News for Christmas - Part II

For the last four days, I've been looking out at a snowy landscape through a cage of icicles, some of which are three feet long. It's pretty awesome. My room is the only room in the house that gets this view, because my gutter was hit by lightning and tore off a couple of years ago, and we never managed to afford to replace it, so melting snow drips off the roof instead of down the gutter and through the pipes.

Ry has a couple of short icicles, and there are a few on the eucalyptus tree outside the kitchen window, but none like these. I know that icicles generally only come when you have a poorly-insulated roof, and that I'm not only damaging the planet but pushing my heating bills up exponentially, and that sooner or later I will need to buy and install insulation. But I sure will miss the icicles.

I can never decide if they remind me of happy, soft Christmassy things, or of my late ex-boyfriend Julian. A bit of both, I think, depending on my mood.

I do love snow, but I have to admit I'm getting tired of it. If all of this snow had come in early December - or even late December - I would have been thrilled. Snow makes me feel Christmassy. But by January, my winter spirit has petered out, and I'm ready to start moving forward and thinking of spring, and I find the snow and ice sort of irritating, especially now that the Christmas decorations have been packed away. (Not in my room - my little tree is still up. I don't believe in bad luck, and tend to live according to my own internal clock.)

Although the day that it fell, everything was so beautiful it hurt. I love the way the world looks when the trees are still covered in it, when it rests on all the branches without melting or falling off. Everything looks so pure and untouched, and it gives me this cozy feeling.

Actually, I often feel that way with snow. I first noticed it when I read Wendy Rosnau's "The Spy Wore Red", from her Spy Games miniseries. Nadja and Bjorn are hunting the assassin Holic Reznik, but a blizzard comes and they get stuck in a cabin in a ski lodge in Austria, and for a couple of days there's nothing for them to do except eat stew and drink coffee, curl up in front of the fire in chenille blankets, and make love. I love those scenes in the book, and every time I read it I feel like I'm there with them. It's like the world stops for a little while, and I feel like I'm all wrapped up in a safe little corner where nothing can touch me, except the few people I let in. I also get it when I play Pokemon Diamond / Pearl / Platinum, when I come out of Mount Coronet into the snowy route up to Snowpoint City.

Yes, I'm a geek. So shoot me.

I know I was supposed to give you the rest of my news updates, but honestly, I'm not quite sure what else there is to tell you. I went to see my Dad and stepmother two Mondays ago. Stacy - my middle-up sister - was there, too (there's me, who's smack-bang in the middle, and then there's my middle-up sister (Stacy), my eldest sister (Haley), my middle-down sister (Amy) and my youngest sister (Lucy)), which was really nice - I hadn't seen her in a couple months. We ate chicken and mashed potatoes - Jackie puts swede and parsnip in with hers, and it doesn't sound like it should be good, but somehow it's wonderful - and salad, and I left feeling like even more of a blimp than normal. (My stepmother and my two stepsisters are just built very small, even though my sisters are only a couple inches shorter than me, and even when I'm slim I often feel like the Hulk around them, but never more than right now. I really HAVE to get back to the gym this coming week, if the snow clears up enough for me to get there.)

And, of course, we swapped presents, and I got a neat book from Haley (I can't remember the title, but it was something about being a fabulous queen who loves herself, and looked very funny), and some purple candleholders from Stacy(which I told her will look fantastic in my cherry-pink bathroom), and my Dad and Jackie gave me some coconut stuff from The Body Shop, and a vast makeup set (goodness knows what I'm going to do with all that stuff; most of my makeup is handbag-sized), and a book about vintage handbags, and a wonderful wintry handbag in black and white and emerald green, and a check. Which I fully intended to use to open a new savings account (my last one got totally cleared out when my Dad had his stroke back in April), but in the end I had to put it in the bank to pay my loan this month. Hopefully I'll be able to take most of it back out next week, though, and start a holiday fun with it. It won't get me to Ohio, but, as my sister joked, it might get me to O, and the hio part will have to come from any extra work that I pick up.

I was hoping to get to the States for 4th of July this year, but I don't know when Mom's operation will be, and I also don't know if I can get the money together. If not this summer, then hopefully next. Actually, next summer might be better for me. I have a close friend over there (in Chicago, not all that far from Ohio) who I want to visit, but I need to work out my feelings for him before I go and see him. Although, that said, he's going through a pretty tough time right now, and if he decides he needs me to come visit now, I probably will, even if it means extending my bank loan for a couple months.

Ehh, probably this is unrealistic, and I'll end up using the check to pay next semester's tuition, but I can dream.

Which reminds me, I MUST write up my Japanese notes tomorrow. I've been really good all semester about writing them up each week, but then in the three weeks before Christmas everything fell apart, and I have three sets of notes to write up. And I HAVE to write them up, or I won't learn anything. I really envy those people who can write neat notes right off the bat, because I've always been a scribbler. My brain works fast enough that my hands can't keep up, so it's useless for me to try and write neatly at the time. But I like things organised - some people would even say that I'm compulsive about it - so I always copy everything up nicely afterwards. Which is good, because otherwise I'd look back a couple months later and wonder what the heck it said, because my scribbles are pretty illegible. I just hope that I can still decipher the stuff from the beginning of December.

I've spent much of the last two weeks working, a little bit of my time sleeping, and quite a bit of it - more than I should have, anyway - shopping for things that I don't REALLY need, but I've managed to convince myself are essential to my emotional and physical well-being. Actually, I was fairly good this year, and didn't buy anything too frivolous. I got a long silk dress in a sort of minky-brown colour to wear to a couple of weddings that I have to attend this year. Brown isn't exactly a weddingy colour, but now that my hair's brunette I think it will look good. I love silk because I can wear it year-round, but even better, it's a silk-blend, so I don't have to dry-clean it, which means that I can also wear it on dinner dates and to garden parties and stuff. The dress is actually a bit big - they had a 12 or a 16, whereas I usually wear a 14 - but I think Lori can take it in at the seams for me. I appreciate the extra bust room, anyway.

Hmm, what else? Oh, I got some really neat Ruby & Millie makeup in the Boots sale - a set of 4 brushes for £7.99 (half price, and even at full price they would have been good, because usually you pay £12-14 for one brush, they're very good quality), and a set of greeny-blue eyeshadows for the same price. I really wanted a little Chilli Pepper eyeshadow pallette in blues that I bought for Stace, but they didn't have any left. They had the brown pallette, that I actually bought for Haley, but I don't wear brown on my eyes very well. I got an emerald-green leather wallet to match my new bag (which I'm very happy with, it's been years since I had a real wallet), and a red Chinese-silk diary for 2010, and a little business-card holder (which is actually identical to the one I got last year, and Mom misplaced before I could use it). And I got a long silver chain from Past Times, which was a lifesaver, because it's really hard to find a chain that's long enough for me, and a pretty cream keepsake box to keep letters and stuff in. And a totally awesome pair of redherring shoes from the charity shop that had only been worn once. I was overjoyed by the shoes, because not only are they totally hot, but they're almost identical to a pair that I had to sadly throw away not long ago, after many years of wearing.

I got some clothes, too. A couple of short-sleeved rollnecks with buttons at the back, in teal and royal purple. Two basic T-shirts from H & M, one in dark purple and one in pale lilac. A purple bolero-shrug thing to go over dresses. (I'm wearing a lot of purple at the moment, which is rare, I usually only wear it in autumn. I suppose there's a lot of it in the sales, because it was such a fashionable colour last year.) And a one-of-a-kind cardigan which is one of the most beautiful items of clothing I've ever owned. They called it a waterfall cardi, and it looks like one of those hand-knit South American things that you see in the Peruvian Collection catalogue for $600. I think it is hand-knit, and the fabric is amazing - soft, warm, but also thin and silky, not at all woolly - but it certainly didn't cost me $600. Actually, none of the stuff I bought was expensive except for the dress, and even that was half price. I think the dress and cardi were the only things I bought that were more than £10. I found really great sales this year, even without going to London.

I probably need to get a pair of snowboots, but I'm honestly not sure where they'll sell them, that won't have sold out. It may not be worth it now until next autumn.

I think I really should go now and try to get some sleep. I know I haven't written much of value recently, and for that I apologise - I know it's mostly guys who read this blog [Hah - how things have changed!] and there is probably not much in the world that bores you more than hearing about my shopping days - but not all that much has happened to me, aside from seeing friends and family, and court, and the stuff I mentioned in the last post that I am trying my hardest to forget about for now. Court was cancelled for most of last week, but I'm back on Monday. And I also have to start painting my room again, and make a dozen phone calls (ick) and an appointment with my dentist (double ick). So I may or may not be around much, but I'll try and check in.

Enjoy your week!