catvalente

I have all these essays I want to write, and yet, while sitting in a warm bed waiting for the hot water to come back so I can have a shower, I find the energy for any of them is just not there. So I say fragmented things instead, by way of Day in the Lifeing.

The first snow of the season came on Saturday. I firmly believe that it came--so very late--because we were down by the sea singing carols and lighting the tree with the rest of the island, and singing about snow. We then went home and queued up the Hogfather audiobook on the stereo system, and the first snowflakes immediately appeared. The sun rises; snow falls. Sympathetic magic. Behave as though it's winter, and winter comes.

On Christmas Eve, I'm making pork pies and sherry.

So by midnight or so we had several inches of perfect building snow--that kind that so rarely falls in the northern parts of the country, where cold and dry makes for crumbly, squeaky snow. I grabbed babymonkey and we dashed out in furry hats (mine a Soviet ushanka--what can I say?) and gloves and built ourselves a snowman. the first I'd made in years. It all went up fine, though we didn't rally have traditional materials for face and buttons. I found some marzipan balls in the house, and used them for eyes and clothes, blackcurrants for a mouth, and a big mandarin orange for the nose.

He needed a hat, obviously. So I brought out my grey fedora that I bought in St. Louis (my formal gypsy family will know its significance) and set it on his head. He was clearly Don Draper the snowman.

We made snow angels and threw snowballs for Grimm to catch--they exploded when she snapped her jaws down on them and she licked up all the snow on her muzzle. All in the dark, with snow gently falling still.

On Sunday, thanks to an unexpected rush of income, contract being up, and growing resentment and hatred of my old phone, I broke down and got an iPhone, which means I am officially One of Those, as my computer is also a mac--though I gave justbeast my ipod, so I don't have the full trifecta. Oh my god, the iPhone is magical. It's the first time in a long while that I've held a piece of tech in my hand and thought: wow, this changes everything, and also this technology is magic, and is way better than Star Trek.

Also, it hit me how much I live in the future. It's better than a jet pack, really.

I'm still playing with it and discovering the many ways in which it makes my life easier--if anyone has apps suggestions, preferably the free kind, leave them in the comments. That thesaurus.com shows beautifully on it makes me so happy--it was unusable on my old Centro. This means that I can work in a cafe and still have research and materiel on hand. I can photograph book pages in resolution good enough to actually read. Not to mention Shazam and Simplify Media and all the other really amazing leaps in tech this device provides. Not to mention Minority Report-esque gesture commands. And it's a nice phone, too. Wow. I haven't been so pleased with a purchase in ages. (I always try to buy something for myself with a novel advance check, and then the rest goes into savings. So that I can look at it and remember the work that earned it, and feel like I'm a bit patted on the back for all the long hours.)

We also got our Christmas tree--we drove to a tree farm out in the country and rode the horse-drawn sleigh and everything...and then couldn't find a tree of the right size or type in their forest, so ended up getting it at Lowe's. Sort of MaineFail, there. But the horses were huge and gorgeous. Someday, I really want to have a horse. My ex-husband's family had Appaloosas, and I loved them, and miss them. Someday, with enough time and land. Like everything else.

This morning I have mainly been tending to poor Grimm, upon whom justbeast stepped the other day, so she is poor and still limping some. Though she still chases the mailman along the fence just fine, so I suspect she just wants up on the bed. And I've been thinking about Rosie the Riveter, after whom I named my iPhone, because I name all my tech and because seriously, we can do it.

She's a personal icon for me. Hard work and that gorgeous image of her with her big, strong arms. But I had no idea until today that she was originally a song, that the woman she was modeled after eventually went on to be a pilot. I love her even more. I wish I were better with GarageBand, because there needs to be an industrial/techno remix of that song. And I still want a Byzantine-esque icon of her, parrish_relics -style. I put this wishes out into the ether, like playing Hogfather to a snowless December. To me she's a Kami, one of the many million gods, a female Hephaestus, and she makes me want to work harder, to be better, stronger, more awesome.

To that end, I have a story to finish today, and another to start. And a shower in my very near future. Here's hoping your winter is crisp and icy and pale and bright, like ours, out here on the edge of the world.