~:: Inversion ::~

A day late, and in this economy – lucky to be a dollar short. But here is my traditional Valentine’s greeting, to all who have been kind and patient with me – my dear friends, my lovely valentines!

Finally: the post I started five and a half weeks ago:  (First line was: I am writing a blog today. Line edited out as ineffective.)  And a disclaimer: I turned a corner day before yesterday. I sodon’t wanna be that person who is defeated by some seasonal dip in my chemistry. I am heartened that I started to perk up before the sky turned blue (as it has today, even though it’s cold as iced under-drawers. And I had the Valentine of all Valentines yesterday – but that was AFTER I’d already shaken it off. I think maybe remembering to take my vitamins after eating a pound of dark choc all during the holidays (took me several weeks) might have helped.

The problem: we live in a high mountain valley. Evidently a deep valley.  Like a bowl.  And we’re situated in this conflux of high and low pressure zones that get funneled around through all these mountain ranges around here.  Evidently, were we sit turns into a dead zone every so often. High pressure stalls out over us and nests, like a heavy hen over all us egg-heads. And it holds in the freezing cold, and engine emissions and sneezes and sighs and steam and the air gets very thick. Something like the L.A. smog sometimes. Then everything is dingy gray and still and very, very cold. And we don’t see the sun. And breathing gets dodgy.

Finally, a storm comes in off the ocean, sweeps across the northwest, whisks away the stagnant air and—voila—we are once again brilliant.  But it can take weeks for that to happen. This has been one of our worst years.

Anyway, this is a lot of writing, but also a lot of pictures. So you can sample both, or only one or whatever. If anybody’s still out there.  Are you?  YOO-HOO!!!

THE POST

I’m all messed up.

I started doing genealogy again, just puttering. Maybe it started with going through the boxes and sacks of papers Dad has been sending home with me the past couple of years – and finding things in them that should have gone into his book, which has long been finished. And I  started up again on Mom’s life story, long overdue.  Plus, they “relieved” me (read: fired—from teaching my 13 year olds in Sunday School which did NOT make me happy) so I could to start teaching the Family History class at church. Whatever it was, the Spirit of Elijah, once invited in, has grabbed my face and turned it and my heart to the fathers – but in this totally chaotic and helpless and really pretty head-rocking way.

 If everybody on the planet had just stayed Catholic, all this family history stuff would be SO much easier. Protestants reek at keeping good notes. And so do counties.

After all this was over

the snow that was so tame and pleasant and Christmas-card like didn’t get the memo.

And suddenly, there we were, huddled together in the gray, freezing, endless foggy dreariness.

I started to write a blog three weeks ago and it got as far as “I’m writing a blog post,” and went splat on the floor.

It was probably stupid for me to re-enter that family history site again. I always say bad words when I mess with that thing. But they’ve redone it, and – well – I’ve now got that class to teach – so I ventured into the land of name-and-date chaos, only to find out that the new set-up isn’t half bad. It still has all the misinformation and mixed up families, but it gives me the power to wade in, delete what doesn’t match up with the records and research I’ve done for decades – connecting people in the right family trees, people who I suspect never even knew each other until some fifth generation cousin got the wind up her skirt and connected her guy to some Mary Smith just because he name sounded almost right.

So night after night, sometimes till midnight and beyond, I’ve been sitting here, mercilessly nuking wrong husbands and merging almost right ones.  It is power, and I am mad with it.

The nice thing is that now my family tree doesn’t look so hairy. The bad thing is that it’s like skeet-shooting mosquitoes at dusk in a marshland.

It’s supposed to snow again tonight.

There are so many things I have to do—going through mounds of put-aside paperwork for relevance.  Organizing it. Paying the bills.  Putting together the tax numbers. Making up the last twelve or so ponies I have fabric for (Scooter reminded me that HE doesn’t have one yet), posting the book reviews I passionately wrote up through December and the first of January, making fabric pumpkins, learning something – anything. None of which will bring a cent into the family coffers or address the issue of blooming-mud-on-eight frantic-and-joyful-paws.

 Then Julie the Angel Dog had to be put down today (weeks ago), and now I’m a sopping mess with a headache and stuffed up face.

After we  put her down, we found out that Levi, eight miles away at school and completely not aware of what we are doing—suddenly went haywire at that exact same moment—seizure and agitation and incoherence, and misery—while mother is kissing the Angel Dog good-bye.  I tell Guy about this and he shrugs: “They were connected,” he says. This comes from a man who is practical and pragmatic. We do not know half what we think we know about What’s Really Going On Here.  I am caught between the wonder of it and the sadness.

I am so heavy limbed, I could sleep for a flipping week.

This is why I keep the Christmas lights up. Heavy as a January night can be, you need a little bit of surreality to keep you from involuntary hibernation.

 The Christmas tree is still up. But that may be because it has been devilish cold and dreary here, and eating chocolate hasn’t helped half as much as turning the little colored lights on against the still freezing dark. The outside lights gave up the ghost in the last bout of freezing rain, and I haven’t had the heart to talk them back into life. Feeding the horses has been quite enough hoar-frost-in-the-hair for me, thank you very much.

How come Christianity doesn’t have some attendant sort of zen practice? Like Tai chi. How come my religion doesn’t come with something like that? What would the equivalent of “yoga” be in Hebrew, I wonder?

 And I need another tall bookcase. Very, very badly.

At least, with the mad making of ponies, the craft table is cleaner.

Have I ever mentioned what a rare gift it is to have an intelligent, thoughtful, strong married daughter? Especially when your mom’s phone line is pretty much busy for all eternity. I always tell you how strange it is to have the children leave  – but I haven’t said much about how great it is to have them grow wiser and stronger and finally understand why I yelled at them so much when they were little. Advice from children who know more than you do about things. Important things.  Like nutrition and computer code.

Such a great many wonderful things to do. But sometimes, there are so many, I have no idea what to pick up first. So I don’t pick anything up. Like a ball in a pin-ball machine, careening from almost-starting-this to amost-starting-that, and I am beginning to fear that I will never have enough peace in my head to give form to  this book that keeps pushing against the inside of my skull. I can’t write about anything. So much that’s important, and it’s like I’m too tired to sit down and freeze it into language. Or images. I don’t even what to mess with Photoshop. Picture this ameba-like mass made out of dark green jello lying on my floor, once in a while flailing its flagella around – that’s me.

Of course, I’m writing at this very minute, here – and using lots and lots of words quite easily to say pretty much nothing at all, so I’m still capable.  I want to write about The Undercover Boss thing I thought about. And—there was another moment of brilliance. But I can’t hold on to any one for long, because all these other things keep crowding in line till nothing is brilliant or even remembered. This is really bad. It’s a foggy inside my whole self as it is outside.

I keep chewing gum.  Because I really want cookies.  Lots of them.  All kinds.  Homemade. With milk. Or just chocolate. A whole Trader Joe’s dark with almonds, I could eat. RIGHT NOW. Or a gallon of hot chocolate with peppermint in it. Sipped slowly for three hours. Bottomless and still just hot enough.  I keep wanting to make tiny presents for people. But I am too tired. I SO love Valentine’s day. Real Valentines with lacy paper and little fussy details. But it’s going to snow tomorrow. And how that relates I have no idea.

Reading novels: self-medication.

Is this whining?

I wonder, if I were living where Linda Dawkins lives, or Jenny – would I be feeling this way? If it were summer, moving toward Autumn? Or is this just cabin fever, do you think?

 And Chaz asks me seriously, “Is it just me? Or wasn’t there a time once when everything seemed just regular, just day-to-day without all this drama and trouble it seems like we’ve been going through for years? There was, wasn’t there? Or is it just that I’m older now.  And I’m more aware.” Grown up. Responsible for the state of the world. Yeah.

 I wonder that too.