elainegrey

I've been delighted to read (on my phone, while the laptop freezes up) the holiday observations everyone has shared. I'm thankful for how you share your lives with me and for the friendship you have blessed me with.

Thanks be to All.

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Yesterday began with greetings to folks back east and a huge section -- slice implies something too small -- of the apple pie Christine bought the day before. She'd also bought a pumpkin pie because she was not sure we decided on a flavor.

We had no particular plans: Christine needs to be working on her papers for the end of quarter, and i've my usual to do list at hand. If anything, choosing to rest more than usual was the goal.

I've painted an inexpensive wooden advent calendar, a triangle plus "stump" tree shape with twenty four little drawers. I enjoyed blending my primaries to get just the right shades of green, playing with matte and gloss medium. I'd imagined overpainting the gold spray paint base of the drawers with red, but it looks just fine without. I couldn't find my fan shaped brush for putting tree branch like texture on the sides with dark and light overpainting, so i sponged the surface.

For our midday meal we indulged in a tray of carrots, celery, and bell pepper strips along with a tray of olives and pickles, complimented with an aged gouda and pimento cheese spread i'd made the night before. This was similar to what, in my childhood, would have been set out to appease us children while the main meal was prepared. It certainly satisfied us. Christine chose a Godzilla movie to watch with a newly critical eye for Orientalist concepts, which we quickly realized was moot as the film is Japanese directed. Christine fell asleep in my lap as i crocheted.

Another visit with my family via video, views of turkey and pies and boiled brussel sprouts.

Then Christine and i took off for a walk. I proposed Alviso, surprising Christine. I think of the town as a little remnant of the old valley, blessed with floods that spared it the horror of sprawl. When we saw the boat ramps, the desire to kayak in an inexpensive inflatable kayak washed over me, like some Toad experience in Wind in the Willows. Splash, splash instead of toot! toot!

'Believe me, my young friend, there is NOTHING—absolute nothing—half so much worth doing as simply messing about in boats. Simply messing,' he went on dreamily: 'messing—about—in—boats; messing——'

'Look ahead, Rat!' cried the Mole suddenly.

It was too late. The boat struck the bank full tilt. The dreamer, the joyous oarsman, lay on his back at the bottom of the boat, his heels in the air.

'—about in boats—or WITH boats,' the Rat went on composedly, picking himself up with a pleasant laugh. 'In or out of 'em, it doesn't matter. Nothing seems really to matter, that's the charm of it. Whether you get away, or whether you don't; whether you arrive at your destination or whether you reach somewhere else, or whether you never get anywhere at all, you're always busy, and you never do anything in particular; and when you've done it there's always something else to do, and you can do it if you like, but you'd much better not. Look here! If you've really nothing else on hand this morning, supposing we drop down the river together, and have a long day of it?'

I liked the trails around Alviso: somehow it seems closer to the bay and sloughs than the local trails.

Home for photo processing (Oy! Lightroom keeps freezing up.), dinner, more pie, and a Richard Gere movie in which few women swooned over him, The Double.

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ETA: Christine carries her grief over the slow loss of her mother to Alzheimer's Disease, and i don't, can't carry it with her. I hold her when she cries and listen as she talks, but the grief isn't mine. She doesn't lean on me much, not like i think i would lean on her (and this journal) if i were in her shoes. Holidays have always been a hard time for Christine, and now there seems to be another strand of pain to stitch through the pattern.