Contradictions and Contrasts

I do love to curl up on gray-pending-rain days, the kind of days that good authors use for great prose inspiration, the kind of days that make parents go insane, the kind of days that keep the bars full, and binge watch a few episodes of some dark and somber British/Irish/Scottish drama of the lonely, alcoholic, detective running from dark secrets, a detective who is deeply sensitive and takes every victim of his (usually a "his "but could be a "hers") to heart with deep passion. Hubby, who is a bit of Irish finds these dramas way too depressing for binge-watching, although he can become intrigued by an episode or two.😘

I am not a somber depressing person by nature. At least I do not think so, and no one has told me that I am too gloomy. I am usually considered mildly bubbly and friendly while not necessarily outgoing. So what is it about these dramas that grasps me? I am guessing it is the disturbed hero that I want to be saved from his loneliness in the end, by a joyful young person who re-enters his life or a passionate lover who needs him. I also like the puzzle of solving the crime(s). I am not attracted to the many sexual persecutions of helpless women plots, but if they are peripheral to the story, I will continue to watch a nice bloody murder.  When I feel I need something warmer I will watch something like Midsomer Murders, which requires very little investment on my part.

On very rare evenings I will watch the Hallmark channel with its syrupy characters, cliched and formulaic, but I watched due to a need to see nice interior designs or fantasy holiday decorations or just something you can chew gum and easily watch while fixing dinner.

In the early mornings (with my new Christmas gift of a very expensive wireless headphone set) I listen to the BBC In Our Times from my laptop.  I work my way through the years of titles in alphabetic order....now up to the Fs.  Sometimes I just pick arbitrarily.  This morning I listened to a talk from three astrophysicists on the Kuiper Belt.  The discussion left with a tease of perhaps a huge planet just beyond our visibility that may be very powerful.  I guess that makes me a bit of an intellectual...although these days that is considered a bad thing.

As the morning progresses, I also am finishing listening to the audible version of Born A Crime read in Trevor Noah's own voice and wondering how he got to be so smart and compassionate considering his problematic upbringing.  

I did just finish reading The Tenth Island by Diana Marcum and while it made me want to go spend a month or so in the Azores, not sure I enjoyed it all that much.

All of this keeps me distracted from the torture circus in the news.

So just how are you keeping yourself entertained in our Northern Hemisphere quiet months?

Tabor is Ruthless

It is now the time of those in-between days. I am a bit too old for all that self-renewal stuff. Yes it is the coming of a new year and I will try to do better, but I am not going to re-invent myself.   I will make the silent resolution of cleaning out everything.  All the crap  memories that no one wants and that will be a burden to others long after your funeral, unless someone starts a yard fire.  This house has way too many great storage areas! 

There are some things in the guest bedroom and a closet that I will hang onto for a little longer for reasons I do not wish to go into right now.

BUT, the kitchen cupboards are going to be relieved of all those dishes and stuff I have never used during the 12 years we have lived here.  They will go, along with a big batch of books, to the Thrift Shop.  I am going to be ruthless!

Hubby will be going on a long fishing trip in mid-January and that will give me days to go through his stuff in the basement.  I guarantee he will not miss that box of reprints on shrimp reproduction, which should be available digitally these days.  He will not miss the plastic containers for the jam that have gotten brittle.  And how many empty cardboard boxes does anyone need these days?  He will be pleased that I went through the messy drawers in the bathroom.

The most difficult will be boxes of Pacific seashells in that dark corner on the shelf in the basement that are so lovely but hidden away and never seen!  They will remain for another year.

I will be boxing and sending off VHS tapes to digitize---FINALLY.

Later in spring I will go through my closet and toss anything I have not worn for a year.  I will be ruthless.  (Who was ruth (ruthe) anyway?)

But until then, the days between Christmas and New Year's Day usually looks like this around our house.

Happy New Year!

It's All Garbage

Its all about the birth of Jesus, right?

Except on the day after Christmas, it is all about getting the garbage out to the street on time to prevent the fire hazard your house has now become.

The neighbors (a demographically perfect family of four - once divorced) across the street from my daughter's house have a somewhat normal batch of detritus.

Then the neighbors across the street, also a family of four, but liberal and environmentally correct have a very nice and reasonable batch of detritus.

It was early the day after Christmas and all were still asleep and I was sipping coffee and reading my Kindle at my daughter's house when I heard the rumble of the garbage truck. I had on the water shoes I got for Christmas from my son as I dashed out the door to get the stuff from her house out into the street.  My feet got cold and wet as I slopped through the sump pump drainage on the side of the house and drug out piles and piles of stuff---six trips.  This is the demographically larger family of five that keeps the economy going for the rest of us!

Different and Hopefully Better

In the holiday spirit, I printed a new recipe for cookies from one of those foodie sights out in the vast Internet. We really had not been eating too many desserts, unless you count the doughnuts I bought when the grands were here or the pecan pie I bought from the grocery two days ago or all that mint chocolate candy in the Tupperware. Anyway, I was thinking of Christmas cookies to take up to the city for Christmas Day, so we were not going to eat them all!

The recipe was for thumbprint cookies and would allow me to use up more of the abundance of persimmon jam we seem to have by putting a tiny dot in the hollow of the thumbprint. The recipe only required 5 ingredients, including the jam, so the work went easily. I watched them closely in the oven spread into thin flat spheres of sugar and butter with the ones in the back of the tray burning just a little on the bottom. The second batch did the same even though I turned the oven down 5 degrees and cut several minutes off the cooking time. Now I have two dozen thin almost burnt wafers of confection! They look nothing like the thumbprint cookies on the Internet.

Hubby is on the third/fourth day of a nasty head cold and he did not seem at all dismayed by my cooking disaster as he ate two of the broken ones just like the Cookie Monster does. I do not bake cookies as often as I used to, and maybe I am just out of practice.  He is not out of practice on the eating, though.

Today I will drag out an older recipe that I have used in the past and make different and hopefully better cookies.

Scrooge Got His Comeuppance

I was lucky to get the Grands last week. Mom and Dad had one of their dressy Christmas parties in the city with an overnight in the hotel. We took the Grands out for sushi (a fav) and then home for hot cocoa.  

I did not have tiny marshmallows so cut up some big ones.  The next morning I asked them to decorate my tree. It was kind of a surprise when I remembered that hubby and I had donated our full-size artificial tree to the thrift shop last year and only had the small artificial tree to decorate. But it also meant that they were the age where all I had to do was select the boxes of ornaments with the right colors and tell them to put on the decorations. It was fun seeing them discover new (to them) decorations and put stuff on the tree. 

There was no argument or shoving or anything. They worked exactly as if they were Santa's elves! They alone brought the season of joy into my heart.

(I elevate it on a small wooden box that normally holds other things in the basement.)  I put the cover around the base and then I get a really lovely Christmas tree with an aura of specialness this year.  Scrooge has retreated.