I tied a cheery red bow around our lamppost (I have been too busy to put the lights on the stinky bush or the garlands on the porch and around the door) but a few mornings ago, I realized that it is MIA. There were crazily strong wind gusts during the early half of the week and I suspect it is being volleyed by the Nor’wester somewhere near the stratosphere, the way it’s blowing outside. Earlier this week, as I was getting ready for work, there was a mighty blast and I watched the window shades churn violently, which makes me very glad that the contractors were putting in the new windows this week.
We still don’t have any snow (the heavy three inches that fell last Monday morning was gone by noon that day), save for the thin remnants that linger in the corners of entryways and along curbs. The radio stations are playing Crosby’s ‘White Christmas’ as though they can play it enough times and the weather gods will take pity. Personally, I’d rather not be reminded that the world is brown and how it totally negates the one good reason that we put up with all of Wisconsin’s brutal winter shit.
I can’t help but wonder how it is for the people who live in places where there is only one season. I mean, as much as I kvetch about the cold, I sort of enjoy the cycles of play and rest, wakefulness and sleep. I do find this sort of brown time of year very beautiful too. The bare branches of trees blending together into the landscape, as utilitarian as hairbrushes. The way everything fades into muted colors, the way we shrink back into ourselves, remember what it is to be us.
In Door County, which is the Midwest’s answer to Martha’s Vineyard, there is a sign in front of the Ephraim Chamber of Commerce that says ‘Welcome Winter’ now we have time to visit’ which always seemed to me to sum up everything. As much as I hate January, I would really like to have some time to do something that is not last minute, crucial, deadline type stuff. I have fantasies that involve unexpurgated stretches of time in which I paint virgin canvases or rip down the kitchen backsplash or read something that I want to read for fun or just shop for flooring for my freaking office so that I can move myself in there instead of being a squatter in Esteban’s office. Oh poor me, she whimpers, take pity.
Half the new windows are up, with the other half going up today. They completely destroyed the plaster around the double set of kitchen windows and I’m really unhappy about that. The surprising side effect of this is that we now do not have shades or blinds on a single window. I don’t know why I didn’t realize that would happen. It’s a bit like living in a people terrarium right now. I have a feeling that the weekend will be spent measuring and installing blinds. More decisions. Fuck. If I can find three decent blinds for the bedroom, I will consider myself successful this weekend, as I still have to compile a CV, get my freelance thing in, get my holiday card stuff finished (My GOD, another one of my cards arrived yesterday! We are so on the same comedy wavelength! Or, you know, all shop at Target. One of the two.) and, dare I even think it, figure out my Christmas gift plan. Because right now, I don’t even know what I’ve got or what I have yet to buy or anything. I’ve informed Esteban that we’re spending Friday evening watching White Christmas, drinking hot brandy drinks, and wrapping. To which he started beat boxing, because he is the whitest man on the planet.
Esteban : How was your day, baby?
Weetabix : Good’ my head is hurty, but other than that, good. How are you feeling?
Esteban : Better. My torso is likewise hurty.
Weetabix : Maybe call the doctor and get a Zpack or something.
Esteban : You know, I’ve only had it for two days. The only reason you call them up and get antibiotics right away is because you have weak asthmatic lungs. They’re going to tell me to just work through it.
Weetabix : You never know. And you don’t want to miss the joy that is prednisone.
Esteban : Did you remember to update your diary today? For the holiday marathon thingy?
Weetabix : I did. Oh, you know what I finally wrote about? I wasn’t going to, but I did. The coozer thing.
Esteban : I thought we weren’t supposed’
Weetabix : We aren’t. But I had to use the word so that you’d know what I was talking about.
Esteban : Heh heh heh’.. (giggles) Coozer.
Weetabix : (sighs)
