The dying light

This winter so far has been unusually mild, with 60 degrees and sunny on thanksgiving. Thaghappened a few years ago too. It smelled like spring and we walked down to the chicken house in tshirts to see what the girls were doing. 

This year we contemplated volleyball but ended up skyping my bro that's out of the county instead. Now that I think about it as the bitter cold bears down hard, I wish I would have set up cricket or a bocce game. We just listened to my other bros baby mama chat about black Friday deals on new computers and other unneccasaries. 

Turkey sandwiches with cranberry sauce And goat cheese. Mmm. And separating this years lambs that are to be butchered from the ones kept for breeding and he ones going to butcher. And yes, I feel terrible how excited I am for some new rugs. I am thinking of getting a sturdy needle and turning some of last years pelts into warm slippers. 

Well, despite the coccoon of quilts with a bed warmer I've created, I need to get up and prepare for another day of Christmas decorating. Spray paint and ribbons and sticky hands from evergreen sap will be the fate of my day. Which I think sounds pretty good. 

Universe city

Boston is beautiful this time of year. The slight nip in the air adds to the scholarly and historic tone of the city. And any drab bit of gray is entirely covered with garland and lights like no other time of year could be. It's still the exciting time of the holidays where the old songs aren't too overworked yet and the lights are in full glory. The pubs are filled to the brim with decorations so gawdy that if it wasn't for the overwhelmingness of the entire collection, you might consider them bad taste.

Decor aside, the city is very beautiful and mildly reminiscent of European cities with small brick townhouses with store fronts on the ground floor and very pricy lofts above. I ate the most expensive hamburger of my life and drank the most expensive whiskey and soda I have ever had.

Public transit is amazing and I can only imagine that public health care might be nice to have too. Riding the train or the subway I can't help but notice the slimmer waist sizes from us corn fed mid westerners and I didn't know it if was from walking because parking was a nightmare or from having to fit in small spaces on the subway, the packed restaurants or crowded staircases

I'm always amazed at how quickly adapted and at home I feel in big cities, not quick to ask for directions of check online reviews but rather enjoying the somewhat directed wanderings and experiences new places bring.
It also amazes me how no matter how large the city, it suddenly gets smaller with familiarity. Once you start to recognize the streets and landmarks, the subway routes and main roads, no matter how nonsensically designed they may be, the map dissolves into number of Dunkin doughnut shops or the building next to the park or the crowd gathering around the bronze -pull my finger- statue. It becomes real and attainable and easy to navigate.
It's only at that moment that I think "I have conquered another city!" that the overwhelming lonely feeling washes over me. Kinda like learning all the planets that orbit our sun, just to turn around and realize that every star is a sun and the universe is so vast that the surface hasn't even been scratched. Yes, I know where the farmers market and the fish mongers sell and I found where to get a $10 lobster and walked through the basement shop of Chinatown that sells beta fish and porn, but I look up and imagine thousands of people living here, piled story after story on top of each other with lives and jobs and kids and dreams , suddenly the city seems so vast again. And I didn't even scratch the surface

Blood is thicker than water

Tuesday has turned from garden day to gift making day. My sister and I get together and we trade off what gift ideas to make each week. Last week I picked grandmas BBQ sauce. We spent a ton of time and money on ingredients just to keep tasting it thinking- that's not right. Sneaky grandma left out a

couple secret ingredients. Of course

This week my sis found fruit infused vodkas on pinterest. Good idea in theory. In practice, more vodka was consumed than any recipe would have called for and I watched some tv while she cooked dinner. When I went up to see how dinner was, she could barely stand up. Fuck. Sneaky vodka. But I'd be lying if I blamed the drink not the drinker. 

So when her husband came home, I felt quite embarrassed about the situation. But what was I supposed to do? I love my sister and she loves to drink but something in the Houston blood doesn't trigger the -had enough- cue to stop. So I made small talk and left, her leaning against he wall for support, cussing about how ugly her dinner looked. 

An hour later I got a call from her husband that she fell and was bleeding everywhere. 

He wrestled her to be hospital where a cat scan was followed by many questions about how much she had drank. I sat outside the room as she was disorientedly getting her head stitched up. She made horror movie jokes about being covered in blood and begged to go to work the next day. 6 deep tissue stitches for the nicked artery in her forehead then 17 to close the gash. Very little anesthetic but quite a few nurses to hold her down. 

I snuck away to clear the house of vodka and clean up the pools of blood and the trail. Can I just say nothing is quite as creepy as cleaning up a creepy little house with bloody walls as the trees creek and rain falls outside. 

I looked outside with a lantern for her glasses. The pumpkins  and zombie heads around the doorways didn't help ease my nerves. Blood coagulates rather quickly and I contemplated a career change to crime scene cleanup until I looked at it again in daylight and realized I missed a lot of spots. 

She didn't sober up until we got her back home and the reality hit that she was covered in itchy blood with a big gash in her forehead. She kept wanting to touch it. The doctor said if she would have gone unconscious she would have bled out in less than an hour. 

While I'd like to decidedly state that this is her moment of clarity, I am hesitant to get my hopes up. 

I feel like I'm having these growing pains or mid life crises or some combination of both. My best kitchen worker quit. I miss her terribly as humor really used to get us through whatever. I haven't been to work in days. Rent is due and I don't have it. I spent the first half of the week with my mother who can't go to the store and my dad left her for two weeks with a bunh of sugar free ice cream and sugar free protein bars. 

Ok, so I don't think we will ever make a healthy meal in pill form or anything that comes from a lab. She thought her condition was effecting her bowels and turning them to liquid. Anyone who's had one too many sugar free candies before knows what sorbitol does to you, to anyone. It's sugar free and a very powerful laxative! Yay! Weight loss here we come!

Her fridge was bare. She was eating veggie chips and cheese as a meal. Not veggies cut up but those puffed deep fried things. 

And my brother booked his ticket back to Spain despite not finishing up his med school applications or going through the courts with driving without insurance.  Genius. 

So now I am sitting out front of a dance bar waiting for my friend to come as my dog barks at the drunk girls waking by. Akron looks a lot different than it did 5 years ago when I came back. The crackheads on bikes are still here. So is pints and the college, but that's sprawling and pints has different songs on their jukebox and bartenders not quite as accommodating. 

But maybe it's me that's different.