Boy A: It's not violent Mom. It probably just has a bit of bad language and little kids can't watch it or they might say the bad language and then it becomes a habit.

Me: All pirate movies are violent, that's what they're about: fighting.

Boy B: Huh uh, when Bugs Bunny is on the pirate ship and the little pirate [Yosemite Sam] gets blown up by the cannons, he doesn't really get hurt. It's funny.

Me: I don't know. Look at these guys on the back of the dvd. Pirates are always missing something-a leg, an arm, an eye...

Boy B: The Captain does that to make the crew look cool.

I didn't necessarily want or expect to finish a rough draft. At first I just wanted to find out if 1) I could even create a 50,000 word story without running out of something to say and 2) what my daily routine would look like if I were to devote myself to the longer form of fiction writing. Could I have any meaningful output considering how busy my life already was?

It turns out that I'm quite wordy, which is no surprise to you who read my blog I'm sure. At 50,000 words I was only about 25% done with the story. It may be that large sweeping epics in the style of Tolstoy and Michener might be right up my alley. Surprising to me, considering I used to have to confine myself to 100 words, or 3 sentences, to explain the entire evolution of birds, for example. Editing is done with a smoking laser in science writing circles.

The daily routine didn't suffer much from the writing, I found I could get my daily word count in about 2-3 hours after the kids went to bed. At first it was easy. So easy that I decided I'd probably have time to edit the thing before the end of the month and have a bona fide shiny piece of new writing in my hip pocket.

During the second week I became self-critical, the story dried up like a mouth full of crackers and I resorted to typing filler words like "What in the hell am I doing?". Then I just stopped writing altogether.

The day before Thanksgiving Mister left for three weeks to take care of his parents. Reveling in the wide open sky of psychological freedom, I began writing again, doubling the daily word count, still committed to making 50,000 of the best words I could, laid down in the right order to make a story worth telling by midnight of November 30.

Four teenagers are still standing in the snow at the headwaters of the Missouri River not sure whether to risk driving to Three Forks to try to buy ammo for the stolen rifle, or to get the hell out of there before Mitch's dad finds them. I, however, had found what I was looking for. The process of writing this story that was so different from my own let me clearly see into the murky depths of my boggy marriage. 4 months after I saved that last draft of the novel, I asked for a divorce and this new journey began.

Fiction writing is so powerful that I dare not try it again. I might end up running away with a good-looking blonde California boy and living the rest of my life playing in the sun and drinking fruity drinks topped with little umbrellas. And we can't have that now can we?

Boy A: Do people at the South Pole fall off the Earth?

Me drowsily: No, everyone sticks out of the Earth, gravity sucks us toward the center.

Boy A: What's a Black Hole?

Me: Uh, I think it's a spot of infinite gravity.

Boy A: Huh?

Me: If the Black Hole is here and you try to shine a beam of light this way, the Black Hole will suck up the light. It will suck up everything.

Boy A: Why doesn't it suck up the sun?

Me: It would if it were close enough, but the Black Holes are far away in the universe.

Boy A: I thought they were on the sun, there's black holes on the sun.

Me: They may be black spots, but they're not Black Holes.

Boy A: How big is it?

Me: I dunno, planet-sized?

Boy A: What!? That's huge! How do they know it's that big? Did someone drive past it in a spaceship?

Me: No, they have instruments to measure it I guess.

Boy B: Like a ruler?

Me: Well...no, you can't get close to one or you'll get sucked up. They probably use instruments we've never seen.

Boy B: Like a violin?

Me:

Boy A: A flute!

Me: ?

Boy A, shouting: Dinosaurs! No one's seen those! Send a dinosaur in there to measure it and see all the stuff piled in the bottom!

Boy B: Yeah, send in a Nanosaur!

Me even more tired: Don't you guys have some where else to go this morning?

For some reason, I was fascinated with the food.

On the tour we saw the kitchen and dining areas. Helping clean up one evening, I perused the titles on the kitchen's cookbook shelf like The Complete Tassajara Cookbook and I'm looking forward to getting some of these and being excited again about vegetarian cooking. I have a very old and tattered copy of The Moosewood Cookbook that I loved when I was just out of college and working as a baker at Bridger Bowl.

The monks eat mostly informal meals, but during retreats, everyone eats oryoki, which means just enough. Oryoki is a silent eating meditation focusing on mindfulness.

After meditating in the morning, a monk would ring a bell and announce, "Oryoki". We'd pick up our oryoki set which consisted of 3 small wooden bowls and a pocket of eating utensils bound in indigo-colored cloth napkins. We would hold the oryoki set in front of us and march out of the zendo, the meditation room, into the dark moist air across the grounds to the dining room, and stand behind our seats. We'd say a few chants of gratitude (there was a laminated blue card with the words) basically recognizing all that went into the food, it's cultivation and growth, the harvest, the labor that brought it to us. We sit on either side of long tables arranged like the letter "E" with the retreat's leaders sitting at the head table and other monks scattered among the students.

At each meal a kitchen monk would stand and call out which of the foods we were eating had been donated and who donated it. For example, "tea from so-and-so, carrots from whose-and-such, and apples from neighbors." We'd bow in gratitude, sit down and unwrap our bowls, set them and the utensils out in a specific way, which I could never seem to remember, getting my chopsticks backwards every time, but my neighbor would tap on my placemat and point to hers, so I'd correct it, no harm done. No one cares if you get it wrong, but there is the expectation that you'll take it seriously and try your best.

Then the officiating monk would clap two pieces of wood together and large bowls would be passed down the table. We'd scoop food into our bowls and put a tiny bit on the end of the spatula as an offering to the Hungry Ghosts, an act of remembrance for all those who have died from hunger.

The morning meals consisted of a cooked grain cereal, soy milk, brown sugar, peanut butter and a fruit. The first morning it was a wonderful applesauce made from neighborhood apples. I loved it. I really like homegrown apples, even standard varieties like Macintosh and Jonagold taste completely different than their commercially farmed counterparts and mixtures of apples are even more complex in flavor. At the farm, I had 16 different apple varieties mostly on old trees. I'd make applesauce and pressed juice, dried apples and apple pies, and give away the best specimens to the neighbors and the boys' school and one year a women's shelter in Portland. Wormy or blemished apples were hauled to the sheep 40 lbs at a time where they were magically turned into wool. Even on the years when I put up the most, it was but a dent. The year I broke my back all but the 200 lbs I had already picked before I fell of the ladder rotted and fell off the trees. We picked them up and composted 3200 lbs of apples and it about made me crazy with grief and guilt.

And that was all we had for breakfast. You could eat seconds as the big pots were passed in silence back up the table, but the idea was to take just enough and to have nothing left in the oryoki bowls at the end. Lunch usually consisted of a vegetable casserole with a vegetable salad or rice, dinner was always soup and homemade bread.

At the Mindful Eating Retreat, we discussed oryoki a lot because most of us had never eaten that way before. A lot of people were surprised by how little food they needed or wanted when they were paying attention to their stomachs. Much of the time we eat to please the mouth with sensations, or from distraction, or for many reasons other than because our stomaches would like some food. Like a lot of other people, I was surprised at how flavorful the vegetarian dishes were and also how I liked the tofu and mushrooms, they weren't rubbery and awful like I thought they would be.

After everyone was done eating, the monk with the clappers would clap them again and kettles of hot water were passed down the tables. We used a little rubber spatula to scrape out and eat any bits left in the bowls, then served each other about 1/3 cup hot water washed the bowls and utensils, then either drank or poured the wash water into a bamboo vase that was passed down. After meals the kitchen monks would take the wash water and offer it to a specific tree on the grounds. Leftover food was composted. We'd dry our bowls, wrap them up and march back to the zendo.

I'm trying to get the kids to eat oryoki, at least until I get a dishwasher. It's not going so well.

I've been stuck at this place in the post a couple of days trying to describe meditation practice in an interesting way for you, but since all of the battles are internal, it makes for a pretty dull picture. Just a lot of people sitting quietly on cushions in candlelight at 5:30 in the morning, but for me the experience was transforming.

Hogan Roshi, our teacher, instructed us to notice our breath, to start with the top of the head and move though the body slowly consciously relaxing the muscles on the out breath. When we notice our mind is not on the breath, we label it "thinking" and gently bring the mind back to the breath. This technique is called a body scan, it's one of four techniques we learned.

I used to think I meditated on long walks, while knitting and spinning, while dyeing and washing wool and all of those activities can be meditative, but none are as deep or intense as sitting meditation. The nearest analogy I can think of is that sitting meditation feels like giving your full attention to a rambunctious and mischievous 2 year old child with the attention span of a gnat.

I sit down and arrange my legs in a comfortable position, one I can sit in for 30 minutes without moving and then I watch the movie of my mind as it unfolds. It goes something like this.

Me: Breathing in consciously starting at the top of my head and relaxing the muscles on the out breath. Hmmm, face feels tight. Hmm, bit of a headache in back where the neck connects, hmm...

Mind: Does this really work? It isn't hard, I'm doing great...

Me: Thinking. Breathing in....breathing out....

Mind: Easy peasy I don't know what the big deal is.

Me: Thinking. Breathing in....breathing out...

Mind: I wonder what's for breakfast?

Me: Thinking. Breathing in...breathing out...

Mind: I hope there's not mushrooms for lunch. Stop it with the mushrooms already, for the love of God! You're not supposed to be thinking!

Me: Thinking. Breathing in...breathing out...

Mind: You've only been sitting like 5 minutes and you can't even get 2 consecutive thinking-free breaths in. I wonder if other people are the same way. Probably not the monks. They look like they can sit for hours without having to listen to all this inane chatter. I wonder how long it took them until they were getting it down pretty good. I wonder what it's like to be a monk. Do they have sex? They seem really happy. I wonder what kind of people they were before they became monks. What if one of my boys wants to become a monk. Wow, that would be hard for me, I don't know, blah, blah, blah,...

Me: Hello? Thinking!

Mind: Right. Are they keeping track of the time, because it sure seems like it's been 30 minutes by now, I'm pretty good at telling time without a clock blah, blah, blah...If you don't stop thinking you're never going to get this and it will have been a terrible waste. Concentrate you dumb ass! That's really not appropriate, we're not supposed to be hard with ourselves, we're just supposed to think 'thinking' and gently bring our concentration back to the breath. You're right, you'll get it, you always do eventually....

Me: Thinking.

Mind: I wonder if there are any cute single guys here.....

Me: Thinking. Fantasy. Breathing in...breathing out....

And so on in 30 minute chunks for about 5 hours a day. The hardest part for me was the first morning, after that my mind settled down, my breathing became less constricted each session and I could feel I was relaxing deeply. The whole retreat except for the initial orientation and a small group discussion session on the second day was conducted in Noble Silence. I liked the silence, it allowed me to be free from having to take my attention away from my own experience to chit chat or be concerned with someone else's feelings. The silence felt surprisingly intimate and I didn't feel alone or lonely.

On the third and last day we learned the technique of asking "Who". For example, if the mind is wandering and chattering, who is the one that notices and brings it back? I had a breakthrough with this as I realized that there were 2 of me. One which was afraid and chattering, and one who was still and deep and beautiful. It wasn't an ecstatic experience, but it was a profound one. I realized that the real me was the still, deep and beautiful one, the other me was just the little fearful one on the surface, a thin layer that looks real, but isn't. I'm afraid this isn't making any sense, but think of it this way. What if you had found a statue at a flea market and it had an interesting shape and was painted in faux granite spray paint and you took it home and washed the paint off and gasped at what was underneath. The most beautiful precious material you had ever seen. A treasure beyond treasure. That's what I felt like on the third day, like I had found a one-of-a-kind treasure of infinite beauty.

The experience has lasted now 2 1/2 weeks. I have felt extraordinarily tender with myself and with everyone else, including Mr. X. A crack of compassion has opened up and I see that maybe he does have an illness on the autism spectrum, perhaps complicated by something else and having a family proved more than he could handle. Maybe I could forgive him. Maybe I could forgive him even when he's being obsessive and stalk-ery. Maybe. I have a sense that if I could forgive him, I'd be able to live more with the deep, still and beautiful me and a lot less with the frightened me. Perhaps forgiveness and fear are linked in some way. Perhaps it takes courage to forgive and by using this much courage to forgive this big ass wrong, more is made available to use for other things. Like eating mushrooms, and living with uncertainty, and loving again.

For information on meditation retreats see the Great Vow Zen Buddhist Monastery's website.

I used to do things like fly alone to Mexico City at 2am because when I landed in San Diego to meet up with my friend, she decided she didn't want to go on this vacation after all and at an outdoor cafe on the beach passed me a hand scribbled note from our third friend living off Honduras' Mosquito Coast to meet him after dark in the zocolo in Oaxaca and I thought they had a firm itinerary and had at least coordinated on the phone, but apparently that wasn't the case because phone lines didn't extend to oil rigs in the Caribean Sea and cell phones hadn't been invented yet and I didn't know my credit card was maxed out, but what the hell, I already bought the tickets and it could be fun.

Then spend that night and the next few days fending off amorous men who couldn't understand the strange and apparently exciting idea that a single woman who didn't speak Spanish was wandering around ancient Zapotec ruins by herself in the desert countryside for 3 days and waiting after dark in the zocolo for 3 nights for a friend I hadn't seen in 3 years who was supposedly taking a second-class chicken bus from Honduras according to a random scrap of paper torn from the back of a letter I hadn't read.

Then both of us flying in a Pringles can, mostly above the forest canopy, into the Peten jungle and sneaking illegally into the Mayan ruins at Tikal after dark and almost running into a tapir and sleeping on a 3 foot wide ledge halfway up the side of a pyramid temple belonging to a culture who performed human sacrifices while what was left of the Sandinista rebels shot off mortars and automatic rifles, and jaguars prowled below looking for the tapir, and being jerked awake in the dark by the otherworldly shrieking of warring bands of howler monkeys in the trees overhead and momentarily panicking thinking there was incoming gunfire with all the racket while warm mist visibly flowed like fast water through the temple in the gloom like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie and all my return plane tickets were stolen except the one from Denver to Bozeman, but when you have to fly from the jungle deep in northern Guatamala being able to go from Denver to Bozeman is cold comfort.

Yeah.

I'm currently reading Pema Chodron's The Places That Scare You: A Guide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times. She also wrote When Things Fall Apart which my friend Susie who has cancer calls, When Shit Happens. Chodron was my go-to author in 2009, she inspired this whole Year of Doing Nothing, and as I said before, she's a Buddhist nun living in a monastery while I am not, but much of what she says is inspiring in a quiet, deep and truthful way. So I decided I would learn more about meditation which is the first step in becoming fearless.

I enrolled in the Beginner's Mind retreat at the Great Vow Zen Monastery in December. It was even better than the Mindful Eating retreat I had done the year before.

I had really been looking forward to the Mindful Eating retreat last year because my stomach constantly hurt and as a consequence I was living on Starbursts and tea, but the morning I was to go, my mind started scaring me.

Mind: What if it's weird? What if there are weird people? What if I do something stupid and offend a monk? How embarrassing. Will there be plenty of hot water? Can I have tea with caffeine in it? Or do I have to drink some weird kind of tea that tastes like burnt rope? I don't know how to meditate, what if I cough, will the monks glare at me? What if my back hurts so bad I can't even stand it and I start fidgeting? What if it's boring-ugh. God, I hope there's not shellfish. What if all the food has mushrooms in it? There's just no way I can eat a huge portobello mushroom. What if there's rubbery tofu or some other disgusting thing. What if I throw up at the table-OMG! HOW WILL I SURVIVE THIS?

You'd think for someone who managed to sleep in the jungle of a foreign country and get out alive and unraped that eating vegetarian food and hanging out with Buddhist monks for a weekend would be a no brainer.

I almost didn't go. At the last possible minute, I just threw myself into the car and went, what the hell, even if it's flat out bizarre, at least I'll learn to meditate and even my HMO doctor recommended that.

It was a profound experience. I was sitting on a bench out front at dusk the first evening before the retreat started, just listening to the geese making their way along the Columbia River and I was feeling peaceful, knitting a little and listening to the geese. Suddenly I realized that the fear had lifted, like someone lifting off a heavy load. Not only the fear of being there and doing something out of my comfort zone, but the ordinary, walking-around-fear had lifted, too. I felt extraordinarily safe. The feeling contrasted so sharply with my every day experience that I was able to see and understand very clearly just how afraid I truly had been.

Terrified really.

Divorce is scary. Raising young children by yourself is scary. Not having a place to live is scary. Not having a job is scary. But all these fears are compounded when one spouse is mentally ill and no one really understands what's going on. I had been living subconsciously with the fear that one day I'd either find him dead in the barn, or he'd finally come unwired and kill us all with a CPU.

Mister Ex's mental health had been spotty at best and deteriorating over the years, but now was resulting in even more extreme behavior. He was calling my friends and relatives for no particular reason other than sheer obsession, people he had never bothered to call in 11 years of marriage. He was calling my pastor during Easter week, a person he had never met, to ask her if he could answer any of her questions. Of course, she told me this, then paused and raised her eyebrows as if to ask, "Why is he doing this? Would you like to tell me something?" I just said, "Thanks, he's not rational right now. Sorry he bothered you during this very busy time, he's just inappropriate sometimes and I don't know how far he's going to go any more."

During court-ordered mediation he looked like he was going to have either a heart attack or a complete breakdown, he was blotchy-faced and sweating buckets, rambling in his speech, couldn't hold eye contact, kept repeating himself over and over, kept crossing his legs over his crotch and squirming. He seemed on the verge of a psychotic break. Ask me how I know. The mediator asked me in private afterwards if I wanted a security escort to my car.

I felt a burning embarrassment and shame which was nothing compared to how angry I was with him, not only for acting strangely now, but for all those years of imposed celibacy and for lying to me at the beginning of it all.

The monks and nuns at Great Vow are wonderful, kind, caring people and most of them are younger than me, except for the co-abbots. Everything about the retreat and the facility was explained, no one cares if you screw up, there's always going to be another opportunity to practice. Everyone is practicing, even the people who have been there for years. I mean, that's the point. That's what they do. Practice. The most important thing I learned is that I hold my anxiety in my abdomen, when I'm paying attention I can feel it in there as a clenching, tight ball and it makes eating painful. The Mindful Eating retreat was led by Chozen Bays, one of the co-abbots and author of the book Mindful Eating: A Guide to Rediscovering a Healthy and Joyful Relationship with Food. Which by the way, comes with a CD of guided meditations like those we practiced at the retreat.

This year I went back for the Beginner's Mind Retreat which is a weekend slice of monastic life, created to teach more meditation techniques and how to deal with obstructions. I'll explore that more in the next post, this one's becoming unmanageably large and I need to dye some yarn today before the temperature plunges to single digits tomorrow. Hang in there, more to come.

To be cont.

The gold tree was one of my favorites, a black walnut brought to this place by Oregon pioneers. Our farm was part of a 100 year old nut orchard homesteaded by the Johnson family. I used the walnut husks to make a beautiful honey-colored dye. You can see how the walnut towered over the oaks in the middle ground and the apple trees in the foreground. The walnut was the last tree to leaf out in the spring and would lose its leaves all at once, a brilliant golden shower that lasted all of a single, glorious day.

Black Opal, a German hybrid angora with a litter of bunnies in the rabbit yard. The wool and breeding stock the rabbits produced paid all the feed bills for all the animals on the farm, as well as funding the early years of my wool dyeing business. I loved them. Black Opal shown here was the last animal to leave the farm. I had her put down at the very end, burying her body under the fir trees in the back yard was my final act as a wool grower. She had an advanced tumor that was keeping her from eating and there was no way she could be cared for any longer.

Evening chore time was my favorite time of day. I'd have a couple of newly gathered warm brown eggs in my pockets and would eat whatever produce was to be had in the garden, a sprig of asparagus, a couple of carrots and a celery leaf, a handful of strawberries, winter apples in the fall. I felt peaceful thinking that when I was an old woman a couple of Rhode Island reds and a small garden would completely feed me. One of my fondest memories is of the boys as toddlers feeding themselves from the garden, faces muddy and chubby hands clutching pea pods.

After watching the bats working back and forth over the darkening meadow, I'd check on the sheep, chivy the sleepy hens into the coup and feed the rabbits. Then I'd just stand, listening, reluctant to go back in the house.

We moved to the farm when the boys were about 2 1/2. A few miles away was a beautiful reservoir where the boys would eventually learn to ride on the forest trails with me running along behind. Here I'm helping Boy B learn to cast. Below, Boy A has a surprise.

What's left of the Shetland flock grazes in the apple orchard. Karen Ries in Grant's Pass adopted the entire flock and tells me they are all still alive and love to race beside her to the feeder as she hauls a bale of hay on the back of her ATV. Taking the sheep to Karen was one of the most difficult things I had to do. Seeing her beautiful farm, the lush pastures and the Shetland ewe lambs that my guys were joining, meeting her kind husband who so obviously loved her and supported her passions, including taking on the responsibility of my failure as a shepherd. Their kindness and generosity continue to touch me everyday. Without them, my beautiful handspinning flock would have had to be sold at the Woodburn auction, probably for pet food. As long as I live I'll be grateful to the Reises who spared the boys and I that horror.

2009 is over now. There's nothing more I can do with 2009. Now each moment of 2010 is full of joyful possibility.

I wish all of you a healthy and prosperous New Year, especially those of you who I know are trying to hold onto your own farms. And those of you who are divorcing or who realize you no longer can hold onto a failed marriage. And for everyone experiencing loss. Thank you for your emails and notes. I hold you all tenderly in my heart. May we all handle the challenges that face us with grace and equanimity and accept with abundant joy the moments of happiness that await.

I was fine yesterday until I got an email Christmas card from a friend and went sifting through my photos to find one of me and the boys together to send back and I got to the farm pics and cried. Again. Sigh. Dammit.

How many times do I have to go through this? WHY am I still grieving? And why am I grieving the loss of the land more than anything else, even the animals? Is there anyone out there who misses soil? Is there a support group for those who have lost grass?

I asked this of a therapist at the beginning of the divorce process when I was trying to find out if Mr. X was gay or mentally ill or addicted to internet porn or all of the above. She said she thought I was someone who was always going to need land. Too bad it's so expensive. I wish she would have pronounced that I needed Piazza Sempione. Or yarn. *snort* (Just to recap, I moved to Rural with 48 boxes of wool.)

My family owns a ranch near Yellowstone National Park and I love it still. We lived there with my grandparents when I was a little girl. I loved the horses, I loved the cows, even the scary bulls, I loved the sounds of the coyotes on summer nights, I loved the chamomile-like smell of crushed pineapple weed in the driveway. We didn't have television reception then and every night after dinner dishes were done the women would play cards at the dining table and the men would lie in the living room telling stories.

When we moved away to come to Rural, America, I felt a deep longing to go back even as a child. I remember a winter visit and running down to the lower pasture where the horses stood patiently by the haystack, having finished breakfast and standing broadside to the morning sun, their slow breaths steaming out of their nostrils, their backs frosted. I'd pet them with my mittens until the last possible moment and take long intoxicating hits of horse smell on the drive home.

Last night I had my recurring ranch dream. I've had this dream a bazillion times and I still don't know what it means, but it always takes place at the ranch. Sometimes my dead grandmother is there making cinnamon rolls in the kitchen. Sometimes she's just getting up and has a present for me which I have to wait to open until everyone gets there. Sometimes my dead grandpa is there sitting in his recliner and looking out of the big windows to the Gallatin Range. Sometimes the aunts and uncles are there. There's always horses in the barn and corrals. My dad is always there in his overalls, somewhere, outside working on something.

This time I was walking down the long driveway and noticed a bunch of ugly new houses just north of the main house. What!? In the dream I remembered the family had sold 10 acres and these houses sprung up seemingly overnight. They were WAY too close to the big ranch house. And as I looked around I was aware that there were a lot of houses nearby and I was very upset. The ranch was now in the suburbs. Then I noticed that a ski area of sorts had been built on the hill separating the corrals from the lower pasture and people were riding up a rope tow and sliding down solid icy ruts in the dirt road. No one lived in the ranch houses any more and I realized it had all changed and I didn't want to be there.

Maybe grief is like a fever, it just has to run its course and there's not much you can do about it. Someone told me once that the fastest way to get over grief is just to let yourself feel it until one day you notice it isn't there any more. If you don't actively feel it, it'll go down and make a big pustule of emotional infection instead. But really, I want to be done. I want to move forward and not look back. I don't want to feel sad every time I go to Portland or see sheep grazing in a lush field.

Maybe feeling grief is like visiting hell, to paraphrase the song, if you find yourself there you may as well keep on going and maybe you'll get out before the devil knows you're there. Seems like I've been to hell and back so many times they made me a guide.

Or maybe grief is like a creek, a small part of a large wild world, flowing down to something bigger, still and quiet.

"Hi Honey, how are you?"

"It's Christmas Dad, I hate it."

"By God, so do I. So. Do. I."

I wish it was over already so well-meaning eye doctors and dentists and cashiers would just stop asking me if I'm "ready for Christmas". Today I very much wanted to say to these people, "Damn! I forgot to get the gin, thanks for reminding me, gotta do that today before the likker store closes." But I just gritted my teeth and told a bald-faced lie each time, "Yep." Which maybe isn't so much of a lie, I'm ready for it like my old grandpa was ready for the bear that kept breaking into the barn--with a lawn chair, a thermos of coffee and a shotgun full of pellets.

The earnest doctor can't be a year out of high school and he has a poster of the ten commandments in the office window, so I guess he really likes Christmas. He asked me last month if I had all my Christmas shopping done and I looked him right in the eye and said, "Doc, I don't have a job, there's not gonna be any shopping." Which isn't entirely true, I bought the usual stuff. I was using hyperbole to make a point, so please don't feel sorry for me. I inherited Grandpa's shotgun and it's still loaded for bear. Just sayin.

I can't think of a stupider thing to say in this town than to ask people if they've spent a lot of money on dumb plastic stuff made on the other side of the globe. Ah, the transgressions of youth. I've done it, too, but Jesus, the unemployment rate has to be at least 20%, it was 17% before they laid off the last 90 workers at the aluminum plant a few weeks ago. There were 1200 workers at the plant when we came to Rural. I think a lot of people are using the current economic climate to scale back and even change how they do the holidays. It's been a long time coming in my opinion.

The children are at their dad's in another state, so I'm free to do whatever I want and I was planning to go skiing after burning the Christmas tree in the backyard while dancing around it in my long underwear with a bottle of gin in one hand and a skein of yarn draped around my neck, but my brother insisted I come to their house and for extra good measure my sis-in-law assigned me to bring a bit of food. I could have still gotten out of it, but she said the teenagers specifically asked for my dinner rolls and pies and I wavered, a tiny fissure opened in my airtight and firm "No thanks". Teenagers specifically want my food? Damn. Caught.

Oh. All. Right. But then it's right back to my regularly scheduled Christmas curmudgeonliness.

At breakfast this morning:

Boy A petulantly: How come there are 5 presents for you and only 1 for me and Boy B?

Me: I have 5 presents?!

Boy A still jealous: I don't see why you should have so many. Whiney whine, whine, whine, presents, blah, blah, blah.

Me: Don't you think I should have some presents?

A little later Boy A is still talking about getting presents.

Me: Christmas isn't about the presents you know.

Boy A: What? Well, what's it about then, the tree?

Me: Nooo.

Boy A: The lights?

Me: Noo.

Boy B peering around the cereal box with one bright little eye: It's about spirit.

Me: (Thinking about planting the idea of the light of hope in this darkest time) Yep. And hope. Blah, blah....

Boy A interrupting and muttering: I hope I get some more presents.

Me: ...blah, blah, and don't forget to wear snow pants this morning.

Boy B: No, I don't want to wear snow pants, they feel funny. Whine, whine, whiney whine...

Boy A: Do we have to? It's not that cold.

Me thinking: Hmmm, I wore a mohair hat to bed last night and listened to the thunk of the furnace coming on and off, on and off, accompanied by the high pitched whistling sound of money being sucked out of my checking account.

Me: It's still dark, but I think it's pretty cold.

Boys: Check the weather!

This is our morning routine which culminates with me showing them the page for our town on the weather.com website.

Boy A: What the...? Minus 10 degrees?

Boy B: rolling around on the floor fighting his snow pants: It's not THAT cold.