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Bought toilet paper—celebration; bought kolbasa—more celebrating
It's a strange Christmas Eve. It can't be less than fifty degrees outside; there's mist in the wet streets and the moon is rainbowed with haze. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
derspatchel and I are spending the night at my parents' house in Lexington so that we can wake up together tomorrow morning. It doesn't feel like winter and it doesn't feel like the holiday. So much time ran away this year, I'm not really surprised.
Earlier this evening, my cousins held their traditional family pre-Christmas dinner:gaudior's parents and nineweaving came over; we ordered takeout from Zhu in Arlington Center and exchanged presents afterward, since not everyone will be in suitable proximity tomorrow. Nine gave me a triptych of things to cook with and/or put on bread—treacle-dark marmalade, ginger spread, chestnut honey—and I matryoshka'd the cylinders of wrapping paper, after which Rush straight-faced handed me Anya von Bremzen's Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing (2013), with recipes at the back. There was lots of vegan Chinese food and ginger cake and clementine-chocolate year-king snowmen. It was good.
This has been the kind of winter where I forgot even to mention the solstice as it happened, but I have proof that sometimes the season brings things back: I re-read Vivien Alcock's The Mysterious Mr. Ross (1987) for the first time in nearly ten years. I discovered the book in January 2006; it's a YA novel I couldn't believe I hadn't read in childhood, because it features a stranger out of the sea, a shy and mysterious, endlessly bemused young man with flyaway fair hair and and bright round eyes who claims to be called "Albert Ross"; he cannot be what he says, but whether he's slightly cracked, or supernatural, or a liar—or all three—is what no one in town, not even awkward, storytelling Felicity who seemingly saved him from drowning, can say instead for sure. I lent it to one of my cousins and then their old apartment flooded and I thought my copy had been one of the casualties. Water-damaged, cover-peeling, spine-cracked, it was sitting quite happily on their shelves filed under "A," and so I read it before bed last night. I don't know if I love it as much as Alcock's ghostly, formative The Haunting of Cassie Palmer (1980), but it was as ambiguous as I remembered, with good ocean. Now my husband is sitting on the couch beside me, telling me terrible knock-knock jokes and relating Slutcracker anecdotes as Tchaikovsky plays on the radio. It is important not to let everything be lost.
derspatchel and I are spending the night at my parents' house in Lexington so that we can wake up together tomorrow morning. It doesn't feel like winter and it doesn't feel like the holiday. So much time ran away this year, I'm not really surprised.Earlier this evening, my cousins held their traditional family pre-Christmas dinner:
gaudior's parents and nineweaving came over; we ordered takeout from Zhu in Arlington Center and exchanged presents afterward, since not everyone will be in suitable proximity tomorrow. Nine gave me a triptych of things to cook with and/or put on bread—treacle-dark marmalade, ginger spread, chestnut honey—and I matryoshka'd the cylinders of wrapping paper, after which Rush straight-faced handed me Anya von Bremzen's Mastering the Art of Soviet Cooking: A Memoir of Food and Longing (2013), with recipes at the back. There was lots of vegan Chinese food and ginger cake and clementine-chocolate year-king snowmen. It was good.This has been the kind of winter where I forgot even to mention the solstice as it happened, but I have proof that sometimes the season brings things back: I re-read Vivien Alcock's The Mysterious Mr. Ross (1987) for the first time in nearly ten years. I discovered the book in January 2006; it's a YA novel I couldn't believe I hadn't read in childhood, because it features a stranger out of the sea, a shy and mysterious, endlessly bemused young man with flyaway fair hair and and bright round eyes who claims to be called "Albert Ross"; he cannot be what he says, but whether he's slightly cracked, or supernatural, or a liar—or all three—is what no one in town, not even awkward, storytelling Felicity who seemingly saved him from drowning, can say instead for sure. I lent it to one of my cousins and then their old apartment flooded and I thought my copy had been one of the casualties. Water-damaged, cover-peeling, spine-cracked, it was sitting quite happily on their shelves filed under "A," and so I read it before bed last night. I don't know if I love it as much as Alcock's ghostly, formative The Haunting of Cassie Palmer (1980), but it was as ambiguous as I remembered, with good ocean. Now my husband is sitting on the couch beside me, telling me terrible knock-knock jokes and relating Slutcracker anecdotes as Tchaikovsky plays on the radio. It is important not to let everything be lost.
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Maybe one day it will tour...
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You're welcome! I saw the 2012 cast and can definitely recommend the experience. I hope either you or it are in the right city for each other someday!
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Thank you. To you, too!
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I like the sound of this.
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We ate them to bring back the sun (and the winter, since last night was muggy). Even if it doesn't work, they were delicious.
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Likewise!
Thank you for mentioning the Soviet Cooking book. I just ordered it thanks to your suggestion -- it sounds fascinating.
You're welcome. I'm really enjoying it so far.
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