Normally, I can tune out the people in the office next door. Normally, upon hearing the laughing and the rearranging of heavy equipment (something they seem to do rather frequently), and especially upon hearing the thundering of tiny feet that heralds a visit from their children, who seem to delight in running up and down the stairs (which are right behind the wall next to where I sit), I can just shrug and do my best to ignore it. But on days when my sinuses decide that the abrupt shift in temperature outside requires a corresponding abrupt bout of intense and painful pressure inside my head, I become much more sensitive to all the thunping and thundering and squealing and yelling. I want to pound on the ceiling and force them to talk in normal tones of voices instead of hollering back and forth to each other. I want to ask them to stop dropping heavy things on the floor in the loft. And I most especially want to reach through the wall and hang up the damn phone because when you call someone and they do not answer even after it rings 20 times, they are not there, and putting them on speaker phone and turning the volume all the way up just so the rest of the world can also hear the phone ring-ring-ring-ring-ring will not make them magically appear to answer the damn thing. It seems unfair, somehow, that with the way our office is laid out, only those of us in the back corner cave are subjected to the neighbor noise – and not just the ones next door to us, but also the lawyers down below, whose normal mode of communication seems to be arguing with each other at the top of their lungs.

I ended up going home early on Monday because I was in so much pain, and even though it eventually subsided, the pain returned in force last night. The joy of sinus hell is that when it gets this bad is is usually also accompanied by enough nausea that I cannot trust my ability to take medication, for fear that the introduction of a pill to my queasy stomach will be all it takes to spur the whole experience on, and having endured the fun of throwing up while in the midst of a sinus attack and feeling as if my head really just might explode from the force of the pressure, it’s something I’m rather loathe to do again.

It is frustrating, this thing with my sinuses. I have been on the allergy shots now for over a year, and while I no longer get the sinus congestion so bad I cannot breathe through my nose for days on end, the sinus pressure attacks have gotten progressively worse. Even more frustrating is that the only medication that seems to wrench my sinuses back into compliance is starting to not work as effectively any more, leaving me pondering ways in which to stab something sharp enough to penetrate my cheek bones, just so that I might reach the damn sinuses and clear them out once and for all.

Happy Holidailies

After the rain we had this week (rain for which the local news kept interrupting Lost on Wednesday night to foam at the mouth about how we are having a Winter Storm – um, not), I checked the forecast for the weekend and decided that since it was to be sunny and nice this weekend, we ought to take advantage of the break in the weather to take care of all the outdoor parts of decorating the house for Christmas. There are fewer pre-Christmas weekends this year, since Christmas falls on a Sunday, and the unfortunate thing about this time of year is that by the time we get home it is too dark to do anything like go tree-hunting, or climb out on the roof to put up lights, so if we are going to do either, it has to be the weekend, or not at all.

Thus, yesterday we got up and despite the overwhelming desire to just say to heck with it and loll around all day in our pajamas doing nothing remotely productive, we instead headed out and tackled the lengthy list of things to get accomplished. First stop breakfast, followed by Costco, since we needed to get stuff for the food drive at church (for which I am one of the team leaders), plus we’re doing the food drive again at work so I wanted to have something to bring in for that. And while we were in the area I needed to get a skein of brown yarn for a gift I am making for Christmas, so we first went to Joann’s, but they have apparently decided, in their infinite lack of wisdom, that the only people who want to buy yarn prefer to buy the foofy fluffy stuff that is only good for scarves, and have been slowly phasing out all their basic solid color worsted. Luckily Michael’s has a marvelous yarn selection – something I have tended to forget, but will remember now that Joann’s is no longer an option – so I found the yarn I needed, plus some yarn that I didn’t, but which needed to come home with me anyway. And then we stopped by CompUSA because even though neither of us can stand that place it is the closest source of ink for our printer.

We managed to get all of this accomplished before noon, so next was to swing by Blockbuster because while transferring all my stuff from the old purse to the new purse last weekend, I stumbled upon a Blockbuster gift card. I am not entirely sure where it came from, but we figured we might as well take advantage of the opportunity to score some free DVD’s, and they just happened to have a copy of Signs, which I have decided I must watch every Halloween, even though it makes me cry every time I see it. And then it was off to the local tree farm (because how cool is it to have a tree farm in your very own town) to cut down our Christmas tree.

I remembered that we prefer the incense cedar, so we went to that section first. But I was appalled to discover that the tree farm decided that trimming all the other types of trees wasn’t bad enough, so they also had to go trimming all the incense cedar trees into perfect, narrow cones. I can only assume that a majority of people prefer their trees to look perfect and fake and that I am apparently in a very small minority, but I prefer my tree to look like, well, a tree. If I am going to go through the bother of cutting down my own tree I want it to have imperfections – little bare spots, or branches sticking out in odd directions. A tree should have personality. If I wanted a perfect cone-shaped tree I’d go buy a damn fake tree, for crying out loud.

Poor Richard got to listen to me mutter and grumble about what the tree farm did to the incense cedars as we tramped around in a futile search for one they might have missed. Finally we headed for the tiny little patch of redwoods, where we discovered that at least the mad shaping monsters had not attacked them too (yet, I suppose) and we finally found our tree.

We moved the plant stand from the living room to the dining room, where it lives each winter so that the tree can take the place of honor in the bay window. We got the tree into its stand with a minimum of effort and then we dragged down all the boxes of Christmas stuff from the attic (wow, we have a lot). Richard sorted through all the lights, which he carefully labels and wraps each year so that he knows now exactly which ones go to which window or spot on the roof. Then he tackled the lights on the garage and the porch while I started going through all the decorations, and between the two of us we managed to get all the decorations on the tree, and about half the lights hung, and most of the other decorations dispersed throughout the house, and all of that just in time, too, because who should call but Beth to say that they would be passing by our town in an hour or two and could they stop by. Since we haven’t actually been able to see them in a year or two, I immediately said yes, and then we zipped around and did some hasty child-proofing (which, in a house with five careening cats, doesn’t require much additional work at all) and threw together some chicken and black bean enchiladas because I wasn’t sure if they’d had dinner, and put a pot of cider on the stove to mull, and Richard vacuumed up the excess pine needles from dragging around a freshly cut tree, and by the time they arrived we were more than ready for them.

It was wonderful to get to see them; to meet their newest son (who is now about four months old and very alert and cute) and watch their little three-year-old happily entertain himself for nearly the entire visit with Richard’s set of antique cast iron trains (which are extremely sturdy and perfect for small people to play with as long as they don’t try to drop one of the cars on themselves because cast iron is a bit heavy). We chatted with Sabs about his job as a cook in a restaurant (he recently finished school to become a chef), and with Beth about what she’s been up to with work, and we talked about kids and cats and their new apartment and it seemed like they had barely been there any time at all when they finally had to go.

Today hasn’t been nearly as busy, although we took advantage of the remaining sun and nice weather, and Richard got the rest of the lights hung outside while I got most of the ones inside up and signed and addressed the first batch of 40 or so Christmas cards. We had the remaining enchiladas for dinner while we watched our usual Sunday shows and I was pretty happy that something I threw together on a whim turned out so darn good. We mulled more cider and turned on the lights on the tree and with all the decorations out and the house smelling faintly like pine, it isn’t too hard to believe that Christmas is only a few weeks away.

It has been a surprisingly nice week. Yes, there have been a few days of rather heavy rain, but even that hasn�t managed to change the fact that it’s been a nice week.

Considering we’ve got the cantata coming up and the director is usually pretty stressed by now, and especially considering that the cantata he picked for us this year is likely one of the hardest things we have ever done (the fact that at times we split into 9 parts might have something to do with that), the fact that choir practice last night was remarkably low key and even mostly enjoyable was a large part of why this has been a nice week. I am having a wonderful time with this cantata because, since there are only two of us tenors and he is more comfortable with the low notes while I tend to prefer the higher ones, when we split, I stay on the top line, and can remain blissfully immune to all the confusion the rest of the tenor and bass section have to deal with. I noted that this meant I got to pretend I was a soprano, not ever having to worry about which part I was supposed to sing, at craft night tonight, and one of the other people there reminded me that this didn’t apply to *all* sopranos (she happens to be a second soprano, so in a piece of music with sometimes nine parts, she *definitely* has to be paying attention). Plus this particular cantata has a number of men-only choral sections that are also actually challenging, so it is a lot of fun to sing.

Another reason why it has been such a lovely week is that I had today off from work. So I got to sleep in a little bit, and then, because I finally managed to schedule an appointment (I have been trying for weeks now) I got a long overdue haircut, during which she chopped off several inches and restored my blah hair to its former almost cute self. Then, because the stars were aligned perfectly and I not only had the free time, but am not even sick, I zipped off to the blood center and spent a few hours sitting in a chair watching Bride and Prejudice (which is the sort of movie that is only entertaining because it is just so truly bad) while they stuck needles in my arm and hooked me up to a machine and sucked a triple donation of platelets out of me because I may not have much in other respects, but by golly, I have oodles of those.

It’s been a few years since I was able to do this sort of donation, so I’d forgotten just how much this tends to wipe me out, but that’s okay, I had the day off! So I went home and took a short nap and then camped out in bed and worked on my knitting and ended up sitting there far longer than I’d intended, all the while having to go to the bathroom more and more desperately but unwilling to move because Zucchini decided that after twelve years of being too nervous to do more than pace around near me and occasionally let me scritch his head before he has to run away in terror, he needed to sit on my lap! And not only was he on my lap, he was purring and batting at the yarn and letting me pet him and I think this means the world might end, but that’s okay, because after twelve years he has finally decided that he can trust me enough to sit on my lap.

I told this to the people at craft night tonight (where there were kittens to play with, which just added to the week of good) and there were enough people there who know about him to realize just how much of an amazing thing this is, and also people there who have cats who are not quite as invisible or as terrified as Zucchini is, but still pretty skittish, and so even though they might not know the whole story about Zucchini, they completely understood why it nearly brought me to tears.

Ever since we hosted Thanksgiving three years ago, Richard’s been wanting to try barbecuing a turkey on his grill. I wasn’t willing to let him try it on the year we were hosting, figuring it might not be wise to experiment with the turkey when one is supposed to feed 17 people with it. And over the years we’ve talked about getting a small turkey and trying it out, but we’ve never managed to get it together enough to do it til now.

Yesterday while I was off braving the (surprisingly uncrowded) malls with my older sister Richard headed off to the Co-op in Davis and picked out a 20 pound free range turkey, which was just about the smallest bird they had left. It was, however, quite frozen, so we weren’t able to grill it yesterday, as had been the original plan. As it turned out, that was just as well, since we managed to grill it up today and have a surprise dinner guest to share it with.

Richard had put the bird in the fridge yesterday to thaw, but it was still pretty frozen by this morning. So switched to the sink-full-of-water method of thawing, which meant by the time we got back home after lunch, it was finally ready to go. We’d pretty much just walked in the door when the doorbell rang, and who should be on the doorstep but Richard’s best friend. He chatted with us while we frantically rummaged through drawers looking for 9-volt batteries in order to swap out the dead ones in the two smoke alarms which had started to beep in a truly lovely manner (luckily neither of the dead ones were located in the most inconvenient smoke alarm, which requires the use of our tallest ladder, and a lot of swearing), and he chatted with us while Richard got the coals started, and I pondered the fact that it would be far more fun to make a dinner for three people instead of just two, and it didn’t take much coercing at all to convince him to stay a few more hours to share in the barbequed turkey experiment. And this meant I had a marvelous excuse for whipping out a few recipes I’d been wanting to try, so I zipped off to the store and loaded up on sweet potatoes and russets and apples and butter and cream and while Richard occasionally poked at the turkey and he and his friend chattered about school and writing and kids and everything else, I stirred together an apple walnut cake. We discovered just how little counter space we really have in our kitchen, because when there are three people in there – one peeling various forms of potatoes and one chopping up said potatoes and the third huddling in the corner where all the baking supplies live stirring up cake and biscuits and the topping for the sweet potatoes, it got a little crowded.

Somehow we managed to time everything perfectly, despite having no idea just how long the turkey might take, and despite the sweet potatoes taking twice as long to cook as the recipe claimed, and despite me having to recalculate the cooking time for the biscuits because I had to toss them in with other stuff which cooked at lower temperatures. Richard tossed the turkey giblets into a pan with a large mound of butter and when they were cooked I chopped them up into tiny pieces and spread them all over two plates and then lured the cats upstairs with promises of treats so we could eat in peace.

The barbequed turkey turned out marvelously, and the rest of the meal was pretty darn good too. I cheated on the gravy and just bought a few cans of pre-made stuff because I didn’t feel like trying to remember how to make my own (it was enough I remembered what to do with the potatoes, since I think this was possibly the second time I’ve ever made mashed potatoes in my life), and we all agreed that in hind sight we should have considered also making some kind of stuffing, but there was more than enough food on the table as it was, especially for only three people, and lots of it left over, even after we’d all done our best to stuff ourselves silly.

The apple cake recipe called for a homemade caramel sauce as well, so I stirred that up, after stuffing a stack of plastic containers at our friend and insisting he fill them up with as much of the leftovers as he wanted, since we figured starving college students should always get first crack at homemade food. And then we sat down to small slivers of the cake, drizzled with the caramel sauce and served with scoops of vanilla bean ice cream and ooh, it was good but so incredibly dense that I knew larger pieces would just make us all explode. I put half the remaining cake on a plate for him to take with him because he has roommates to feed it to and there was no way Richard and I would be able to plow through the rest of it by ourselves before it started to go funny (it is quite possibly one of the heaviest cakes I have ever had, but so very good that I am definitely saving this recipe for the next time I have to make something for a potluck or some other gathering where there will be a lot of people). And then we sent our friend back off to San Francisco, loaded down with boxes of leftovers that I am not sure even made a dent in the remaining pile of food, and now Richard and I have both collapsed wearily into our chairs in front of our computers and I am curious to see if I will be able to stay awake long enough to make it through Desperate Housewives and Grey’s Anatomy because I am so, so full, and somehow a huge turkey feast spent with one of our very dear friends seems to be the perfect way to end the Thanksgiving week.

It was absolutely lovely to be able to sleep in this morning to the oh-so-late hour of 7:30. That’s about when my brain simply could not stand being idle any longer, followed a fraction of a nanosecond after by the arrival of several of the cats, who all could immediately sense that I was finally awake. No matter – I had plenty of knitting to get done, and laundry to wash, so I got started on that, after first feeding the cats because making them wait any longer for their breakfast – even though they have two bowls of kibble upstairs, available to them any time of day or night – would surely have constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

My mom called first, it being Saturday and one of the first weekends in a while where we’ve actually been home to receive the traditional Saturday morning phone call. And then my older sister called, wanting to know if I was interested in going shopping, Christmas is coming and she actually had some time to take advantage of. I pondered my tentative plans for the day – more knitting (because by Christmas I will have made ten snowmen and you know what? They are cute but I am starting to get a wee bit tired of making them) and possibly dragging ourselves out of the house to run errands, and a husband who I knew would much rather hole up in front of his computer to continue writing because November – and thus Nanowrimo – is not yet over. And I also pondered just how long it’s been since my sister and I got to hang out together, just the two of us, so after about two seconds of thought on the whole thing, I noted that my only time limitation was in waiting until I had clothing that wasn’t still sopping wet (see above mention of needing to do laundry), but no problem, because she wasn’t going to be heading out until after lunch anyway.

It was actually a fun trip. I was half afraid the mall would be crowded and horrible with after-Thanksgiving shoppers, but if there was any sort of mad post-holiday rush, it must have occurred yesterday, and so today it wasn’t bad at all. We wandered around Mervyn’s first, and even though I was supposed to be looking for ideas for the few Christmas presents we have left to buy, there were sweaters on sale (and I have been needing some new winter tops) and miraculously I found a purse that meets all the criteria for what I need in a purse and it was also on sale, and then there were these really cute Christmas guest towels and even better, when we went to pay for our finds, even though we’d both managed to lose our 15% off cards, the clerk gave us the discount anyway, plus an additional $10 off the whole check. Plus she did not laugh (well, too much) when I asked for a pair of scissors so I could immediately remove all the tags from my new purse and start using it right away, and my sister also refrained from laughing (too much) at me when I insisted that I needed to go find a quite, flat spot to commence with the transfer of purse contents. So we got small caramel sundaes from Dairy Queen and bemoaned the rather glaring lack of seating in the mall and instead perched on the floor in an out-of-the-way corner so I could dump the old purse into the new one and use it as an excuse to also clean it out. And then we wandered around a few other places and eventually made our way over to Target, where stocking stuffer shopping commenced with great abandon, before we realized that it was way past the time when she said she really had to start heading back. So we both headed home in separate directions and I stopped by the fabric store on my way home so I could pick up a large sack of polyfill (to stuff all those darn snowmen) now I am home, where it is warm and there are cats, and there is pizza on the way for dinner and presents stashed away in secret places.

It is funny, that on Thanksgiving, when we went around the table to say what we are thankful for, my mind went blank and so all I could think to say was that I am thankful for my family. But tonight, it all comes clear. I am thankful for this – for being lucky enough to have a wonderful husband and a nice house, and a family who is (mostly) close enough to visit as often as I want; thankful for yarn and cats and afghans to cuddle into when it is cold outside, and for the change of seasons and most of all, just because.

Somehow or other, through actual planning or just good luck, we managed to get everything we needed for Thanksgiving *before* Thanksgiving. So no one had to do a frantic run to the store for something last minute. Naturally this means, I am sure, that the grocery stores were all open far later than they normally are, just to spite me, but it’s too late to care.

I’d invited my parents to come over for gingerbread pancakes, but they had both come down with the latest version of winter ick, so they stayed home to sniffle in private. I made the pancakes anyway, because we both love them, and also because the beauty of the combination of spices that make up gingerbread is that they get stronger when you let them sit, so they are even better the next day. Then we lolled lazily in front of the television and watched the Macy’s Christmas Parade, which was almost completely free of idiotic chatter until Al Roker showed up. Luckily he did not stick around for long, or else maybe enough people have called the network to ask them to please put a big cork in his mouth because he is not funny, no matter how much he thinks he is, and Thanksgiving is supposed to be about sharing and togetherness and being happy, and not about trying to mentally reach through a television screen and slap duct tape across someone’s mouth because every stupid thing that he says makes your head come that much closer to wanting to explode.

But anyway. Pancakes. Parade. Lazy slumping about the house in our pajamas and bathrobes until we couldn’t put it off any longer and had to go get showered and dressed if we were going to make it down to Richard’s parents’ house in time. And because I am always paranoid about there being horrid amounts of traffic (despite the fact that there never is) I wanted us to leave with an extra hour to spare, just to make sure we would get there in time.

I stirred up the green bean casserole, which is my contribution to Richard’s family dinner – and shockingly, something they had never had before I came along (I know, I’m not sure how they survived either) and we managed to time it so that it came out just as we were ready to head out. I carefully wrapped the casserole dish in towels and slid it into a canvas sack, all in an effort to keep it warm – effort which turned out to be rather pointless, as it went directly into the refrigerator the second we walked in the door anyway. Ah well. We swung by the little independent coffee shop on the way out of town to get blended mocha chillers, which fulfill both the chocolate and caffeine food groups amazingly well, and off we went. And what do you know, there *was* traffic on the way, at least through Fairfield where 680 and 80 and 12 all merge, so while we didn’t need that full extra hour, it did eat up nearly 30 minutes, which was just enough to make me glad that I allow myself to be paranoid about hitting traffic on Thanksgiving day.

I brought my knitting with me because despite thinking I was actually done making snowman, it turns out I am not, and I need to make five more before Christmas. By this time, however, I pretty much have the pattern memorized, and they go pretty quickly. Plus Richard was willing to drive, so I managed to get most of one snowman body done on the drive down, started the second one last night, and have only a few more rows on body number three to finish tonight.

Richard’s parents had invited several family friends over, some of whom have kids, so it was a lively crowd. We sat around and chatted and drank sodas and sparkling cider, and eventually realized that it was starting to get a little late and we were all starting to get a little hungry, and that’s when we all finally realized that the turkey – despite having been put in the oven set to the right temperature and with plenty of time to cook – was refusing to cooperate and was nowhere near done. They took it out briefly so we could warm up all the side dishes, but the turkey kept on stubbornly remaining uncooked. So when we finally sat down to dinner, it was without turkey, which, as one of the friends pointed out, meant that this Thanksgiving would get to be not just a nice gathering, but a memorable event. Plus, really, turkey is only a carrier for gravy, and for a lot of us (okay, me), we’d rather have the side dishes anyway. And there were certainly plenty of those to go around – stuffing and mashed potatoes, two kinds of cranberry sauce, a marvelous jello salad that reminded me very much of a green jello, pineapple, and nut concoction my mom sometimes makes, the green bean casserole, sweet potatoes, rolls, and on and on. And for dessert there was a box of chocolates because Richard’s niece recently started working at See’s, and two kinds of pie. I’m not sure we would have even had room to fit in a bite of turkey in there anyway!

Everyone stayed and talked and laughed until it was late and we were all starting to fall asleep on each other, but everyone was having too much fun to leave. But then suddenly they all did, and the house rang with silence and we all crawled off to bed, over stuffed from a wonderful day.

Today we did the traditional after-Thanksgiving things that Richard’s family does. We all met at a restaurant that is always over-full and crowded, but makes marvelous breakfasts, and we all stuffed ourselves silly with waffles and pancakes and eggs and bagels and coffee. And then we went to this florist that is a few miles down the road from the traditional breakfast spot, where each year every member of the family picks out one ornament from their rather expansive selection. I picked out a cute little glass snowman head wearing a swirly hat with tiny bells, because for some reason I have had snowmen on the brain lately (gee, I wonder why) and Richard picked out a penguin. Later in the afternoon, we all piled into the car and headed off to the movie theater to see the Wallace and Grommet movie, mainly because neither Richard nor I have ever seen Wallace and Grommet before, and Richard’s family decided that it was about time we did. The movie was delightful, and not just because there was a ravenous wererabbit, or because Grommet knits when he is nervous.

The turkey, by the way, was finally done at about 10:30 last night, so when we had the traditional leftovers-for-dinner this evening, we actually got to have turkey along side the leftovers, and despite taking nearly an entire day to finally decide it was willing to be cooked, it turned out delicious. There was more puttering and more talking and laughing, and more knitting, and then we realized that it was getting awfully late and we needed to head home. I drove, since it was too dark outside for me to knit, and we listened to the Barenaked Ladies Christmas album the entire trip and now here we are, and I am thinking that if I can manage to stay awake for even a little bit longer I can finish off those few remaining rows and have three completed snowman bodies, and be that much closer to being done with making cute knitted snowmen for another year.

When my mom sent me the info about this, I knew we needed to go. It was scheduled at the last minute, and noon on a Thursday afternoon is rather a hard time for most people to go anywhere, especially with very little notice. But considering the reason, I knew I had to be there, if only to add to the numbers of people willing to stand up for something they believe in.

I have been baking bread all week, so the house has smelled marvelously of pumpkin and cinnamon and ginger and allspice. I do this every year – fill up the freezer with loaves of pumpkin bread, and then thaw them out the night before, just in time for the church craft and bake sale. It’s been especially nice to have this, at least, to look forward to, since I no longer have any good reason to do the massive holiday cookie baking that I used to be able to do.
Along with the baking, I also decided to toss in a little knitting. I usually don’t bother contributing anything to the craft table, and unlike the past two years the young adults never got a chance to get together and cook up copious batches of pomegranate jelly, but this year, on a whim, I decided to whip up a few more snowmen, since the one I made last year turned out so cute. So I made these guys and what do you know, they sold. In fact, when there were only two left someone asked me if I could make one more, since she wanted three. It was rather a relief to know that they were cute enough that people were actually willing to buy them – so often with craft sales these days not much gets sold.

In years past the annual event has been a craft and bake sale that starts in the morning and stretches through the early afternoon, followed by a dinner in the evening. It’s been like this for as long as most people can remember, so it’s understandable that some people were getting a little burned out by the sheer amount of work. So this year we decided to do things a little different. We condensed the whole event into only three hours, tossed in a rather expansive brunch buffet (with pastries and ham and egg frittata, and even an oatmeal bar with all the toppings), created a ‘bake shop’ with all the pies, cakes and cookies displayed on pretty plates, so people could pick and choose what they wanted (and the baked goods were then boxed for transport), scheduled a few musical performances and set up a number of rather impressive displays around the church, in the form of an open house, so that newcomers could learn about the history (which, since our tiny little church building has been around over 100 years, is extensive) and the various programs that take place. So instead of just showing up in the morning to drop off my bread and browse the crafts before escaping for the rest of the day like I normally do, we actually ended up having to stay a lot longer. Richard was slated to be the information person for the bible study displays, while the recorder ensemble, for which I’m the de facto leader these days, was scheduled to play at 9:30 in the morning. And then there was really no point in me going home after that because the choir sang at 11:30, but we gathered to run through our songs at 10:45, and somewhere in there we had to fit in time to actually eat breakfast and browse the craft tables, and also snatch the very last jar of pomegranate jelly (because someone else *did* have the time to make it, yay!).

I would like to point out that the downside to watching “Into the Woods”, especially if it happens to be one of your favorite plays and you have most of the lyrics of the songs memorized, is that you will then be plagued for days (DAYS) afterwards with random snippets from songs in no particular order. And if it was the whole song running through your head maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, but it is not. It is just pieces that repeat themselves over and over and it is driving me insane. And yet I still hold an unnatural love for Stephen Sondheim’s music and lyrics, so apparently even two line musical ear worms is not enough to change my mind.

Anyway.

I was driving home from work last night and as I came up upon the causeway, I looked up toward the sky and saw something so amazing I literally gasped, all alone in my car. And then I did my very best to get into an accident by craning my neck side to side and trying to see out every window so I could watch what was going on up there, all the while, somehow managing to avoid plowing into anyone else on the road. Considering how erratic the traffic was on the causeway last night I strongly suspect I was not the only one awestruck by the whole thing, although the guy in the little silver blue sports car to my left probably was not even aware of it, because I rather belatedly realized that the dirty looks he was giving me were likely because he thought I was gaping at him. Um. No.

It looked as if nearly every single bird in all of the surrounding few counties decided that last night was the night to fly south for the winter (although admittedly it looked as if they were all heading north, so I’m not sure exactly what to make of that). What first caught my eye was a wide swath of black spots winging across the sky – and it just kept on coming. The expanse of birds crossed over the causeway and disappeared into the distance and when I looked to where they were coming from it seemed as if that also went on forever. It was beyond amazing. Why everyone did not immediately slam into each other from not watching the road I will never know. I wanted so badly to pull over and whip out my camera and try to capture the view of thousands of birds flying overhead in one dense ribbon of black, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get a good picture, and besides, there really isn’t anywhere to pull over on the causeway, and with my luck, even if I *did* pull over, I would naturally be the one the police would notice, which would cause them to pull over and give me a ticket because I strongly suspect ‘taking pictures of all those birds, did you see them?’ would not be an acceptable excuse.

I think what struck me the most was not that there were so many, but that they were not flying in formation. Further along the highway, just as I was coming off the causeway I saw another swath of birds, but these were all in formation, and so their flight path was liberally decorated with uneven v’s. It was a little surreal to see them, especially since as I got nearer to where they were flying the air shimmered as if there was intense heat – a visual effect brought on by the fact that they were maintaining those formations perfectly, but the flapping of their wings caused the entire panorama to flicker. And again, those layers of v’s stretched on either side of the road as far as I could see into the twilight of the sky.

As I pulled off the highway on the exit to home I could see back down the road, and up into the sky where the moon hung amid clouds as if it lay at the end of a road of watery silver. And even though I could not see the birds anymore, I rolled down my window and just for a moment I thought perhaps I could hear them, calling into the night even though by then it was almost too dark to see if they were truly there.

We made our yearly trip up to Apple Hill today. The way things worked out, this was really the only weekend we’ve had so far where we had the entire day (or at least most of it) free.

I’d figured it would be a good time to come as well since we’d miss the Halloween crowds, but it would be too early yet for the Christmas rush, and that did turn out to be true. Unfortunately, we found out that most of the craft vendors stop coming after Halloween (I suspect the weather may be a factor), so many of the places we stopped were a bit more bare than usual.

We stopped at High Hill Ranch first, since that’s where they make the best caramel apples. We’d only picked up coffee on the drive up because we knew we’d be eating pie and things once there, so we had apple donuts for breakfast and left the caramel apples for later. It was a gorgeous day up there – not too hot and not too cold – which made it perfect for the next place on the list, Kids Inc (since they have the best pie). They’ve got a nature walk down a rather steep hill, that winds around just past an orchard of apples and a field of pumpkins, along a tiny creek and under a canopy of trees. We met a few people along the path, but they were all heading in the opposite direction so for the most part we had it all to ourselves. And by the time we had climbed back up that rather steep hill, we were definitely ready for heaping servings of ice cream and apple pie with steaming cider sauce.

We made a few more stop along the route. I found cinnamon apple jelly in one little craft store and bought my yearly jar. We passed by a brewery and Richard tried a few of their beers. We checked out an open house (because I like looking at open houses) that stood on three acres of trees up a hill and featured a lovely glassed in sun porch upstairs that seemed as if it had been built with cats specifically in mind. And then we headed back home, to work on novels (Richard) or knitting (me) and eat our caramel apples for lunch.

This evening I went with my parents to see Into the Woods, which is the latest offering by Davis Musical Theater company, and the first play they’ve done in their new theater. The theater is quite obviously not finished – the walls were just bare sheet rock and the theater area itself was notably lacking in all the finishes which would allow theater-appropriate acoustics. So it was often difficult to hear the singers. But we all know the play practically by heart and everyone made allowances for the building’s still unfinished status and because it is one of my favorite plays, I was extremely relieved that despite the issue with the acoustics, they did a truly wonderful job.