Day in the Life of an Idiot

 It's been stormy and windy here in Saint Paul for the past several days. We will have brief periods of sun, but then another storm will roll in.

Image: A bird ornament, so you know this is a Solstice Tree....

Shawn and I went out to the Happy Land Tree lot on West 7th to look for a tree on Saturday morning. We arrived just as they were getting their new shipment, so it was a bit chaotic. However, we found a lovely tree and brought it home. The nice thing about the guys at Happy Land is that they will bundle the tree and help you strap it to your car. This is especially good because last year, when they were too busy to help us, Shawn and I tried to do it ourselves and managed to cleverly tie the doors closed. Don't ask. Anyway.... we used to go to the Y's Men's lot which is just across University Avenue from us, but for the last several years their tree choices have been on a scale of sad to sadder. 

The tree from Happy Land is quite wonderful:


Image: Slightly blurry (because my phone is terrible) picture of our Christmas/Solstice Tree for 2021

Because we don't have Mason this year (him being off at college for another two weeks before winter break,) Shawn and I put up the tree as soon as we got it, but didn't bother decorating until Sunday afternoon. We have another tradition where we make spiked eggnog (with brandy) to drink while we decorate, so that was quite lovely. I'm normally in charge of the lights. As we still have one very young, mischievous cat, all the ornaments on the bottom quarter of the tree are unbreakable.


Image: Buttercup sitting on the tree skirt he loves

Meanwhile, our other cat, Buttercup has to be given his own, special sparkly tree skirt otherwise he will run off with the official one. As a bonus, however, he LOVES this particular tree skirt and will gut at it and nuzzle it and all the things. So, he is very well satisfied by this ploy.

The weekend was generally very chill. We have not yet started our holiday baking of too many cookies, but that should commence shortly.

Since we are the sorts who simply exchange lists of the things we want for the holidays, my Solstice shopping is all done already. I am hoping for a nice, low-key holiday with the family. I'm looking forward to having Mason home, even though we just saw him.


Image: Sun ornament; how you know this is actually a Solstice Tree... look, I can't help it that the Christians stole this whole tradition from us! :-)

Looking forward to lengthening light!

 Yesterday I complained about the lack of visible sunshine and lo, I woke up today to a burning ball of fire in the sky! Hooray!

Less fun, I also woke up to the sound of the City of St. Paul removing a tree near the end of our block. I panicked because there is a gorgeous, healthy maple on the boulevard at the end of the block and I would be devastated by its loss. However, after quickly dressing and grabbing a mask, I ran outside to ask the city workers if they knew what had happened to the tree.  When I got to where the workers were, however, I could see by what was left in the ground that what they'd removed was one of the ugly trees that we have a ton of on our block. These trees are awful. I wish I knew what they were called, but they are stunted and unhealthy looking and are constantly sending up little shoots of themselves near their main trunk that are really hard to keep under control.

Here is a picture of a similar tree in front of our immediate neighbor's house. 
'
Image: Okay, so this looks like a decent tree, but see how badly it fills out? This not a nice tree. Don't let it fool you.

But, whatever it is called, according to the city workers, it toppled in the night. I never saw this happen, but apparently the earth just heaved  up and pushed the tree over until it fell into the street. We speculated that it MUST have been sick because the earth very rarely just rejects trees (I mean, these ARE butt ugly, but Mother Nature loves beetles, so...) It's been wet, but normally trees are still heavier than the wet ground. You'd think maybe the wind took it out, but the constant rains have been very gentle. 

I hate to say it, but if any of the trees on the block had to go, I will not miss that one. If you have seen my weed filled yard, you would have to wonder how I could call any plant ugly. But, I have long disliked these particular trees. I think because I am jealous of all the other neighborhoods that have these lovely canopies of tall, broad trees and then there's our block with it's spindly, runty trees. 

Anyway, that was SOME EXCITEMENT as we say around these parts, this morning. 

I am now settled on the sunny porch, hoping to feel inspired enough to write a bit. If not, I'll go play around in the dirt. WITH THE PLANTS I LIKE. 

Image: a tree on Summit Avenue in St. Paul, MN, putting on fall colors (yellow!)

Shawn and I took a short walk today along Summit Avenue. We did it partly to celebrate autumnal equinox, partly to GTFO of the house, and also because I had found a book that gives a rough "walking tour" of the Avenue and its historic houses. The book is called the AIA Guide to St. Paul's Summit Avenue & Hill District and I picked it up at the grocery store, because Kowalski's is on Summit Avenue and fancy like that.

Weirdly, it was kind of hot today, reaching a temperature of 81 F/ 27 C. So we didn't go very far, but we did see some fancy houses and we stopped and read about them, which was kind of a nice diversion.

The only other news in my life is that the class I thought was cancelled is on. I don't know where Kurtis found me three more students, but he did, and that was apparently enough to push me over the threshold into "viable." A contract arrived by 2:00 pm yesterday and the class starts at 12:01 am tomorrow. As you know, I've been working on it for over a month, but I had kind of quit after I thought I was going to be cancelled last week... and so yesterday was a lot of last minute welcome video recording, proofreading, and making sure I had all my ducks in a row--at least for the first week.

I still have gaps? But it shouldn't actually be too difficult to fill them. Besides, this way I have some flexibility about what will be taught next and students can actually give me feedback and suggestions... at least I hope they will.

Otherwise, I had a lovely wrap-up chat about FutureConSF with jiawen on Monday morning. There are still a few panels that I'd like to retrospectively watch, but the nice thing is that I believe FutureConSF is planning to keep them up indefinitely, so they will be there when I am ready for them. They might become what I watch while I'm doing dishes in the afternoon. As mentioned, I don't hate watching Zoom or YouTube so it's kind of relaxing for me and weirdly does work to make me feel connected to a larger SF community.

My friend in Canada turned me on to some art seminars, so I may check those out as well... at least as soon as I feel more done with the written materials for class.

Here is another lovely tree for you all to enjoy.


Image: Another lovely tree, this one with more oranges and reds coming through

 
 Picture: New Kitty, Willow, smiling. 

Since so many of my friends here have an icon of their black cat, I should probably make this one of mine. It is often so hard to take pictures of black cats, but Willow is turning out to be surprisingly photogenic. 

We have discovered that Willow will play fetch. It is massively adorable.

Also, there appears to be sunshine today, a minor miracle. Here is St. Paul, Minnesota, we have been drizzly and overcast for several days in a row. Hopefully, today after I take Shawn in for her physical therapy (she's developed an arthritic thumb), I can drive along the Mississippi River and catch some of the fall colors. When I posted pictures on Facebook a few days ago and I suggested we were close to peak, someone corrected me and said we were at 50%. It just might be that my favorite time is actually not peak. I guess I like it when the yellows, reds, and oranges are contrasted to the few remaining green trees. 


Picture: gray day, but lovely colors of leaves along the mighty Mississippi (Lake Street Bridge, looking south, for the local folks.)

Tonight, I'm planning on going to the meet-and-greet dinner at Gaylaxicon. I don't have to be back at the con then until late Friday, which is good, because I am still frantically trying to get through my revisions for Unjust Cause. Because so many of these changes are bone deep, I've been having days, like yesterday, where i work ALL DAY and end up with a -1 word count. THAT was frustrating. But productive? I like the story a lot better now. I am sort of dreading today's work, however, because i'm approaching a section of the previous stuff that, even when I wrote it, I remember thinking, "Wow, this is sort of off track," so goddess only knows what I will be able to salvage from that. Ah well. I'm still having fun writing again. Deadlines (and a contract) are good for me.

And, for pameladean here is a lovely picture of my big orange, Buttercup:

 It was a fairly busy weekend as such things go.

I worked at Roseville on Saturday for 5 hours.  That went surprisingly slow at times, though possibly my best interaction was with a patron who wanted to tell me all about the memoir he was going to write about how the Pope got assassinated by the cocaine cartels... a MEMOIR. I live for moments like that, honestly.

I came home to a house full of teenagers. Mason had gone to SpringCon with his girlfriend and their mutual friend, Dalton. Dalton had to head out, but we ended up hosting Rosemary for dinner and a seriously rousing game of Trivial Pursuit. There were several points when I laughed so hard I nearly peed. (We have a policy of random guesses when you don't know an answer.)  I was very sleepy by the end of the evening, however.

Sunday, Mason really, really wanted me to see SpringCon (aka MPS Comic Con.) Plus, he'd reported that our friend Theo was there selling art. So, we hopped in the car and stopped by for an hour or so.




If you've never gone and are curious, SpringCon is basically a gigantic dealer's room held in the Grandstand of the State Fair. There are lots of racks of comics, boxes of comics, and artists showing off their work. We said hello to Theo and their partner, Pip, as well as to my friends Barb Shultz and Christopher Jones. There are also people showing off fan related things as well as fan merchandise.

Someone had made a LEGO model of the battle at the end of "Last Jedi."



I took Mason out to lunch (Wing Stop), but we got it to go and sat in the grass at Como Lake and ate. It was a lovely day out and a ton of people were out walking dogs and enjoying the sun.

I only felt bad that I had to cut our picnic short in order for me to book it out to Chaska to the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum, where I TRIED to connect with some friends who were doing a flower-viewing party (in the style of a Japanese hanami).  I was supposed to meet them "under the crab apple blossoms about a mile in on Three Mile Drive," but it was a comedy of errors. For one, even though Three Mile Drive was obviously drivable, I had no idea if there would be parking anywhere near my friends were camped out at. I guess I sort of imagined that the drive would be like Custer State Park, where you can't really pull over anywhere, except in the case of a buffalo emergency.  I really don't know why I got that in my head, but i did, and so I parked in the main lot and proceeded to start to WALK. 

I ended up walking around the parking lot for a stupid amount of time because I was following signs that said "Three Mile Drive." I also have no sense of how far a mile is. Also, when I came to this set of trees, I thought that somehow this was the meet-up spot and they had moved from there to somewhere else.



Thus, I figured I missed them and so decided, instead, to check out the Japanese garden and head home.

The Japanese garden was lovely.



But the trip felt sort of wasted, you know. I sunburnt my nose and wasn't able to off-load ANY of my Japanese candies that I hauled around.

Ah, well. I did get to discover the MN Landscape Arboretum AND had a lovely time exploring the Japanese Gardens there.

Weirdly, I ran into Rosemary's mom, Lisa, on my way out. Like, I could NOT find my friends, whom I'd planned to spend time with, but randomly in this HUGE PLACE, I run into Lisa, who was there with a friend to see the tulip display.  She offered to let me tag along, but I was feeling pretty done (see: sunburned nose).  I offered them a bit of my Japanese candy and then headed for home.



Luckily, it's an easy drive home, despite the distance... or would have been if 35W wasn't under heavy construction.  But, I got home and we had a lovely dinner (I made kielbasa and a potato hash) and I slept like a LOG.

Today I worked at White Bear Lake and I could not have felt more tired and exhausted.  But, hey, I'm working a lot now because after Mason is off school, I'm pretty much taking the month of June off. (Bearskin here we come!)

I'm not the sort to feel general uneasiness, but today is starting out strange and somewhat... je ne sais quois.

The first odd thing that happened this morning was that when Shawn, Mason and I headed to the car to begin the various trips to work and school, we discovered our neighbor's tree completely toppled. At first I thought: Holy shit! It's so dry the trees are just falling over! This is not as crazy/stupid a thought as you might initially think. When it was really windy here the other week, another neighbor's boulevard tree snapped in half, weakened by the drought. (These are small trees, not fully grown ones.) Anyway, upon closer inspection the tree seems to have been half sawed and then broken. Which then led us to wonder: Why? By whom? And to what end? (And, being the neighborhood busybodies that we are: who the frak is going to clean it up???)

Shawn is on that last one. She's emailing the city people probably even as I type.

The other odd bits actually occurred last night (as probably did the tree vandalism/accident). One: our cat Apollo, who died several years ago, seems to have returned in ghost form. 'Pollo was never very bright, nor could he see very well, both of which made him very sweet and endeared him to us forever. But, on thing he used to do in the middle of the night was stand on the landing and make a very distinctive meow that we always took to be him saying: "Hey! Hey, are you guys here???" To which we always responded, "We're [fill in the blank, i.e., in the TV room, bedroom, etc.]" Last night (and not for the first time, either,) I swear I heard 'Pollo. We have another talker in the house, Mr. Inky, but his meows are very different (plus, no offense to 'Pollo, but Inky is smarter... if he wants us, he jumps on the bed and meows in our ears.) Often, too, Inky sleeps at my feet. Anyway, I heard 'Pollo last night and I muttered, "We're upstairs, 'Pollo!" and, just like 'Pollo always used to do I hear a sort of "Murph" (his "okay, then") and then silence. Just like 'Pollo always used to do.

Very odd.

Also, it was a restless night, in general. I'd had too much caffeine at Wyrdsmiths and was stimulated by all the interesting people, conversation, writing, etc., and wasn't exactly sleeping soundly (what, with 'Pollo) and, apparently, neither was Shawn. Shawn has always been a sleep talker. I have a ton of funny (and sweet) stories of the things she's said and done while competely and totally asleep. Normally, I listen in and take notes to tell her about what strange (and/or wonderful) things her subconscious does at night when she's not paying attention. Last night I was so tired/wired, that all I noticed was that she was sitting bolt upright in bed and talking up a STORM. I just yelled out (not unlike with 'Pollo) "Honey, you're talking. Go to sleep." Which she did, only to pop up later and start talking again.

Weird night.

Plus, I think I had dreams that involved being in Cairo again, running from someone or something. I don't really know.

Today I'm feeling just sort of out of sorts and I don't much feel like doing anything other than gardening and napping, despite all my book deadlines and the fact that Shawn and I are going to go grocery shopping in about ten minutes.

Sigh.