But winter beckons

Thursday Jim and Kelly arrive to help me move the last two piles of tree limbs. The snow flakes swirl around us as we work, sometimes they stick and sometimes they don't. After we finish we head off to dump the load and go to lunch. When I come home I light a fire in my fire pit and start burning yard debris. Looking around in satisfaction they yard keeps getting better and better. A couple more loads and I will have it under control... with a plan.

Then Friday roles around, along with a snowstorm. Saturday it snows all day as well. Winter has not forgotten us. But at least when it melts I will be a step ahead of the game.

I also started writing snippets of a new book, with regards to the dream that I mentioned. On a day off why is it so hard to pick one thing to do? Is it guilt? 

Spring has Sprung

Time progresses.

I woke from a dream the other day, vague but intoxicating. The snippet of it as I came to consciousness, intriguing me in wonder and surprise. The premise? A woman who owns a whore house in post apocalyptic Utah. She builds her house of ill repute next door to a man who owns a livery. A man to protect her and the woman she employs. He was furious in the dream, that of all the property she owns she located her business next to his. She did it for security and because he was sexy.

Interesting dream I thought eyes closed and melted back into it to make it stick, comfortable under the weight of the quilt I made and the heft of the down comforter on top of that. The flash of it all. Dreams are that fast just seconds most of the time.

Today is like that morning I have gone back to bed after seeing Nick of to go fishing with his buddy Corey. I lay under the warmth of the covers in the chilled house. I have a rare day of no plans and alone with myself for a change of pace. What to do? It is sunny outside and the snow has all but gone in the last week. In February this is rare and Spring has come very early. Yard work? Write? Cook? Entertain? Friends? Lay around and watch movies? So many choices and so therefore I wander about the house trying to figure it out and achieving nothing.

This dream is in my mind all the time; haunting me and trying to figure it out... pulling it together for some kind of book, I think that I might write... and some great sentences come to mind from some recent conversations.

I'm going to grow old with you. The grass is not greener on the other side of the fence. No sometimes the grass is lush and verdant.

I treat myself to McDonald's figuring if I eat, I will get motivated. I also make three phone calls to friends....nobody answers I leave messages. As I munch on my lunch on a dirt side road I call my sister she answers and we catch up. She tells me Miss O had made a request, to see the house Nick worked on when we visited last Saturday. Very cute. She has an epic crush on the guy. He is pretty damn cute and special. We finish up our conversation and I head home to work in the yard. As the sun sets and the sky darkens I head into the house to finish this blog. Nick and I plan to make pizza and watch a movie. I have achieved most of the things I wanted to do today.

Also

I forgot Christmas, Seahawk Sundays, two brawls, Big Jim and Bill. Now they have passed by and we are well into the New Year. So perhaps I will make some time to talk about all this stuff. But this is a note to flag my memory and also to not forget that it happened.

Wherewithal

The cold air in this recent front has sucked any moisture out of the air. My lips are rosy red and chapped. I have been boiling water on the stove-top for days, putting moisture into the air. One night at the tail end of my own cold, I woke from sleep in the deep of the night and felt like I was going to crack in half.

An arid desert, dried and desperate for moisture. I got up and started boiling pots of water on the stove and after about an hour sat up in wonder from where I lay on the couch wrapped in a blanket, and inhaled deeply through two nostrils. A defining moment in the end of my cold. Breathing through two nostrils. Inhaling again deeply, alone in the house and room. I felt like I was finally, ah..what is the word..glanced around the living room and noticed the condensation on the glass of my front door. Saturated. The humidity covering the window in steam.Yes I felt saturated, my pores replenished.

In a small town the gossip, tales and stories can make you feel the same. Like saturated.. but in fat; gossip can pervade your pores, blood and bones. Saturated fat.. and gossip.. yep great analogy. Did I forget this part of living here. Maybe.

Now a week later I have recovered from the effects of disease and gossip. But. But then again Nick comes into the house this morning and someone I care about deeply has been arrested. Arrested for working in a bar. Yep that sounds asinine. Arrested for working. So the question of the morning.. who sold him out? Who gossiped about him? Nick and I have this conversation in quiet tones, because this is serious in so many ways. Who sold him out?

These thoughts run through my mind as I head back to my bedroom to finish this blog. A flash of memory runs through my veins. That scene in Heat, where Ashley Judd stands on the portico outside her hotel room and gives a silent signal to her husband Val Kilmer, to not sell him out. In this small tight knit town, that kind of sell out is just wrong. Who the fuck did it?

This time it is my blood that is boiling.


Snitch:

betrayer, blabbermouth, canary, deep throat, double-crosser, fink, informant, narc, nark, rat, sneak, snitcher, source, squealer, stool pigeon, stoolie, tattler, tattletale, tipster, turncoat, weasel, whistle-blower

Step up or step out

The question of the day will he step up or step out. What a heartbreaking weekend. Seahawks lost and Nick is still lost.

Facing a cusp.

Cusp: The dividing line between two very different things.

Friends only or everything. I want it all. I want him to step up and be the man I need him to be. And just once I would like a man to choose me over all.

PHEW... what a peak.
The Holidays are over and I'm busy, busy at work.

Yesterday all day long, I thought of all the things I was going to do today. My day off, in fact I even made a list.

Put away Christmas
Dump
Wood/loft/or Craig's list...exercise bike, tires.
Make cookies and tamales
Get paintings ready to hang at Mama's
Stretch the new canvas

Then I woke up exhausted.

It is the first two days off in a row in nine days after working twelve hour days or more with overtime. I'm fucking tired and just want to lay around and catch up on sleep and the pleasurable things. So that is what I'm going to do. New list...

Lay around in bed
Stay in pajama's
Drink tea in bed with kindle
Open and write in the new journal
Write a blog
Have lunch with Laura
Take a picture of the icicles and ice ceiling that has formed on my roof, that I should go beat with a broom but not gonna...

View out my office window

Good Eats

Mountain Mermaid

Working from home four days a week still leaves the other three days a week at home. Yesterday I wanted to stay in and write, because I wanted to write. Then I thought maybe I should get out and about and write. Nick has mentioned perhaps once or twice that I do spend an inordinate amount of time in my house. This morning in the small amount of time we have together before he heads to work, I informed him I was 'getting out'.

Later after tea and a shower I packed up my laptop in my super cool black leather carrying case,  slipped into my snazzy Franco Sarto boots and walked out the front door into the sun.

Sun. I turned around and went back inside the house and dug my fingers into the copper colored pottery bowl I have laying on my pulpit and grabbed my shades. The fake Dolce & Gabbana I won for free and like so much. Headed down my steps and to the street below. The sides of the streets are still covered in snow from the last snowstorm, but the pavement is bare and wet. As I walk past the Pastime, Misty hollers at me I reply but keep moving to my goal. The first goal is the post office and it is a lackluster day in box 723, two bills I stuff them into my case and Ricardo holds the door for me and we walk down the sidewalk together heading towards the Brick. He informs me he is done working for the day and heading home to take a nap. I inform him I'm going to the library. His heavy accented English I enjoy. He would be damn sexy if he just had front teeth.

Crossing the highway I decide I will pop into the Mountain Mermaid and do a bit of Christmas shopping, perhaps get a sandwich to go. I let myself in the door of the former Foreign Legion Hall and as always I'm amazed by the amount of clutter this place has. (See photo above.) It is organized chaos and I really like it even though I'm not a fan of clutter. I look through the antiques and such finding some promising items then turn to the chalkboard menus. Jen the owner has good food. I check the today's special chalkboard and the special is half a sandwich and soup. The soup choices of the day are 15 Bean and Bacon, Tomato Cream and Pasta Fagioli. I decide to stay for lunch and order Pastrami on whole wheat with the Tomato Cream and one of Jen's yummy cookies. The waitress (Jens Mom Vicki) comes back out after taking my order and informs me that they are out of the Tomato. I hate beans... so the next best choice is the Pasta Fagioli.

Lunch

After my quaint lunch I head down to the library and set up shop under the window below the new lawn I helped install earlier this year. Erin and Shauna the Librarian and her assistant are in and I chat with them occasionally. After an hour or more of solid writing the quiet of the Library is interrupted by the Mayor giving a tour. I pack up and head up the street to see if Tricia owner of the The Crazy Horse Trading Post is open, she is and I finish my Christmas shopping for Tara, buying a tile for her. Next is the wine shop and Cindy and Christi are there we catch up I order some wine and then I head to Markos' and sit down next to Max and Drew and proceed to have two beers. Audrey is bar tending and then soon Tricia and Tom come in. I text Nick letting him know which bar I'm at since he should be in cell range soon and coming to town for his evening cocktail.

I have another beer, and it is now dark. Probably time to head home, I pay my tab and head down the street towards the Brick and Nick texts me asking if I'm still at Markos I call him as I round the corner, glancing in the window of the Brick to see if perhaps he has made it there yet. But can't see inside because the curtains are shut. As I walk past Maggie's Pantry I spy his truck simultaneous to his answering my call. He is at the Brick and I stop and change direction cutting through a snowbank to head to the Brick. He is sitting with Brent and Kathleen. Kathleen of the tile that I bought for my niece. Nick and I share a Prime Rib dinner and he orders me a whiskey press. Scotty the bartenders heavy hand has made it and quite suddenly I find myself soused.

We end the night with the lovely glow of Christmas in my own house for the first time in five years; munching on Nick's gourmet popcorn, cuddled on the couch watching Men in Black 3. A couple of days ago as it dumped snow, Nick and I smoked on the porch he grinned and leaned over to give me a hug and said. "Welcome back to winter in Roslyn."

It's not the size that matters.

It's good to be back. Cheers! And I think of the theme song from Cheers and the spot where it says ... 'where everybody knows your name' trickles through my mind as I have spent the day out and about where I know every-bodies name and they know mine.