Solstice
Ah, winter. Here at last.

The air turns chill, halls bedecked with holly boughs, Sugar-Plum Fairies streaming out of the methadone clinics to spread seasonally appropriate cheer, mornings waking to new snow fallen in a soft, even layer under a wide, unbroken crust of crystalline particulate ice lit to sparkling by a low winter sun.

At least that's the impression I get from the Christmas cards I've been getting. Wintry landscapes all looks so jauntily festive, but it just seems damp to me. After all, snow is just a bunch of weaponized water you can't drink. When I see snow, I see half a street-long mud-puddle in potentia. All that snow has to melt some time. But my snow=water fixation might be somewhat skewed by the fact that the only snow I see falling happens inside those little globes with the plastic villages inside. Intellectually I know your house doesn't have to be under (to scale would be roughly) 60 feet of water and then have your entire house and its immediate environs lifted and agitated by the hand of a giant in order to get snow, but with so little personal experience with it, I just can't be 100% sure.

Plus there's all the shoveling and the associated freezing that frankly I'm happy to do without.

Winter in Riverside means we have 4 out of 7 days per week under 80°. Usually. Just not Christmas Day this year, apparently. Today, this first day of winter, we're supposed to dip waaay down to about 76°. To ward off the chill, this is the time of year where I generally start wearing underwear again beneath my shorts.

It also means that, as of today, my oldest boy is off for Christmas Vacation. It's not "Winter Vacation" because he goes to Catholic school. They want me to know very specifically that this is Christmas vacation. In the spring we get Easter vacation, not the pagan "spring break," which is fine because I think at 6 years old, my son is too young for Jello shots anyway.

While I appreciate the no-alarm-clock period of my life resuming for this oh-so-short period of time, it does mean that I have to find some way to entertain three children instead of just two during the day now. They kill a couple of hours every afternoon sewing shirts for the Kathie Lee Gifford Collection up in the attic with the pack of refugee kids who also live here, but I can't leave them up there all day. The last thing I need is another hostage situation.

How this affects you, my loyal Bucketeers, is that fresh Bucket might be delayed by an hour or so every day as I leave behind Gluttony (for now... I'm gearing up for Saturday and Sunday) and indulge in a lot more Sloth. Hopefully the overall dip in personal commitment will not be reflected in the quality of my blogposts.

Alas, it is too late to save this one.



This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.7


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 10:48 AM