Back to What Passes for Normal These Days

With the holiday tree given to the woods to turn slowly to compost and the ornaments packed away, the living room is back to normal, everything in its usual place.  Willow mourned for a day.  As we were taking the ornaments down, she sat and stared and occasionally made a little sound, almost inaudible. She is our most silent cat.  Mingus is the noisiest, Schwartzie in between in vocalizations.  That night, she did not sleep with me, but by Sunday night, she had forgiven me and came back purring again.

We had our first snow of the year on Friday, a wet snow that mixed with rain and then went back to snow.  By noon, it seemed to have stopped after around three very wet inches. The winds have risen since the snow stopped.  They were quiet while snow was falling, big flakes sailing slowly down and then small pellets striking fast.

I’ve filled the workshop and am looking for two alternates, as usually someone drops out in April when the remainder of the fee and 15 poems to form the basis for the conference are all due May first.  I had 3 or 4 times as many submissions this year as last.  I think people just want to be able to do, to learn, to mingle – Covid fatigue.  I know we took the risk of a party with fully vaxxed friends in December.  Nobody got sick.  By now, I don’t think we’d risk it, but Omicron hadn’t reached full force  the Outer Cape yet.

I’ve been doing seed orders with Dale and then on line myself all week.  Last year, the problem was that a lot of newbies were trying their hand at gardening.  Most of them gave up when it turned out to be far more work than they anticipated.  This year it’s the supply chain.  I’ve never seen so many ‘out of stock’ labels. I’ve had to go far afield of the usual places I order seeds from to new places – just as I was forced to last year. Normally, I really enjoy doing seed orders, but last year and this, it’s a bit tense with so many vegetables I want to grow gone missing.

I just finished a superb novel by Pat Barker, THE SILENCE OF THE GIRLS – a strong feminist take on the women’s side of the Trojan war.  I have been reading some of the other feminist versions of Greek mythology.  One of my father’s sisters, Aunt Georgene, who I did not get along with well, nonetheless gave me books including a tome of Greek myths.  So, an avid reader, I gobbled them up. Those and a book of fairy tales my mother found at a yard sale, influenced me greatly.  Certain of those tales are embedded in my mind. they haunt me still.  I didn’t read the Iliad till I was in college, but I read the Odyssey when I was thirteen.  Got it out of the local public library. An adult translation, not the watered down version for kids.

We ate at the beautiful house Felipe Ortriz, a talented painter from Colombia, is renting for a short time longer, when he has a gig elsewhere.  The chef was Ann Wood, whom we’ve been close to since we published her novel BOLT RISK back when we ran Leapfrog books.  A few of our friends actually can cook – and she’s definitely one of them.  Her Littleneck clams (from the Bookstore Restaurant recipe when she was wait staff there) were absolutely delicious.  So was the rest of the meal.  Good company, good food, a wonderful time in the midst of difficult weather.