last saturday in november

The sky hazed over and so I think the sun will set without much fanfare. Unlike the past few sunsets, which have been quite dramatic. I haven't done much with my long weekend, so far. I spent three hours out front yesterday, hacking at dead lavender and cutting back rose bushes. This morning I walked over to the farmers market, which was pared back post Thanksgiving, and then I walked up the hill to get milk and butter and chocolate at the grocery store on Cortland. The bus pulled up just as I was walking out of the store, so I got on it.

I played a couple of the Goldberg Variations and remembered that the piano badly needs tuning. Also, I am clumsy and rusty -- I haven't played much at all in the past year or so. I think it's because I'm self-conscious about the sound carrying through the walls. Someday I'll look into insulation. I don't know why I haven't done it already. I can hear the neighbors through the walls, sometimes. It's another thing on the list of things I'm thinking about spending money on.

post-Tday

Thanksgiving at L+C's was unexpectedly easy. Who knows, maybe I'm getting better at being the odd woman in a world of couples with children. Or maybe it was just a nice group of people. There were so many dishes and I tried each one, so I ate too much -- but not too too much. I got home sometime around 10:30, and somebody somewhere was playing loud music. All I could hear was the baseline. It kept me up, watching Survivor's Remorse, trying not to get worked up about the rudeness of it all. (I succeeded, for the most part.)

Now it's late morning, and I'm enjoying the light in the kitchen. It was worth it to spend all that money on the house, right? I think the answer is yes.

I took the 44 to Glen Park on Wednesday afternoon and walked up Mt. Davidson. I had never done that before. I was the only person walking up (and then down) the winding streets lined with midcentury houses. It was weirdly warm and I was impressed by the clouds. But what finally prompted me to leave the house was a need for cheddar cheese -- the little market on Diamond St has a good selection.

I don't know what I'll do today. I'm hoping A will want to take a walk with me. It will rain later this weekend so I feel some urgency about getting outside. Also, of course, it is Black Friday/Opt Outside Day. I'm uninterested in both, though I am strongly tempted to buy those Frama trestles while they are 15 percent cheaper. Maybe tomorrow I'll go see a movie.

I guess I should call Wallace. I've been putting it off, telling myself that maybe ghosting is the gentlest thing I could do. Why call someone just to tell them you won't be calling anymore? But he has called a couple of times now, and I think I need to stop rationalizing and procrastinating. 

loose ends

Feeling low and small. Heading into winter, toward the end of what has been a punishing year out there in the world. In here it's been OK. I am a bit stuck in place, I count the decades I may have left and wonder if or how I'll drift through them. Alone, most likely. I don't spend a lot of time feeling sorry for myself but sometimes I press up against the joint that ties self-pity to anxiety. I can tell that I'm low because I haven't got much of an appetite for social interaction, or even leaving the house. I am drifting, I watch too many Outlander episodes. I can sometimes find an opening, a way to contribute to efforts to counteract the insanity of our national situation. But it's a challenge to get beyond my sense of the world as too chaotic and the people in it as beyond my ken.