(no subject)
Had a nice peaceful birthday, just the way I like. (I think my sweetie still hasn't noticed that it slipped past him. Hopefully he knows me well enough by now to not freak out when he does find out. He was nice to me without any clue it was supposedly a special day. There's just really not any special indulgence half as cool as that.)
I finally realized at some point in my late twenties that I don't dislike that particular day *because* it's my birthday. I notice it because it's my birthday. I dislike it because I'm always tired that time of year, between my nephesh/lizard brain demanding that I hibernate and the whole Christmas insanity. Well-intentioned people try to get me to celebrate and be excited and I just want to crawl under the bed and sleep for a day or three.
This year I had a nice calm under the radar day. The office manager let me come in late, so I didn't have to hurry at all in the morning, Lori B took me to Burgerville for lunch (and asked about Jimmy, says, "hi Jimmy!"). Had a nice evening, M went off to weights and I had a nice cozy evening playing in the garden, hanging out with him when he got back.
I saw more shooting stars than I ever have, out on the coast a couple weekends ago. M was just coming down with a cold and sacked out early, I hung about drinking Amarula and looking at this great illustrated history of Christianity book he'd picked up at a stop along the way. Went outside to smoke around midnight and the stars were beautiful anyway, so far from the city lights. I looked at them for a while, and started seeing moving ones. It was cool. I finally went in to lie down, discovered I could see a bit of the sky through the skylight in the yurt, and saw one more nice bright one before drifting off to sleep.
(It made me remember this amazing daylight shooting star I saw in Maryland in the late nineties sometime. I think it was Adam who was with me. It lasted so long that I had time to not just think but actually say "Wow holy shit look at that" or something similar, and have it still visible for a couple beats after that. A hurtling ball of flame, pale-yellow-white and green, like the pale green they call sea green. Like the palest copper oxide, now that I think of it. Amazing and very beautiful.)
The raccoons were much better behaved on this camping trip too. The first I heard of them was M (who had been out making the fire) grumbling that he had smacked one right between the eyes with a stick of kindling and it hadn't even had the decency to shake its head, just kinda looked at him and walked away. The little sticks of kindling turned out to be just the thing for reasoning with the raccoons. Didn't really want to chuck something at them big enough to actually damage one, but those little kindling sticks were just the thing. One they figured out that we actually could hit them on the head if we really wanted to, they saw the wisdom of taking the long way around the yard with the picnic table. After that they were pretty cute.
I finally realized at some point in my late twenties that I don't dislike that particular day *because* it's my birthday. I notice it because it's my birthday. I dislike it because I'm always tired that time of year, between my nephesh/lizard brain demanding that I hibernate and the whole Christmas insanity. Well-intentioned people try to get me to celebrate and be excited and I just want to crawl under the bed and sleep for a day or three.
This year I had a nice calm under the radar day. The office manager let me come in late, so I didn't have to hurry at all in the morning, Lori B took me to Burgerville for lunch (and asked about Jimmy, says, "hi Jimmy!"). Had a nice evening, M went off to weights and I had a nice cozy evening playing in the garden, hanging out with him when he got back.
I saw more shooting stars than I ever have, out on the coast a couple weekends ago. M was just coming down with a cold and sacked out early, I hung about drinking Amarula and looking at this great illustrated history of Christianity book he'd picked up at a stop along the way. Went outside to smoke around midnight and the stars were beautiful anyway, so far from the city lights. I looked at them for a while, and started seeing moving ones. It was cool. I finally went in to lie down, discovered I could see a bit of the sky through the skylight in the yurt, and saw one more nice bright one before drifting off to sleep.
(It made me remember this amazing daylight shooting star I saw in Maryland in the late nineties sometime. I think it was Adam who was with me. It lasted so long that I had time to not just think but actually say "Wow holy shit look at that" or something similar, and have it still visible for a couple beats after that. A hurtling ball of flame, pale-yellow-white and green, like the pale green they call sea green. Like the palest copper oxide, now that I think of it. Amazing and very beautiful.)
The raccoons were much better behaved on this camping trip too. The first I heard of them was M (who had been out making the fire) grumbling that he had smacked one right between the eyes with a stick of kindling and it hadn't even had the decency to shake its head, just kinda looked at him and walked away. The little sticks of kindling turned out to be just the thing for reasoning with the raccoons. Didn't really want to chuck something at them big enough to actually damage one, but those little kindling sticks were just the thing. One they figured out that we actually could hit them on the head if we really wanted to, they saw the wisdom of taking the long way around the yard with the picnic table. After that they were pretty cute.