The Plus Side of Winter

Although the mountain country of North Carolina in the eighteenth century is a whole different world than this one in which we live, there are elements to aspire to. I give you Drums of Autumn, book four of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander series, which is sprinkled with beautiful scenes and feelings of homeyness:

The winter held off for some time, but snow began to fall in the night on November 28, and we woke to find the world transformed. Every needle on the great blue spruce behind the cabin was frosted, and ragged fringes of ice dripped from the tangle of wild raspberry canes.

The snow wasn’t deep, but its coming changed the shape of daily life. I no longer foraged during the day, save for short trips to the stream for water, and for lingering bits of green cress salvaged from the icy slush along the banks. Jamie and Ian ceased their work of log felling and field clearing, and turned to roof shingling. The winter drew in on us, and we in turn withdrew from the cold, turning inward. 

We had no candles; only grease lamps and rushlights, and the light of the fire that burned constantly on the hearth, blackening the roof beams. We therefore rose at first light, and lay down after supper, in the same rhythm as the creatures of the forest around us. 

We had no sheep yet, and thus no wool to card or spin, no cloth to weave or dye. We had no beehives yet, and thus no wax to boil, no candles to dip. There was no stock to care for, save the horses and mules and the piglet, who had grown considerably in both size and irascibility, and in consequence been exiled to a private compartment in the corner of the crude stable Jamie had built—this itself no more than a large open-fronted shelter with a branch-covered roof. [...] 

With few chores to do outside, there was time to talk, to tell stores, and to dream. Between the useful objects like spoons and bowls, Jamie took time to carve the pieces of a wooden chess set, and spent a good deal of his time trying to inveigle me or Ian into playing with him. 

Ian and Rollo, who both suffered badly from cabin fever, took to visiting Anna Ooka frequently, sometimes going on extended hunting trips with the young men from the village, who were pleased to have the benefit of his and Rollo’s company. 

“The lad speaks the Indian tongue a great deal better than he does Greek or Latin,” Jamie observed with some dourness, watching Ian exchanging cordial insults with an Indian companion as they left on one such excursion. 

“Well, if Marcus Aurelius had written about tracking porcupines, I expect he’d have found a more eager audience,” I replied soothingly. 

Dearly as I loved Ian, I was myself not displeased by his frequent absence. There were definitely times when three was a crowd. 

There is nothing more delightful in life than a feather bed and an open fire—except a feather bed with a warm and tender lover in it. When Ian was gone, we would not trouble with rushlights but would go to bed with the dark, and lie curled together in shared warmth, talking late into the night, laughing and telling stories, sharing our pasts, planning our future, and somewhere in the midst of the talking, pausing to enjoy the wordless pleasures of the present. (Pages 380-383) 

Photo: Snowy evergreens in Bavaria, on a visit to Schloß Neuschwanstein in 2008.

February: Scapegoat, or Menace?

I may have, as we were nearing the end of this January (the coldest January of my life), blithely remarked once or twice that February is routinely the worst month of the year. It has been an important facet of my personal belief system for quite a while. Still, I was feeling optimistic. It can't get worse than this is a sentiment I'm sure many of us have shared as we trudged through or avoided the -30 degree windchills of the polar vortex (parts one and two), oblivious to the fact that though the snow couldn't get much worse, it also wouldn't leave us for another month; instead, the mounds would steadily grow, and the slush and ice would persist, threatening our safety on the roads and sidewalks.

I escaped to Florida at the end of February's first week. When I booked those tickets at the end of October, I had no idea how well-timed the trip would be, how bitterly and persistently cold a winter Michigan would have this year. I just knew I wanted to visit my friend Rachel, and that winter was a good time to be in Florida.

It still hadn't let up when I returned from the long weekend. Now, a week later, it has snowed some more and will snow again tonight -- 100% chance.

*  *  *

And it did snow. I guess it snowed several inches last night. On my walk to work, everything was basically the same, just cleaner and fresher again, the various snow control vehicles repopulating the university campus to clear the paths I reluctantly take.

Today, like yesterday, like Friday and Thursday and Wednesday before it, I cannot bear the thought of my afternoon job. I ate breakfast, I eat lunch, I'm still hungry. My eyes, exhausted, my head, achey, I cannot bear these computer screens I have to stare at. This has to stop. Make it end. Let me go home. I know the particulars of the job are part of the problem. But I think it's really the February-ness of life right now that is to blame. I was feeling pretty good about things until I got entrenched in February, and February told me there was nothing I could do but whine.

*  *  *

At the end of January, we decided to fly to California for "spring" break. The tickets were at first so cheap that I thought (what hubris) that I could simply eat the cost, take it from my monthly budget and not pull the money out of savings, from my jealously guarded travel fund that is really only meant for a long-awaited return to Europe. The plane tickets went up, and then there were hidden fees, and still we bought them. If I continued to buy no new clothes, and didn't eat out, and put my paltry tax refund toward it, surely I could still maintain all my other money.

Nope. I'm slashing savings goals left and right. There is still a week and a half of February to go -- that's almost half this deceptively short month -- and the usually comforting knowledge that my afternoon position pays 50% more than the others can't make up for how pathetic it makes me feel. Because all that money is already spent.

February, when I say goodbye to you, I will be 30,000 feet in the air and heading west. This means I have to bear a few extra hours of February -- we get into Oakland International Airport at just about midnight, Pacific time -- but whatever. Once we've crossed the continental divide, who cares.

Hello Winter

I didn't remember NaBloPoMo existed until around 8pm tonight, at which point I was at work, and it had started snowing for the second time today. More serious snow. It took Cooper half an hour to get from North Campus to Main Street to pick me up, and when we got home we found a car stranded on a patch of ice right in front of our building. More cars have hit that same patch of ice since then. Some guys were pushing cars up the hill for a while. It's sort of ridiculous.

My priorities right now are the bowl of popcorn I just made and watching TV cuddled up on the couch, but I burned the popcorn and Cooper can't stop watching the cars get stuck on ice. He called the police, and says the whole right side of the street might be ice. It sounds like spaceships out there when the wheels spin and don't go.

My hair was well-behaved tonight.

Remember February

This should probably actually lead you back to this post, where it was last used, or else this photo album of Emma's and Maraia's and my spring break to Munich/Slovenia (and Emma just blogged about Slovenia, so, there's that), but the post I used it for in 2010 was actually a hopeful spring post, if you average its content all together. I guess the ominous crows didn't bode well.

For me, this photo will forever symbolize the oppressive length of winter. All that snow, with the palace tiny in the distance. You may love winter. I don't really hate it. But I love hating it. So let's all remember the February theory, and reminisce about cozy sunshine naps under the heavy History of the Byzantine State in that wonderful house I used to live in on Packard.

The antidote to February:

Let's get on with life. Let's go. To the wide open west! To the (somewhat) warmer south! To the I don't have an adjective right now besides snooty and cultured east! To the wilds of the north! The secret is that it's not that warm anywhere nearby, and life here isn't so bad when you're not applying to things constantly and then realizing the devious kitten is sleeping on your computer in the hope that the rickety screen will finally get pushed all the way off so that you have to buy a new computer* and can never afford to travel anywhere ever again.

After you revisit that old post, let's dream about the wilds of the north. In summer!

*Last year, that computer died, after a good, long run. And now, I think, I'm finally on the cusp of a new one. The first such large purchase since I fully learned to understand that this money I have Really Matters. I'm scared. But the clicker button on the MacBook I'm using now clicks 2-4 times every time you hit it. Insanity. And, of course, Word makes the computer boycott me.

Now That the Epiphany Is Long Past: My Family's Christmas Miracle

As I promised on Facebook: the Christmas miracle of sustainability that confronted my family's apathy and laziness with holiday cheer.

Before Christmas, I talked to my brother John. He had to work on the 23rd, and the 26th, and so would only be home two days. I would only be home for three -- three glorious days without work, two of them paid!

My family has suggested cancelling Christmas most years I can remember. There's a lot of work, you know? You have to leave the house and deal with the commercial world, at the most commercial time of year. You have to clean up the living room. You have to purchase presents. Wrapping them? Ha! Christmas trees...can't we just skip the tree this year?

NO.

NO.

NO, we said, every year. I think my high school boyfriend helped me buy a tree one year. John started going with me. Occasionally, my dad agrees to come along, like we used to do.

This year, I talked to John. Then I talked to my mom. "It's probably not worth it this year."

"I guess you're right," she said. "But I like the tree."

The lights on the tree are my favorite part of Christmas. But why support the death of a tree (albeit one from a tree farm) for only two days of maximum enjoyment and so much griping from my dad? He always has to take the ornaments off it, because John and I are back in Ann Arbor. He hates it.

I started to get sad about the tree. I decided to bring my tiny Euro cypress tree from Trader Joe's home with me, complete with its string of ten little LED lights from Ikea. The string was far too large for this itty plant, and the bright white of the LEDs was too strong for so little foliage, and not that lovely goldy twinkle I look forward to. But at least it was a Christmas "tree."

I was pretty sure it was dead, but I would stick it in the cupholder in Emma's car for the ride home, and it could adorn the coffee table in the living room or something. 

(Later confirmed: very, very dead, with such painful little prickles.)

December 23rd came around. We woke up to a sunny morning, and I had no obligations. Just pack and go home. Maybe sample some fancy truffles at the nice cheese and liquor store on the way out of town.

Good choice.

But before Emma and I loaded up her car, before I threw five outfits worth of clothes in a bag -- over-prepared for my three-day trip to cat and dog hair everywhere -- my boyfriend ate his oatmeal, donned his coat, and left my building through the front door.

It was meant to be! Who cares if you throw out a tree after three and a half days of use if you're the second family to enjoy it! It cost nothing! 

I rescued it from the curb, and was delighted to find it was a Frasier fir. And not so little, either...

It took up Emma's entire backseat, and the top foot was sticking out the window, the whole ride home on I-94. 

When I knocked on the door to my parents' house, Finn barked through the window at me in excitement and my dad came to let us in. Emma claims that he looked horrified to open the door and find her standing there with a surprise tree on her back.

Oh well. All he had to do was trim the bottom and the top and stick it in the stand. I did the lights, and we skipped the ornaments, to make it easier for him to take down later. Pretty good for a free tree, right?

I got two ornaments for Christmas, though:

Such cuties.

And there were wrapped presents to open under the tree, and The Hobbit to reread and then watch in the theater as a family, and my Isa-kitten, who treated me fairly well, this time. (Sorry about the pictures in that old post...I think the ones from Facebook aren't working. Rude!)

I'll spare you the saga of the floor-clearing, and the table-clearing, because that is the most boring saga. But the rest was a good, good time. We ate so many clementines and delicious macarons and double-cream brie and roast beef. Yum. The End.

Ghosts of Christmas Past

The attic apartment with Emma. And Table Cat and Haroun. Life there was often louder than life now, living alone, but it was also full of peaceful moments. Watching television on the couch. Finishing book after book. Napping with the cats. Here I was finally finishing the Niccolò series in the glow of our prickly tree.

That year, I had two trees. There was also the little Fraser fir in Detroit, with only one ornament. We kept it until my boyfriend's roommate demanded it be removed for the umpteenth time. Something about fire hazards. She obviously didn't get that it was the tree, not the expensively reupholstered midcentury modern couch, that made the room.

Christmastime in the City

Multiple cities, obviously.

Success

Waking up.

Coming home.

I'd forgotten how magical winter light is with snow on the ground and up the sides of the trees.
* * *
With the first significant snowfall yesterday evening, I'm oh so ready for December. So many snow-smiles today.

But November, now: I did it! I didn't publicize it, but I was doing NaBloPoMo (National Blog Posting Month). I thought about trying my hand at NaNoWriMo again (Novel Writing), but I knew with every fiber of my being that it would not, could not go well. I barely managed a blog post a day, so forget seven pages of fiction.

I bent the rules early on. A post a day, before a midnight-deadline, was impossible. But thirty posts in thirty days is basically the same, and something I could manage. I backdated the late ones so that it would be obvious I had fulfilled my task—a post for every day, if not posted every day. If I'd had internet in my home, I might have kept the rules stricter, but sometimes there's just not enough energy left for a walk back to campus. With this post, I've hit the thirty-post mark. I've got the momentum back. I think, after all those false starts, I've brought the blog back.

Yay!

Crunching Through December

It's horrible-time in horrible-land.

Okay, fine, sentences with meaning. It's crunch time in university-land. Exams, term papers, other papers. Sometimes you get to turn in five in nine days, and also become a year older and not really celebrate! If you are my boyfriend.

It's crunch time in my land, too, but I am crunching toward December 1st, not crunching toward sometime closer to Christmas. Maybe this crunching thing doesn't work as an extended metaphor. I did finally buy some potato chips yesterday! With the end of November end my blogging obligations. (Blobligations? Bloglibations? Neither!) (That syntax back in the non-parenthetical preceding sentence would totally work in German, instead of sounding almost cool but actually just wrong like it does in English.)

This post is the last thing I have to write tonight before I can trudge home through the sludge to my bed. When November ends, NaBloPoMo ends, and I can write without guilt spurring me on, and spend less time commuting to internet (especially once December 9th rolls around and internet is activated in my home). But my boyfriend is busy. Very, importantly busy. So with my new-found time, I am going to make things. I will cook dinners—everyone has to eat, so he can multitask when he sees me. I will cook things I haven't cooked before, and cook for just me. I will read some new books. And I am trying my hardest to hang out with friends. Movies, dinner, coffee shops, grocery shopping. You offer it, I'll take it. I offer it, you better take it.

Even though yesterday, my brother told me,

"this is death week though
fucking term paper
all the weeks are death weeks"

today, he invited me to eat delicious fried rice he's making on Thursday, and next week to an experimental more-authentic pasta alla carbonara. If I play my cards right, John could fill all my free time, be all my friends, and all my new cooking experiences.

No. He does work sometimes.

* * *

I lied. I have other things to do, deadlines to meet. What's with all these December birthdays? It's hard enough to think of and afford Christmas presents for everyone. In fact, I usually fail.

Saturday's birthday girl lives many states away, so her presents should be in the mail. Since they go by mail, her Christmas and birthday gifts should travel together. My sad busy boyfriend's birthday is Wednesday. I don't know which night, if any, I'm taking off to celebrate.

I have been working on card designs, and silly details to go along with things, and creative packaging materials. I'm not so clear on gifts. Once I make it past the early-December birthdays, there's a translation I want to do for someone, and photos to pick to print, and frames to find, and everything else to figure out. Christmas celebration number one is December 17th. There's not a lot of time!

Correlation, Causation, Nope

Apparently, the Rudolph who attends the Grosse Pointe Thanksgiving Parade (and delivers the presents to little Grosse Pointers?) hasn't grown his full antlers yet. He looks pretty sad.
If reindeer delivered fresh-baked bread to Trader Joe's, I could blame Rudolph or Santa or Dasher or Dancer or Prancer or Blitzen for there being no fresh bread that day. They were too busy showing off at the parade.

Festivity and Tree Troubles Anticipated

I remember this commercial from last year fondly. Such pleasant Christmasy sights and sounds. Such a funny little quivering rein-dog at the end. Drew, let's get some Stella. Heyyy, advertising.

In the minds of the semi-insane, it is now justifiably Christmastime. I agree with the lights on the trees—they can go up as soon as the leaves are gone, in my opinion, so they can start saving us from winter despair—and decorated storefronts are acceptable, considering consumerism and all that. (They were not acceptable at Halloween.) 

But my family will never have a Christmas tree before the 22nd or so. We make up for it by leaving the tree up forever once it's there, because lights are nice, and who wants to put the ornaments away? Emma and I did it differently. Knowing we would be gone from Ann Arbor at the crucial Christmas-tree time, we got them the first week of December or so, to make the most of the purchase and prolong the holiday joy. We then suffered as a result of those ten- or fifteen-dollar Scotch Pines for the rest of the year. There were always more needles to be vacuumed.

This is one of my favorite Christmas photos. Taken at the Weihnachtsparty ( = Christmas party) senior year.

Those Scotch Pines at Home Depot were the cheapest trees we could find. We wanted smallish trees, because full-sized trees awaited us (or at least me—Emma and her mom like cute, manageable trees) at home. My current apartment requires something much smaller, though, and I think that means I have to buy a living tree. The best way to get a tiny evergreen is one in a pot, for a lot more than fifteen dollars, but I don't want a fir tree of my own, to plant where afterward? We have too many trees in my parents' backyard as it is. So I might get a houseplant sort of tree and hang lights on it. Maybe a Norfolk Pine. My dad brought one of those home for Christmas one year, along with a traditional Douglas Fir. The Norfolk came with extremely lightweight, somewhat tacky, little gold-colored ornaments that attached with golden pipecleaners, which we saved to use every Christmas until the tree got too big for our house and he donated it to city hall. I hadn't thought about my small array of ornaments being too heavy for a non-traditional Christmas tree. I want to use them. Maybe I'll have to take Emma's advice and get a silly little, totally fake, white or silver tree.

Well Maybe Just Half a Drink More

You know what's great? Sidecars. Look how goldy that beautiful thing is. Look how pretty, the sugar rim. And the shadow!

If only the Coach Insignia, the restaurant at the top of the Ren Cen, was less boring-slick and more cozy-fancy. It's still a great stop on a birthday night (that was almost six months ago but I can still bring it up), and you can't beat the view in this part of the world. It's even better to have a Detroit expert with you, but either way you're so high in the sky and there are so many lights forever, because that's how this giant metro area works.

We were there on the weekend (two weekends ago already!) with Emma and Ali and Drew. Drew's friend joined us, taking a break from night three (?) of the anime convention taking place in the building. Why I didn't take photos, I don't know, but there were teenagers and not-teenagers in all sorts of costumes running all over the place. Not so much in the restaurant. We didn't see many people who were old enough to drink, and if you're doing it all weekend, you probably don't want to be paying Coach Insignia prices. Cocktails, all weekend! Nope.
Ali and Drew posed perfectly. It was their last dating anniversary—next year, they'll be married! I don't know why they wanted to spend it with us, but I enjoyed it. The photos with me in them failed, so I shall allow them to fade out of memory.

Ali's drink was also pretty. It was pomegranate liqueur and champagne. Not as good as the nineteen-dollar Kir Royale I had once by accident (the accident was the price, not the drink). Drew passed up drinks for a huge, delicious piece of apple pie. Also not pictured, because I'm not used to keeping up with my blog.

Now comes the part where we think about winter.

This is what's coming. I'm sure of it. Sunsets, and broken-up ice the whole width of the river. And down coats with fur-trimmed hoods—I got one this year. I'm ready. Just like Emma, pictured above.

My ice-cold indoor nose is not ready, however. I get that computers are hot, but do they have to air-condition the Fishbowl this much? Glühwein, anyone? Such a nice word. Glow-wine. Mmm.

I Wish That I Knew What I Know Now

(...in August of 2010.)*

Internet, I know I suck. I'll talk to you soon. But until then—one of my life lessons from 2010:

Always note the room-to-heat-vent/radiator ratio before committing to move in anywhere. In Michigan, it should really be one-to-one.

*To tell the truth, maybe I don't. Then I might live in an ugly little 1960s apartment with no window in the kitchen and only one parking space. Would that really be better, for potentially more constant but still uncontrollable-by-me heating? Probably not.

Here we go again...

And the snow's only getting thicker. Back to the oversized snow boots for me.

There's Something About February

I have a theory about Februarys. (Novembers too, but that's another story.*) The theory is that Februarys become a problem from which one needs to escape. I guess there's the obvious reason: it's been cold for a while. It's been really cold for over a month. When it's sunny, it usually means it's painfully cold. Last week it was actually easily bearable, but that didn't mean I wanted to walk all the way to campus and climb several flights of stairs and talk about winter and Melancholie in der deutsch(sprachig)en Literatur und Kultur—hey look, my class is on topic. I especially did not want to do this on five hours of sleep. Last week kind of spiraled out of control; everything took longer than anticipated, even when I was working diligently. I'd be working working working and then look up at the corner of my computer screen and yell, "Goddammit!" pointlessly to myself when I realized how much time I'd spent scanning in the original text of a translation I'm working on, for example. And converting files. And trying to combine several PDFs into one for free online. It's not easy. I gave up.

This is what February is like: trekking across a never-ending sheet of ice. (View out the Reichstag in Berlin, Jan. 2009) 

Even if the cold has stretched farther into our lives by February (and we're only a week in, people—the oppression will continue), so has daytime. As January passed, I marveled at the sunlight that was still around in the evenings. Maybe the problem with February is that everything has become normal. The snow is old in Ann Arbor, and probably nonexistent in Wayne County, or if in a given February it's there, it's probably dirty from the roads. The sun has been working on its return for over a month, so it's less of a surprise. Midterms are already happening for those of us unfortunate enough to have the two-plus-midterms-and-a-final schedule, and then the normal ones come at the end of the month before "spring" break. (On Thursday I had to spell out Huitzilopochtli on my exam on the archaeology of the Aztecs, and it was not fun. Seeing as that was the hardest part of the test, though, I can't really complain.) It's still the beginning of the new year, but the charm has worn off, and in the context of a university year, by February we've been walking these same streets to do the same things and not sleep at the right times for the same reasons for over five months.

Traveling somewhere that is somewhat closer to spring than Michigan is a good plan. (Justizpalast, Munich, Feb. 2008)

Let's get on with life. Let's go. To the wide open west! To the (somewhat) warmer south! To the I don't have an adjective right now besides snooty and cultured east! To the wilds of the north! The secret is that it's not that warm anywhere nearby, and life here isn't so bad when you're not applying to things constantly and then realizing the devious kitten is sleeping on your computer in the hope that the rickety screen will finally get pushed all the way off so that you have to buy a new computer and can never afford to travel anywhere ever again.

The last few weekends have been really pleasant, even if they were in wintry Michigan and I can no longer remember the weekdays, just the blur of homework and drooping eyelids. I've watched movies: one night all Emma and I could think of that was appealing then was the German film Downfall and Ten Things I Hate About You (neither of which we had seen in full), but wanted something in between. Somehow we ended up checking out Breakfast At Tiffany's. It's in between chronologically, so they dress nicely and are closer to Nazi Germany, but it's not too comedic or really romantic, just crazy. So crazy. I saw Avatar with my brother and parents one weekend for my dad's birthday, then went to Polish Village in Hamtramck for delicious pork, pork, pork and potatoes and that lovely Central European woodbeams-and-white-walls-and-tall-glasses-of-beer atmosphere. It was still January back then.

The dust caught the light so well, but later I cleaned these stairs and vacuumed more than I have ever vacuumed in my life.

My mom visited me and my brother in Ann Arbor so she could take the car I drive home for repairs, and I visited ex-housemates/best friends that have moved out of our daily lives, and they visited us. We ate cookies, ice cream, Chinese food, chocolate lava cakes made in my new red ramekins. I went to East Quad and saw the last Evening of Scenes I will probably ever see, and watched World War II and Werner Herzog movies. I never went to bed at the right time on Sunday nights. Also, I read. I didn't read enough, but I tried, and once Thursdays came and all my due dates had passed, I curled up in the possibly moldy but always cozy yellow armchair, angled it to catch the most light, and read the History of the Byzantine State for as long as I could without falling asleep. One time, I wore my sunglasses because the light reflecting off the book's pages was too bright. Sometimes, like Table Cat, I would just shut my eyes and enjoy the sun.

Ostrogorsky rarely cites English sources. He wrote his history of Byzantium in German, which remains most clear in the footnotes ('Der Streit über den Titel des ökumenischen Patriarchen, z.B.). There are also sources from languages I can't read—Slavic ones, Greek, Latin, Italian. But most of them are in German and French, and I get excited thinking that for once, my combination of foreign languages is most useful. I read "L'Organisation militaire de l'Égypte byzantine, Fin du monde antique, les Études de papyrologie" and I think I want to be studying French again. Sometimes, in the early afternoons when I have the house to myself, I read the titles out loud to the dozing, indifferent cats and try take my accent as far as it can go.

I spent one Sunday going through my photos from last year to build a free photo book on Shutterfly, and then to pick which ones to order prints of to bring my total cost up to free-shipping level. It took all day, and by the end, all I wanted was to ride the Straßenbahn into town, or eat another piece of that Parisian quiche I have a photo of, or at the very least, get out my trusty travel backpack and return to the straightforward existence of the traveler for a week or two. All week long, I'd find myself thinking of other places I could be. It's not that I was overwhelmed, not like other Februarys. Somehow, I still got drawn into this wanderlust (I didn't realize that was a German loanword but it makes sense!). I would love to be around in this house for more golden sunsets like the one below, but I would also love to leave. There's something about February that just makes you want to be somewhere—maybe anywhere—else.

 *Oh, and November? That's the actual cruellest month. Also, I probably should stop talking about sunlight so much; I have a post from last year called Sonnenlicht = Sunlight. And the first two of the last photos are through the front door; the last is the fairy statue on the porch without anything but air between it and the camera.