The year started with cookies, cookies and more cookies for my annual tea.
Several dozen friends helped me eat them, explored tea varieties, chatted with each other, and in general carried on. The friends, new and old, who came out to socialize and bring their own goodies was the kind of happymaking that has the month's worth of baking worthwhile. When you live alone (but for the wee dog), a house full of incredibly wonderful people is just, simply, joy. Sending out invites for the tea gives me a sort of inventory of who touches my life. It's gratifying that there are so many loved ones who've been in my life for decades. A sadness to offset the joy this year was the day after my tea I attended a memorial service & wake for my friend Nat the III's father, Nat the II. I first met the Nat of my generation somewhere around second or third grade whenhe lived on the next block. He gave the main eulogy at the memorial service for his father which consisted of stories about what it was like to have been his son, and the richness of the values he got from that upbringing. I had such waves of nostalgia as he talked about things I remembered so clearly: the beagle that was the joyous companion of his youth, the treehouse that was the envy of many and scene of all manner of escapades. In later years, I had the pleasure to know his mother, and later his father. as people in their own right, not just as parents. So I wept the sad tears and the happy tears at this memorial service for an incredible man, for the son who has been a great friend to me for decades, and the deeply satisfying feeling of connection that fills the gap where I'm missing family.
The birthday weekend.
When I turned 50 a few years ago, I threw myself the party of a lifetime which has evolved into a tradition. I've had a Hobbit-like birthday party each year since that includes lots of food and song. I roasted a big turkey, whipped some taters, gussied up a salad and invited a flock of friends to eat & sing. A dozen friends took me up on it, including Steve & Arron who also have February birthdays. Prezzies were exchanged. My needlework project during jury duty was quilting some silkscreened & hand painted teadragon panels to make a teacosy for their house.
Chuck came up from down state for the weekend for the first time in years. I baked a gluten free "Happy Birthday to US" cake that so Steve could enjoy it. We did do a bit of singing, though several of the regular singing group were missed.After the partiers left, Chuck and I went down to the Prosperity Social Club to see the Smoking Fez Monkeys, a band I've been following for a few months. Tim, one of the front people, has been a favorite performer for years, but in this band he's like a gem that's found the perfect setting: not only does he get shown off at his best, but the entire band is as wonderful as he is and the synergy is electric. Watching the way they get better, hotter, tighter each time I see them is the kind of musical excitement I haven't had in years. On this particular Saturday the lovely young fiddler got sick, and went home, though the illness was not at all apparent in her playing to that point. We were at a table up front with John, who was invited to sit in with the band. Chuck was enchanted John knew his sister Jean through his working for the National Parks, John got his mandolin & the band went smoking in a different way. They were having so much fun that they kept playing for nearly an hour past their usual time. Rolled home at 1:30, exhausted and exhilarated.
I let Chuck have a sleep in on Sunday while I went to church. He's working two jobs, so he deserves a day to sleep in.After church we went down to Bo Long's for Dim Sum with S &A and found several tables full of their friends, my friends, our friends. After lunch, the four of us went to see the Suspicious Cheese Lords, a sublime, if peculiarly named, male acapella early music group from the DC area, who were performing at St. John Cathedral.
Sunday night finished the weekend with in a mellow mood. Chuck hauled in some wood & built a fire while I finished making home made turkey soup. A house fragrant with wood smoke and soup made an evening of reading by the fire, singing a few songs, and reveling in the pleasure of each other's company a perfect end to a splendid weekend. Of course, for every splendid weekend, there is the opposite - like last weekend which was day 3 & 4 of sick in bed with the cough that will not die. By Saturday, I felt like my ribs had been beat up from the INSIDE from the violence of my coughing. In the mail came notice that the work I'd strained myself to finish was not accepted in the show I entered. Drat. was an unfit companion for man or beast, but mended enough to go back to work on Monday full of cold remedies.
Tuesday we woke up to a world gone white in the most decorative way snow can accumulate. Driving in to work, the roads were clear, if damp, but everything else was white, even chain link fences that looked like they'd been flocked.
Wednesday brought more snow which took hours of shoveling to get me out to work. The weather worsened, and by the end of the work day was foul. So foul that I hit a slush hidden pothole and had a spinout on (the road formerly known as) Liberty, and hit a tree. Angels must have been watching over me, for at the start of rush hour, on a well traveled twisty road, there wasn't a single other car in my path when I went fishtailing all over the road, the Gracecar and a tree were all that were hurt. With some help from a good Samaritan on the UCI payroll, I got out of the snow pile I came to rest in, and moved to the side of the road, facing in the appropriate direction. A bungee cord held the dragging fender parts in place for me to limp up the hill home. The Gracecar is in the shop for some extensive plastic surgery & I'm without wheels till Monday. So, for Sadie Hawkins Day 2008, I'm missing my chance to go running after the lads or out to concerts or much of anything but being grateful for being alive and in one piece, and able to keep drinking tea.
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