cool.

---

Gluten-Free Gingerbread

Preheat oven to 350° F or 175° C. 

Grease an 8- or 9-inch square baking dish.

Whisk or sift together in mixing bowl:

1-1/2 cups amaranth flour
1/2 cup arrowroot starch, corn starch, or tapioca starch
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp sea salt
3/4 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp cinnamon
1/4 tsp allspice

Whisk together in small bowl:

2/3 cup warm water
1/4 cup grapeseed or other vegetable oil
1/3 cup honey
2 Tbsp. lemon juice

Pour liquid over dry ingredients all at once and combine quickly.  Pour immediately into baking dish and bake for 30 minutes. When done, cracks appear and top springs back when touched. Best if served warm.

Makes 9 Servings.

The best thing about loving fictional guys is that I can love as many of them as I want and they don't get jealous.  The worst thing about them is that they are not real.

The more I think about this, the more I tend to think that these fictional men I love are really not real.  I mean that they are very much unlike any real men I know.   It is also pretty obvious, from the type of fictional men I have bonded with, that I have some disturbingly unhealthy appetites.

One of the first fictitious men I fell for was "salvage consultant" Travis McGee, written by John D. MacDonald.  As described in the books, if McGee had been a few inches taller, he would have looked just like my father.  That might account for the attraction, I suppose.  I think I'm over him, now, anyway.  I have changed over the years, but old McGee stays the same.

Lazarus Long, the immortal time traveler written by Robert A. Heinlein, didn't appeal to me much when I first met him, even before I knew McGee.  He grew on me, I guess, as I grew.  Come to think of it, I don't think I have ever fallen for a character on the basis of a single book.  All the ones I'm mad about exist in series and have shown real character development with time.  Shoot me if I ever "get over" Laz.  My love for him is, as it should be, as deathless as ol' Laz himself.

I didn't think much of Jack Reacher in Echo Burning, the first of Lee Child's novels I ever read.  But another of his books came my way, I read it, and I was hooked.  I have searched out every blessed book in the series, read them all, and have placed pre-publication orders for the last two, my most serious $$$ splurge in many years.  It is a budget violation I cannot justify, and I won't even try.  I'm in love.

Not long after I met Reacher, along came Joe Pike.  At first, he was just the quietly dangerous sidekick of Robert Crais's private eye, Elvis Cole.  Then Crais apparently realized what he had there and wrote a book, The Watchman,  for Joe.

Now I have fallen in love again.  This guy is as immortal as Lazarus Long (providing nobody blows out his cortical stack), even more enigmatic and dangerous than Joe Pike, and, damnit, not one bit more tangible or here than any of the others.  His name is Takeshi Kovacs.  He is written by Richard K. Morgan.

In all honesty, I'm not as fascinated with Kovacs as I am with the universe Morgan has created.  He does such an excellent and seamless job of putting readers into strange cultures with alien technologies, without any tedious exposition, that he has gained three avid fans here in Doug, Greyfox and me.  Our tastes ordinarily differ so markedly that Greyfox was led some time ago to remark that anything all three of us like has to be good.

Richard K. Morgan is better than good.  His most interesting character, Quellcrist Falconer, is not physically present in Altered Carbon or Broken Angels.  She is there, though, a remembered, revered, ridiculed and reviled revolutionary leader existing only in quotes such as:

and

I understand that she will be revived in the flesh, resleeved, in Woken Furies.  I'm giving it to myself for Christmas.

You probably know about the shrub dodging two shoes thrown at him on Sunday in Baghdad by an Iraqi journalist.  Most of you have probably seen the  video.  I haven't see it.  I don't think I will.  It would surely dispel my delighted imagining of him getting them splat in the middle of that smug grin of his.

I heard the breaking story on the radio yesterday afternoon and immediately called Greyfox at work to relay the news to him.  I knew it would make his day on a slow Sunday at the Xmas Bazaar.  I'm sure there were similar calls and text messages flying every which way as the word got out.

I went ahead with the editing, posted my xmas entry, then did some work on my subscriptions list. (In case you haven't noticed, the Xanga Team has made it easier to edit subscriptions.)  I might not have blogged about the incident at all if the first thing I heard when I turned on the radio this morning had been something other than the angry mob in Baghdad shouting for the release of the man who threw those shoes.

Most sources I have seen identify the reporter as Muntadar al-Zaidi (or al-Zeidi), but he is also identified as Montasser al-Zaidi, elsewhere.  Here are some of the things being written about him by other reporters:

I especially appreciate this one:

Finally:

Seeya later.

Oh ... yeah, there it is, down there in the corner of the screen.  The fourteenth... there was something I wanted to do today.  It'll come to me, maybe, later.

I have been up for about four hours and am not awake yet.  It must be the old fibro-fog.  At the moment, I don't recall whether there is anything I can do about that or not.

At least the weather has warmed up some, up to minus 9.8 degrees F, last time I looked, up from about twenty below earlier this morning.  Doug kept the fire going hot until about 4 AM, then went to sleep, on the couch by the stove because his room is too cold for comfort.  The discomfort of a short couch versus the discomfort of a cold futon on the floor... some days he chooses one, some days the other.

I could tell he had the fire hot because I could hear the water boiling in the three pots on top of the wood stove that serve as our substitute for a water heater.  The water had come off the boil by the time I got up and put more cold wood on the fire, and I haven't gotten it that hot again yet today.

At least all we have to contend with is cold, and we are used to that.  Much of the Lower 48 is really hurting from storms and the aftermath of storms.  If that includes you, you might not even be able to power up your computer today.  I'm lucky.

I got a reminder this morning of one of my previous discoveries about perception of cold versus warmth: how to feel warm when the house is cold.  I rolled out of bed around six AM, pulled on boots and hat, grabbed the warm seat from its place behind the woodstove in one hand, picked the flashlight from its place by the door with the other, and bolted for the outhouse.  When I got back, it was miraculously warm in here.

I will be back later with more holiday blogging.  I was just kidding about not remembering what I had planned for today.  There is brainfog, indeed, and I really can't recall whether I have any handy tricks for dispersing it or must just wait it out, but I do know what I want to do today.  Seeya later.

I hope I have time to write what I had in mind for today's blog.  Doug will be wanting the computer soon, so I don't have all day.  I keep having to get up from here to toss more wood in the fire because the temperature outside is in double digits below zero and I'm trying to get it up above 50° F in here.  To add to the distractions, I have felt a series of sharp little bumps:  small nearby earthquakes. 

In the past hour and a half or so, as I'm writing this, NEIS has recorded three moderate quakes in Alaska.  A triangle drawn between those points would have me somewhere in the middle.  The ground movements I felt probably weren't directly from any of those shocks.  The recorded quakes were small, and what I felt had none of the attenuated rolling sensations suggesting distance.  I'm probably picking up on minute movements in the Susitna Fault, a mile from here, too small to make the NEIS list.

Holiday hazards...

Everyone is familiar with the usual temptations to overeat or drink too much.  I won't deny that they are huge hazards of life-threatening proportions.  People will undoubtedly die, and even more people be injured in the U.S. this holiday season because of their own indiscriminate eating and/or their own or other people's excessive alcohol consumption.

Alcohol isn't the only dangerous drug likely to be consumed to excess, either.  We don't even have to consider illicit street drugs, though they are hazardous enough themselves.  Prescribed anti-depressants, over-the-counter sleep aids, stimulants from health food stores, and painkillers of all kinds have the potential for lethal effects if abused, and holidays are traditional times for drug abuse.

I tossed that in because it is rather obvious and I would be remiss if I didn't.  That was not really the holiday hazard uppermost in my mind when I sat down here.  I was thinking about the potential for social faux pas and political incorrectness.  This was brought to mind by a recent Xanga featured question regarding the greeting, "Merry Christmas!"

I am not engaged in any public contact work where I am expected to greet anyone.  I am not usually inclined to say much more than "Hi" to the neighbors I meet at the spring or the general store unless someone chooses to engage me in conversation.  I am not likely to offend anyone of a non-Christian faith with an inappropriate holiday greeting because I don't go around spouting seasonal platitudes.

It has been quite a few years since I engaged in the holly jolly seasonal hullabaloo.  I have been so far out of town, so to speak, for so long, that last year in mid-December when I spent a few days in the hospital, the oft-repeated, "merry Christmas" wishes of hospital employees struck my ears as jarringly false.  I looked at faces and listened closely, and neither saw nor heard any indication of sincerity.  They sounded more hollow than the usual "Have a nice day."  If I were inclined to take offense at such things, I would have been offended, but not on grounds of religious belief or political correctness.

I fondly envision a society in which nobody feels obligated to mouth any sentiments they don't wholeheartedly feel, and where everyone feels free to say what's really on his or her mind.  Toward that end, I avoid empty words and someone who says to me, "How are you?" is likely to hear the truth even though I know it's not what she wanted or expected.

This holiday season, if you can't bring yourself to stray that far from the herd, you might take a little fling at what we did forty-some years ago when I was riding with outlaw bikers.  On Christmas eve, we walked through San Francisco's Tenderloin, greeting every person we met with a hearty growl of "Merry mother-fucking Christmas."  With such a greeting, one is at least an equal-opportunity offender, not singling out any race or religion.  If you do it as we did, arm-in-arm, four-abreast down the sidewalk, in boots and leathers, people will be unlikely to get in your face about it, as well.

Have a blessed Yule, y'all.