For three days now everything has been draped in thick grey fog.  It’s insulating and fascinating and kind of gloomy and in some ways very welcome to me.  It makes me want to knit shawls in just that same color.  I actually have two projects on needles right now in shades of fog, but it’s not quite the same as a shawl or a stole to wrap the fog about me.

It’s been a long and thoroughly stressful several months with yesterday ending in heartache and disappointment.  After everyone else was in bed I got down one of the cheap wine glasses with wisteria vines etched on them, that I bought myself when I moved into my first apartment, and poured myself a glass of really bad, cheap cooking wine.  The only kind of wine we ever have in the house because well, Steve doesn’t drink at all and I really don’t either.  Maybe a glass of wine while out somewhere once a year.  Maybe.  Depending on the year.  And never at home.  Seriously, this may well be the first time I’ve ever had a drink in my own home.  And it was from the screw top bottle of red wine that I mix in with my beef stew.

I read somewhere once that your cholesterol level influences how easily you become intoxicated.  The lower your cholesterol the less alcohol it takes.  If there is any truth to that them my cholesterol levels must be fan-freakin’-tastic.

I’ve been out of sorts and not exactly myself the last couple of days.  This morning I made a pot of coffee, perhaps as a counterpoint to the wine the night before?  Even though I’ve not been a coffee drinker for nearly 13 years now.  Not since I got pregnant with Iain.  Those two weeks of withdraw headaches were nearly enough to do me in and since then I’ve contented myself with snagging Steve’s mug on the weekends and taking a couple of deep breaths, and once every so often a tiny sip.  I deemed today’s indulgence medicinal, for the headache I woke up with, probably triggered by the wine (no I wasn’t hung-over, I don’t think you can get a hang-over from a partial glass of wine, but certain foods and substances are triggers for me).  I added maple syrup and coconut milk to it, even though as a coffee drinker I only ever made it black, plain, nothing added.  And usually that’s how it would appeal to me.  But today somehow I wasn’t entirely me.

We made Russian Tea Cakes, as the new me/not me conveniently forgot that we’re not really eating sugar right now.  Or dairy for that matter.  I replaced all of the flour with white buckwheat flour and once cool they tasted very much like the cookies I remember from my childhood, though we called them Mexican Wedding Cookies.  Elijah said they were, “scrumptious and sickening”.

We cut hundreds of paper snowflakes.  We’ve always made the ones with fancy folds of a hexagon, but decided to try circles of all different sizes this year and enjoyed the effect.

The big boys have taken to waking up early to clean random things as a surprise for me.  Which is really lovely, and kind of odd, and makes me feel vaguely guilty, though I’m not really sure why.

The two little ones have been out of sorts as well.  It’s that time of year when you can never quite tell if they are still getting over some little sickness of starting to fight off something new.  Màiri’s cheeks grow bright red when she’s fighting something off and Galen made her cry by telling her she looked like she had scarlet fever.

For dinner I made roasted Brussels sprouts, bacon and apples (for the first time ever) and baked squash (for about the umpteenth time this season alone).

It’s getting cold in the house.  I think that maybe I should make a new throw or two.  I keep borrowing The Girl’s yellow afghan to use as a lap blanket.  She shares very nicely, but it doesn’t seem fair.

It was my father’s birthday today.  I wish I had been there to give him his present.  Not that he would have been around anyway, as he’s working too hard this December, just like every one before it that I can remember.  I worry so about him.  The kids all sang ‘happy birthday’ over the phone.  I hope it brought some cheer to his day.

I just finished reading The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food and Love and it was very good, even while making me a bit squeamish at times.  Now I’m re-reading Homecoming by Cynthia Voigt because I seem to remember it striking a cord with me as an adolescent and I was wondering if Iain is old enough for it yet, but even a couple of pages in somehow I don’t think so.  Not that there is anything particularly alarming going on, but it just doesn’t feel right for the stage he’s at.  It doesn’t seem as though it would be nourishing to him in any way.  I really do look at books for them that way, for myself as well.  I try to find the ones that will feed something inside of them and my gut tells me it’s just not the right time for this one.

I had thought that this evening I’d curl up with my fog colored knitting and watch ‘Little Women’.  Somehow that sounds like such a comfort.  All day this has been in the back of my mind.  And if Màiri is restless again and wakes up looking for me, she can come and lay on my lap while I knit.  But now that it’s nighttime, I’m so tired that I can’t imagine staying up so late, so I suppose I won’t after-all.

Sincerely,

Melody