The passing of time. & passing & passing & passing.

I can’t believe we’re already better than halfway through January.*  I’m still grabbing the 2024 diary—the new one doesn’t look like my diary yet**—opening at random & trying to remember where we are.  September?  No, the days are too short.  The sun’s barely up before it goes down again.  November?  I’m sure I just had a birthday, at my age I don’t want another one this soon.***  & then I get to the end of the last page & . . . oh.  Nuts.†  So I have to use this shiny new object I haven’t spilled anything on yet?††  Oh dear.  Isn’t there another choice?†††

I’ve also been distracted from my usual bumpy & rutted track of semi-awareness-of-time‡ by a month of snow & ice, in this town where they don’t plough or sand‡‡.  I like to make jokes about my sixteen-legged, forty-four simultaneous dimensional blast-off, shoulder-dislocating dog. . . but it gets a lot less funny when you can’t stand up reliably, let alone walk, let alone brace yourself against the next time your rocket-launcher dog sees another [BAD LANGUAGE BAD LANGUAGE BAD LANGUAGE] baby [BAD LANGUAGE] seagull.‡‡‡  & when your daily round includes two hours of this death-defying nonsense, it’s very tiring.ɸ

HOWEVER.  For the moment the roads are clear of the standard winter obstructions ɸɸ so I can maybe pull myself together a little & start taking the new year seriously, including posting another variously ranting blog before another week/month/season/decade passes.

Oh, & no, since I’m sure you’re wondering, I haven’t taken my Christmas tree down yet.  It’s only January, what do you think I am, organised?  —Trees.  One small tabletop & one ittybitty desktop.  I’m still revelling in having got them out of the attic ɸɸɸ & decorated them this year.  Before Christmas. Ω  But, you know, not very long before Christmas?  So I may leave them up a while longer.ΩΩ  Easter, say. ΩΩΩ

***

* I’m starting to write this on the 17th.  We are not accepting bets on how long it takes me to finish it.^

^ All right, all right.  It’s the 20th.  But at least it’s not the 20th of February. 

** Don’t tell me about digital.  Or I will bite you.  Digitally.^  At least on paper I know which errors are mine.

^ Yes I know I mean virtually.  In this context I mean digitally. 

*** Unless there are more PRESENTS involved.  I would reconsider if I were getting two birthday hauls one right after the other.

† Macadamia for choice.  You know how the health fiends keep telling you nuts are good for you?  More or less excepting macadamia, which are chiefly fat & . . . fat.  Which is why they’re so tasty, of course.

†† Macadamia nut butter is very oily.

††† NO NOT digital.

‡ I am very grateful for friends to zoom with^, which requires making appointments & WRITING THEM DOWN in your diary, & then remembering to look at your diary.^^  I also infest my stepson & -daughter-in-law’s house for a few scheduled hours every week.^^^  Without these tethers to reality I would be dangerously unmoored, & would rapidly become debauched & promiscuous in a timey sort of way.  Seven hours straight on a fascinating jigsaw puzzle?  Thirty hours without pause rereading all of LOTR?  Sure.  No problem.  No, wait, Genghis.  THANK YOU GOD OR OTHER APPROPRIATE PERSONAGE FOR DOGS.  Although Genghis telling me he’s hungry would not be a good measure for the passage of that ugly thing, time, because he’s always hungry.  However when he starts doing laps^^^^ it’s a good sign that a walk^^^^^ needs to be next on the, ahem, agenda.

^ or even, gasp, occasionally drop round in person.  At the moment that’s an even less good idea than usual because while the ME has been this ferocious, what available surfaces there are have silted up rather.  Because I feel like mould & fungus doesn’t mean I stop ordering more books, & also things like mung beans for sprouting & cranberry powder for my eye-popping fruit blitzes, & things like organic fruit powder & ditto sprouting beans tend to be cheaper if you buy in bulk+, & . . .

+ which also confuses & deflects the addled brain from trying to figure out just what I’m paying per cranberry or per sprout.  Organic is EXPENSIVE.  No Caribbean cruises in my immediate future.  Fortunately I don’t want to go on a Caribbean cruise.  I’d like to make it to Orkney one of these years however.  Genghis would love Orkney.  I don’t think he’d rate the Caribbean cruise.

^^ oops.

^^^ They are so organised.  It makes me tired.  Sigh.+

+ Most things make me tired.  SIIIIIIIIIGH.#

# & yes, of course I allay my FRUSTRATION at having zero-minus energy by OVERUSING caps, ital, etc. 

^^^^ Symptoms that you’re maybe a little excessively preoccupied with your companion animal probably include that, if your companion animal happens to be a dog, & you’re looking at a house for sale, you notice that the downstairs has a nice lap-providing loop for the hyperactive furry, front hall through kitchen/dining/everything room, into back hall, down main hall, repeat.  Once the builders peeled the truly grim fitted carpet off EVERYTHING here, however, I having decided that there were a lot of things I liked about this house beyond a downstairs dog-loop & therefore bought it, vast reaches of original Victorian tile flooring & original Victorian wood planking were revealed.  I had fitted carpet back at the Hampshire cottage, but while the cottage itself was old, it had been Entirely Renovated by someone who wasn’t going to waste any time on details, & the floor was some kind of pressboard crud.  I was expecting something similar here;  when you hacked up a corner of the less than encouraging substance masquerading as carpet, what you thought you saw was even less encouraging.  Surprise!!  Builders & renovators are not a fun time, so you may kind of obsess over any nice surprises.  My Victorian tile floors & Victorian wood planking are certainly worn & beat up—& getting more so by the day, the hour, the excited prancing paw—but that’s what Genghis & I walk on.  But it’s too slippery for taking satisfactory lap-loops.+  It’s bad enough him leaping in place every morning at the foot of the stairs, in expectation of THE FIRST FOOOOOOOOOD OF THE DAY.

+ Poor Pav was already approaching the end of her line when we moved in, & the only kind of laps she was still interested in was the horizontal-human-thigh variety.  Sigh.  I’ve told you that I’m the kind of total prat who can worry about who would have taken Genghis if I hadn’t, because he is a handful!!!!, & you have to be pretty dog-oriented to cope &, since I’m prone to this kind of idiocy, you will UNDERSTAND that I can extract a germ of comfort out of the fact that I was available to adopt Genghis because Pav died way too young.    

^^^^^ If only WALKING were what happened when we get out there.   I could cope if it were WALKING.

‡‡ Although in their listless, laconic don’t-bother-me-my-nails-need-buffing way^, they got around to a few more of the main roads than usual, probably because the bad weather lasted so long they started running out of excuses not to do anything.^^  The road Genghis’ & my back alley mercilessly deposits us on, however, maintained its unrivalled record for flawless mirror ice.  This town is mostly little back roads, but the one we live on, of course, is the skating rink.

^ I have a friend who Knows Things, who says, no, no, it’s not the town’s fault, they don’t have the money for paltry insignificant things like keeping roads & pavements clean & safe—so their citizens don’t fall down & break themselves irreparably & sue the collective rear ends off every admin body in the entire Scottish government.+  To which my perhaps somewhat intemperate response is, So what the spitting dingdong are they doing with all my & everyone else’s tax money?  Hiring professionals to buff their nails?!?!  We turned to other topics at that point, since the conversation showed signs of deteriorating.

+ & think of all the poor, penned up, frustrated dogs longing for a proper walk.  Genghis & I go out whatever the weather, because of that chandelier-hanging# thing he does if he doesn’t get out. 

# YES OF COURSE I HAVE A CHANDELIER.  What do you think I am, a fantasist?#

# I’ve told you about my chandelier before, haven’t I?  Old-blog readers may remember a photo of a small, confused bat hanging from it, back at the cottage in Hampshire, during the famous~ Bat Season.  & YES OF COURSE I brought it with me.~~  Peter bought it for me because we had this giant~~~ English country house~~~~ & THERE WASN’T EVEN ONE CHANDELIER.  Said chandelier~~~~~ hung in my workroom at the old house, my workroom at the cottage, & now hangs in my workroom in this well-wallpapered Scottish Victorian.~~~~~~

~ Famous to me, you better believe it

~~ The chandelier.  Not the bat.  I hope the bat is leading a fulfilled & satisfying life—bats can live a surprisingly long time, so she—since my house was a bat nursery, she was probably a she—may well still be there, having more baby bats, &, I hope, staying in the roof, & not freaking out the current human occupants.

~~~ ramshackle

~~~~ even ramshackle, it was kind of awe-inspiring, or it was to me, whose entire tiny house in Maine would have fit in the front hall.

~~~~~ which is itself tiny.  The bat probably liked it, except for the bright-light aspect.

~~~~~~ Although the workroom is not well-wallpapered.  It’s a nice dark cranberry red.  But it’s nearly all bookshelves, & I didn’t want to be peering through jammed & creaking bookshelves for glimpses of wallpaper.  See previous post.

^^ How much buffing can fingernails stand?

‡‡‡ WHAT?  Urban blasted-screaming-doodah seagulls reproduce ALL YEAR LONG??^

^ This is almost as dire a prospect as the Chump for the next four years.  Not quite.  Almost.  I have very strong feelings about the reprehensibility of seagulls.

ɸ Also, wearing earnest, authoritative hiking boots every day I miss my All Stars. 

ɸɸ Except baby seagulls, which might be categorised in other better regulated towns as nonstandard.^

^ No, I’m still glad I live here.  I’m merely not a fan of town admin.

ɸɸɸ So, yes, fakes, which live in the attic the rest of the year.  But nice fake.  Fake trees have come a long way since those poison-green-confetti things that shed all over you, and plastic poison-green confetti doesn’t smell evocatively of cold northern woods, although it’s marginally easier to sweep up than pine needles.  For those of you who sweep your floors.

Ω & speaking of things this town doesn’t do, it hasn’t taken its revolting Christmas decorations down yet either.  I could do entirely without the local idea of Christmas decorations.  & with the money saved they could maybe plough & sand the streets when it snows.

ΩΩ I have a lot of really nice ornaments.  It seems wasteful I only see them a few weeks^ a year. 

^ sic 

ΩΩΩ I’m sure I say this every year I get the tree(s) up. Before Christmas. If they ever went up after Christmas, it would probably have to be till summer solstice.