Darkness upon us

The real test over how well you weather the winter season is not November - December, when there are lots of holiday lights, parties, gatherings and shopping to keep you busy, happy and over-scheduled. No, it's what happens after that, in the dark and cold of mid-winter, with its short days, long nights and lack of holiday songs and lights,  that separates the hardy from the tender. It's been known to drive some folks mad...but for those willing to lean into those days -- to clarity.

I've noticed most people here in the PNW still have all their Christmas lights up. Maybe they'll take them down this weekend, or later this month, meaning we're truly heading into the darkest time of the year, both mentally and in the light our physical eyes perceive (because although we are actually adding roughly an extra 30 seconds of light each day now that we're past solstice, it doesn't add up to much just yet).  

I have never minded this kind of darkness. When I lived in the San Joaquin Valley, one of my favorite times of year was when the Tule fog rolled in thick and stuck around. Many days it never even cleared -- it was pea soup in the morning, more the thickness of a clear broth at lunch time, and then back to pea soup by about 4 pm again. It was a great time to stay indoors, light a fire, crochet, and listen to music or read. 

It was also a great time of year when I worked at the winery. We'd get stormy days, early on, when we'd have maybe two or four customers visit us over the entire 6 hour period we were open. I loved those slow, catch-up days because they could mean doing tasks I'd never have time for on busier days, or better yet, spending time getting to really know my coworkers as we chatted to pass the time. 

The slow, dark days of mid-winter are a time of hibernation, of incubation, when dreams began to take shape and you feel the new year beginning to take form in terms of goals, ideas and dreams. It is a time for patience and a time for thought and prayer. But without it, you risk just sort of launching into spring without any idea of what needs to stay in your life and what needs to go. It's no coincidence winter is a time when many of us clean out our closets. We're sorting through what works and what doesn't work anymore, both in what we've accumulated in terms of material goods as well as, on the emotional side, what we've accumulated in the form of relationships, habits, ideologies and desires. 

I like to think that when spring finally bursts forth into flower and sun, that I'll have a pretty good idea of what I want out of 2019, what I expect of myself, and what I'm ready to let go of. But without pausing to reflect on those things by using the dark days of mid-winter to sift, reassess and plan, it's all one long, endless road with no turn-outs or rest stops.

Not my kind of journey at all. I think the seasonal darkness has it's own set of special set of gifts it offers, if we're willing to accept them on their own terms. The greatest of which is that when darkness is prevalent, we have the ability to see our own light within much better.

Give to yourself in 2017 (because 2016 sucked)

The magical place where comfort and fashion intersect in 2017.

So by now we are well into the new year and most likely at the point where most people's resolutions have begun to fail. Did you make any? How is your resolve going? I think I read a study once that said by about January 21st, your resolutions are either a regular part of your life or have already fallen by the wayside, for better or worse. With most of us, it's the latter.

My resolutions this year are pure pleasure and therefore have a high probability of success, which it seems to me is the way to go. You can always set new rules for yourself, but for your resolutions (which stems from the word resolve, which means to settle and put to rest) , why not resolve to be a better friend to yourself in one way or another? A royal edict coming down from the Throne of You, towards your most loyal subject, also You.

My first new resolution is to only wear comfortable clothes...starting now...for the rest of my life. I'm heading into my golden years and 55 years of scratchy, snug or constricting clothing is enough for one lifetime, thank you. I'm over those items that look great but feel like CIA-sponsored torture -- snug jeans, pointy toes, scratchy blouses, or high heels that look great

but make you want to hurl them at someone after you've been standing in them for more than 30 minutes.

As we get older I suppose we can expect some times when we feel shitty physically, so why should our clothing inflict it on us now, while we still feel relatively good? Go for those new jeans with the elastic band that smooths out muffin tops and eliminates zipper flaps and buttons. Dance the night away in some nice sandals.

Zen begins in the waistband.

I suspect there will be much better reasons to be bitchy up the road so let's be kind to ourselves now. Choose the fleece, choose life. Choose the flats, choose joy. So very zen.

My other resolution is to be less busy. We've talked about busy-ness here before -- how it runs in cycles and creates balance as we cycle through busy-ness to our seasons of "down time." And all that's true, but if my busy seasons were a nine on the scale before, this year I want them to be a six. 

My new motto is that anything worth putting off until tomorrow is even more worth putting off until next week. Underachieving rules the day.

I've also resolved to get back into my own garden more. With taking several months off, all the beds are now free of pests and I'm hoping to have a honeymoon year with my vegetables. I miss it, and I miss the independence and sustainability I feel when I'm growing a good portion of our food. I'm also hooking up an automatic watering system (which I've resisted for years, mainly because being out in the garden daily doing watering also gives you time to check plants for pests/diseases). But an automatic watering system will allow me freedom from being tethered to the garden in the hottest summer days. Again, it's all about comfort.

I don't know what the official Chinese New Year animal is, but for me this year is going to be soft, fuzzy and slow-moving. The year of the Panda? Sloth? If 2016 took things from us (everything from our sense of justice to an orderly and civilized government), I think 2017 should be all about giving back. 

For me, giving begins in the waistband, moves to the feet, and is made of a soft fabric that doesn't constrict your torso or your mood. So here's to a giving, peaceful 2017. Can't say much about the government's chances, but at least my waistband's not going to annoy me any more.

Sputnik January 1

Dog Diary: Got up January 1, ate breakfast and put coat on to head outside in order to begin fitness resolution for 2017....Fell asleep on sofa instead. 

It happens. Hope your 2017 is exceeding all your expectations so far!

This Year

Summery.

Well, the holidays are almost over and it's back to regular life for now. I received many lovely prezzies but one of my favorites is this tablecloth, which I asked my son for. I have no summer tablecloths and I thought this one would fit the bill well.  Only it was so pretty I had to use it right away. So it's July in December here at the homestead. Put on a t-shirt and have some lemonade.

Death of a Princess.

One of the reasons I was looking for cheerful decor was a bit of sadness over the too-early loss of Carrie Fisher.  "Who'll be my role model now that my role model is gone?" sang her ex-husband Paul Simon on a song called "Call Me Al." Indeed. Carrie Fisher was, in fact my role model when I was a teenager and I saw her in "Star Wars." She inspired a generation of girls to be more than just someone's husband or daughter. Be a senator. Be a freaking star pilot. And be a princess, but not the kind of pastel pink, glittered, pouting and preening model we hold up to girls today...once again, sadly. (Feminism is one step forward and a couple back, it seems sometimes.) Perhaps her death will spurn a revival in being more of a kick-ass kind of princess, who wears a dress she doesn't mind getting covered in dung when she hops into the garbage chute to escape The Evil Empire. I hope so, anyway.

Anyway, 2016 certainly seems to have generated a lot of hostility from the world. I know people who are staying up late this year just to watch it die. In many ways, on a personal level, for me it was good. But in others, it was more like that Facebook friend you have no intimate disagreements with but realize from their posts that they have some serious, off the wall cray-cray going on inside their cray-cray craniums. I don't think many would argue that 2016 was a rollercoaster in many ways.

Tide's coming in to wash another year out to sea.

Maybe in some ways I kept 2016's craziness at a distance. But I will miss Carrie Fisher's wit, guts and humor. I'll miss David Bowie's and Prince's music. And I'll miss having a President who did not make me quite so nervous as this incoming one does. We will see. That's all any of us can say at the year's end, and it's no different this year.

Because either way, it's over and we're marching into 2017. Big Ag and I will be at our favorite Italian restaurant -- early -- where we have a standing New Year's Eve reservation. And we'll sleep through midnight like children who didn't manage to stay up late enough. Nothing wrong with Second Childhood if it lets you sleep well. By the time we wake up we'll have at least seven hours of a successful New Year already behind us.

Happy New Year one and all. Hope you are exactly where you want to be at midnight, even if it's just tucked in and dreaming in your own comfortable bed.

Time of Darkness....and Light

Lights.

It always seems kind of strange to me that the winter solstice is nowhere near the middle of winter...for most of the country, it's more a harbinger of weather to come rather than a mid-point in the season. In my latitude, the summer solstice is the same way. We know on June 21 that summer is just getting started and that the worst (for us) is yet to come. Yet both events mark the extremes in our days -- they will begin getting longer after today, and on June 22 the days will begin to shorten. 

Perhaps more than anything, a solstice celebration is a reason to hope. Oh sure, we know the worst weather is still ahead of us, but also have tangible proof that it isn't going to last forever. In another month or so it will be lighter -- a full half-hour later than it is right now. 

I am not a summer or long day kind of person; my favorite time is this, when days are short but nights are long. Perhaps it's because I worked nights at an Observatory for several years when I was in my 20's, but I think dark nights are the best times to be doing things, especially during this month, when we light them up with colorful decorations and candles. It's actually the one time of year when, to me, there's no such thing as light pollution -- as long as they are cheeful and colorful, the more lights the merrier.

The dark mornings also provide a wonderful, quiet setting to contemplate the close of the year. Such a cliche to talk about how fast the time flies, but our lives move so quickly nowadays that it's sometimes helpful to set aside an hour or three and just think about what's happened in the last 365 days. What was the general mood of your year? Was it frantic, exciting, slow-paced, angry,  blissful or gentle-paced? What milestones did you see pass in 2016?

As we watch the sun set tonight at what would be mid-afternoon for many if it were summer, may we understand where we've just come from and where we want to go, so that once the light returns it will find us with a plan and a purpose, doing what we need to do to get where we want to go. Or if you've arrived at your best destination in life and there is nowhere you want to go, may you find yourself still right here next year, with all bits and pieces intact.

My year personally has been fruitful, and less hectic than 2015 was, although with a decidedly strange autumn due to election madness, which I kind of watched from a distance (and still do). How was your year, in total? One for the books or one for the shredder?

I hope your solstice brings enlightenment and purpose no matter what you've just gone through in this last trip around the sun, and I hope your dark night is spent in a warm place, filled with cheerful warmth and contentment as we officially head into True Winter.

New Year's Eve and I: Still Broken Up

Last night Big Ag and I headed into town for 6 p.m. reservations at a very nice Italian restaurant we always visit on New Year's Eve. My goal each New Year's Eve is to be in bed by 10 p.m. and wake up, hangover-free, feeling fresh and bright on New Year's Day.

New Year's Eve and I broke up many years ago and I have no regrets about ending the relationship.

This year, our dinner featured some great wine and appetizers, plus angel hair pasta with tomato fillets and olive oil, ravioli with scallops and mushrooms in a saffron sauce, and chocolate torté for dessert. It was a grand meal, after which we came home and watched a little of the New Year's specials on television before nodding off to sleep at 10:30 or so.

In the 1980's my New Year's Eve adventures (before we broke up) could have been titled, "A Series of Unfortunate Events." There were relationship breakups and arguments, awful parties and drinking to the point of throwing up. Once I gave up on those "fun" things I and decided to volunteer to work every New Year's Eve at the Observatory, we had bomb threats to the building, ruined fireworks galas and bad accidents on the street leading up to where the building itself was.

Eventually I decided the only prudent thing to do was to break things off completely with  New Year's Eve and never look back. When the kids were little, we'd always make a restaurant run in the late afternoon and bring in lots of good food, and the kids would stay up while I, as per tradition, turned in at 10 p.m. to avoid my "holiday ex."

And so, our breakup has become a permanent thing, and that's a happy thing for me. New Year's Day and I are still going strong as a couple, so with a clear head and bright eyes I wish you all a very happy 2016. 

May you know, or learn, what days to take a chance on (for me, Jan.1) and what to steer clear of (Dec. 31st).

Did you make any? Resolutions, that is.

I don't usually, but for some reason this year I was in the mood.  They are:

Go to the beach more. 
This is an annual item on my list, and I have yet to make good on it. We live on the edge of a continent, and not to take advantage of standing on the point where the Great Land meets the Greater Ocean seems sad.

Weed the vineyard and orchard more more. 
This year I am going to do whatever it takes to keep the star thistle away from my berries, for the sake of my hands (and my legs when I wear shorts down there). It's not going to be fun, but hopefully with better vineyard management I won't have to step as carefully through the thorns to get to my food.

Keep the 20 pounds I lost this year away forever. Wine Country adds a lot of things to one's life, weight being one of them.  This year I finally found a diet that worked for me and, combined with a better exercise regimen, I lost the 20 pounds I'd been carrying around since the first year we lived here.  Yes, everything tastes good in this land, and there is wine with everything and lots and lots of social events featuring great food and wine.  But with excess comes a price, and it must be paid one way or another. I feel much better since taking off the weight and want to keep it that way.

Don't stress so much at Thanksgiving...buying a sous vide system which should solve that problem. Let's face it, hating your "job" by 4 p.m. and feeling like you are constantly behind should be a hallmark of corporate office life, not Thanksgiving dinner at the homestead.  And guests recognize the chaos. This needs to improve.

Get off the property for at least one vacation.
I know, duh, right? All work and no play makes me a resentful homesteader.

Write down and track what varieties of seeds I use so I know what works best.
Novel concept, no? It seems everyone but me does this faithfully. For years I have not done this except for tomatoes and lettuce, but now I'd really like to compare seed varieties for all my vegetable crops, especially pumpkins, squash and cucumbers. 

Make more green manure in the form of cover crops.
This is happening next week, when I plant a cover crop of rye grass in my raised beds.

Sheep?  Alpacas?  Mini-donkeys? Goats?  
This year I hope we can settle this dilemma, get fencing done and get some critters out there for weed control and fertilizer. Plus, isn't half the fun of owning country property having some larger-type livestock?

New Year's Day

I am much more a New Year's Day person than a New Year's Eve person.  Sure, New Year's Eve is as good a day as any to party, but spending the first day of the new year with an ice pack on your head and ibuprofen by your bedside does not bode well for a healthy and prosperous next 364 days, in my opinion.

I love watching the ball drop on television with Anderson and Kathy in Times Square, but when that's over (and I mean real-time, which is 9 p.m. Pacific Standard Time) I'm ready to pack it in for bed, sleeping through my own local midnight and the ensuing madness and excess that comes with it.

Since moving to the coast, we've established some nice New Year's traditions that fit my own beliefs about the holiday nicely.  For New Year's Eve, for instance, we go to a very nice Italian restaurant in town and have an early 6 p.m. dinner.  This year it was angel hair pasta with olive oil and tomatoes, paired with a lovely August Ridge Sangiovese.  I like the idea of knowing (as much as anyone really can I guess) that next year, I will hopefully be sitting in the same restaurant having a lovely  and romantic meal with Big Ag, just like we always do.

 Italian Varietals. Mmm, Mmm, Good!

New Year's Day has its own traditions. The dawn usually breaks very cold and we get up early, clear-headed and chipper (mostly), and head to the beach for the Cayucos Polar Bear Plunge.  This year we had our sons Groceries and TrainMan with us, which made it a family affair, although only Groceries and I were bad-ass enough to brave the cold Pacific waters when they counted down at noon and everyone made a run for the surf. 

Next year both Train Man and Big Ag say they're in for the plunge; I would guess there is a moment of regret (and, dare I say -- envy) amongst those left on land once the countdown is done and there is much celebrating and frolicking in the waves, giving the participants a year's worth of bragging rights for having successfully made the plunge.

I am a bit philosophical about it: Life is like the New Year's Polar Bear Plunge.  You can sit on the safety and comfort of dry land and watch, or run into the surf, for better or worse.  And every minute of every year, you make a choice about which you are going to do. Sometimes it is better to stay on the safety of land, no question....but when the sun is shining and the beach is warm and the water is clean and beckoning, then to stay on land seems a mistake.  But that's just me.

And so, we begin anew.  And like my elegant New Year's Eve Italian dinner, I like to think that next year will offer my family the opportunity to repeat our New Year's Day tradition -- to start the fresh new year by taking a cleansing, invigorating plunge into Mother Sea to wash away the sins of the past year and emerge shivering and happy into the new one.

Happy 2015, everyone! 

Post-plunge thumbs-up!

My Favorite New Year's Poem

By my favorite poet in the world, Charles Bukowski:

Palm Leaves

at exactly 12:00 midnight

1973-74

Los Angeles

it began to rain on the

palm leaves outside my window

the horns and the firecrackers

went off

and it thundered.

I'd gone to bed at 9:00 p.m.

turned out the lights

pulled up the covers --

their gaiety, their happiness

their screams, their paper hats,

their automobiles, their women

their amateur drunks...

New Year's Eve always terrifies me

life knows nothing of years.

now the horns have stopped and

the firecrackers and the thunder...

it's all over in five minutes...

all I hear is the rain

on the palm leaves,

and I think,

I will never understand men,

but I have lived

it through.

Last New Year's Eve, I reflected a bit on where our family was going and where we'd come from.  We had spent the morning in a San Joaquin Valley WalMart, purchasing storage tubs to begin packing our house up for an anticipated move, and I was trying to imagine where I'd be when December 31, 2012, which at the time was exactly one year later.

It's a year later, and I am here.

I have spent my day stoking the pellet stove, adding fresh straw to the chicken run, and deciding where to plant the fruit trees we bought yesterday.  When this round of planting is done, we'll not only have the pomegranate, nectarine, and pineapple guava trees which the house came with, but also a Mission fig, a Blenheim apricot, a Bartlett pear, three cherry trees (two Bings and a Royal Anne), a Granny Smith apple, and an Elberta peach growing on the property. 

 This is good news, as its important to get any trees you will use for food planted on new property ASAP, since it will be a few years before you reap any kind of decent harvest.  So the sooner, the better.  I'm glad we did not procrastinate on this item, as we have on so many others!

My husband has been down in the lower acreage fixing fencing today (one of his favorite chores, surprisingly) and tonight we will take a well-deserved break from our farm work and go into town and to a good dinner at one of the nicer Italian restaurants downtown.

So did I imagine myself here, one year ago, when I was standing in line at WalMart?  Yes and no.  In so many ways, we are living the dream we dreamed one year ago.  And yet, it's different. We are not as self-sufficient here as I thought we would be.  Yes, we will have plenty of food which we've grown ourselves, but we will always need the grid to provide us with electricity for well water, if nothing else.  Our pellet stove is amazingly efficient and cheap to operate, but it also requires  a small amount of electricity, so if we want to be comfortable in winter, we need that as well.

So I've had to come to terms with the fact that here in western United States, there really is no such thing as true and complete energy independence and self-sufficiency...at least not without an extremely great financial investment.  Along with that, we face the fact that we're not getting any younger in many ways, especially when it comes to the manual labor this place requires.  yet it's a labor of love, and so we do all we can and make sure there's always ibuprofen on hand.  

And there are so many positives about where we live. I love the dark night sky here, and the peace and quiet. I love the view from the top of our hill. I love that we're making friends and feel ourselves to be a part of this community and the city that's closest to us.  The air is clean, the water is good, and the sun does not set over our neighbors' roofs, but over the western hills. And even on the hottest day, it still cools off right after sunset.  Our kids are off doing their own things, which we knew would happen, but they're all happy and healthy, as is the rest of our family. Those things are priceless.

I hope you have some priceless things in your life that you're thankful for as we roll over to a new year. If nothing else, you survived the Mayan Apocalypse, and that is surely something to be grateful for.  Happy 2013, everyone.

An over-rated moment?

Well, New Years has come and gone, and I'm happy about that.  I think the December 31 annual gut-blowout is an over-rated one.  Perhaps that's because I have post-traumatic New Year's Eve syndrome from the years gone by.


About 30 years ago, I ran into an absurdly awful stream of bad New Year's Eve happenings.  I don't remember them all, and the ones I do remember are kind of funny now.  Thankfully none of them were truly tragic, but they were just disappointing because I totally bought into the hype that your New Year's plans must be fabulous, your company enthralling, and your locale breathtaking if you wanted to continue having any more of the same during the next calendar year.  


After one particularly crappy New Year's Eve where I attended a party where 30 people were expected, but only 3 showed up (counting me, who felt too bad to leave the hosts and depart for a better party), I decided working on New Years was the ticket.  The first year, I evacuated my workplace due to a bomb threat, and the year after that, I stood on the lawn in freezing rain with a walkie-talkie as the people who'd rented my place of employment for the night attempted to set off fireworks to no avail. I got pneumonia. After that, I spent a couple of New Year's Eves with truly awful dates, and after that, I just gave up.


But the last New Year I celebrated, back in 1990, found me at a beautiful mountain resort, in a glamorous evening gown, dancing the night away and drinking champagne.  At midnight, my date and I retired to the huge fireplace in the lobby and a bellman brought us two glasses of champagne.


New Year's was great that year.  Mission accomplished.  And right then, I decided to quit while I was ahead.  Ever since then, I have a nice dinner and am sound asleep at 10 p.m. and wake up refreshed and happy on January 1.  I think it's better this way.  


Besides, whose New Year is it anyway?  Jewish New Year is in September, and everyone from the Vikings to the Romans celebrated the Winter Solstice as the beginning of another year.  The government's own fiscal year runs from October to October, and some Neo-Pagans I know think the New Year starts November 1.  So perhaps it's all much ado about nothing.


But one thing I do know.  If you consider this first day of the calendar year to be an auspicious occasion, where what you do and feel will set the tone for the entire year to come (as many seem to superstitiously believe) I can tell you that hugging the toilet to unload your last load of alcohol, or grabbing the Tylenol to ward off a hangover headache, is probably not a good tone to set.  Not telling anyone what to do at all, I'm just sayin'. 


I'm not a superstitious person, but meeting January 1 with a clear head and hopeful heart can't hurt anything, you know?

Should old acquaintance be forgot

...and never brought to mind?  That's how the traditional New Year's song goes, anyway.  The last few days have been spent looking at houses out west of here, and meeting with realtors both on the buying and selling end of things. We also rented a storage space to hold some furniture and stuff we need to clear out, in order to make our current home look a bit less cluttered and sellable.


 I can't help but wonder how we'll feel when we look back on what we did this last week of 2011, or if we'll look back on it at all.  Will we fondly and nostalgically call to mind this house, which is currently being stripped of all its personal quirks and personality in order to make it more attractive to buyers?  Will we recall standing in line at WalMart this morning, buying storage tubs,  plus cheesecake and champagne for later on?  Will we idealize and wax nostalgic over the years spent here, in this home, this neighborhood, or this geographic area? Or will New Year's 2012 be a celebration of thankfulness and joy that we got the heck out of here and took our little tribe over the hills to a place with cleaner air, more scenic surroundings and better career opportunities?


Here is what I am hoping:  That exactly 365 days from today I will take a moment, perhaps in front of a nice fire or woodstove or maybe standing out in a field behind our house with chickens and goats busy around my feet, gaze off into the distance for a moment, and think back on today.  I hope I'm thankful to God for my blessings. I hope I reflect on the journey taken, reflect on how far we came in 2012, and feel proud and satisfied. I hope our family, especially our children, are well and happy pursuing the lives of their choice, and I hope the same for everyone who reads this.


I hope that wherever we are living 365 days from today, that we'll all remember to take that cup of kindness yet for Auld Lang Syne.

Reflect

We are heading into the Solstice this week -- the shortest day and longest night of the year.  We have a scant 9 hours of daylight right now, and even when the sun shines (after the fog lifts) it's a wan, weak sun up there.  This is one more reason why it's the perfect time of year to fill the house with lights -- the menorah, the Christmas tree -- and celebrate indoors with those we love.


But there's also another inner celebration we can have, if we so choose.  One cold day or evening, we can light a few candles, put on some calming music, and sit and quietly reflect on the year that's about to leave us, and the life that went into the past before it.  We can think about those we knew who are gone from the earth or just from our lives.  We can remember the people we used to be, without recrimination or regret -- just reflection.  


The year is closing, and a new one is beginning.  It's time to dream about all the good things that are possible as we start again -- heading back towards longer days and shorter nights, and all the possibilities a new year brings with it.


It's a good time to take a moment, and take stock.