We sat on the floor and he played “construction site” while I played with blocks. No plan. No expectations. I played with the blocks, mindlessly moving them, stacking them, toppling them. Nothing mattered — not the choices or the colors or the configurations. It was play. Pure relaxing thought-less play. I didn’t cook, I didn’t wash dishes. All I did was play. What a wonderfully happy holiday!!
We also played astronauts in the space-shuttle/tent I brought him.

He’s my rocketman!

I also actually had time to sit and read my latest issue of Harper’s magazine. Unfortunately, I left it behind. There were bits in it that I wanted to post. The only one I remember is that too much testosterone kills brain cells. (Heh. That would be the one line I’d remember!)
And now I’m back, feet resuming the step by step, day by day journey on this hard ground. I would rather be lost in space.

I am leaving early tomorrow to spend two nights with my daughter and family, and she has invited her in-law family over for a big Thanksgiving dinner. This will be the first holiday in five years that actually will feel like a holiday. I’m leaving a Thanksgiving dinner for my mother and brother. My mom is mad at me for leaving her. No surprise.
A Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

Their cars are parked all along the highway between here and town, where there are forests and ponds and places where wildlife like to hang out. I don’t know it they’re after the four-footed or the flying, whether they’re hunting for supper or sport. I hope that they will eat what they kill. That should be the way of it.
I had venison once. It was cooked by the hunter who killed it. It tasked fine but somehow, well, I just couldn’t enjoy it.
They make seasoned buckshot now, you know. Well, it isn’t real buckshot; rather it’s very hard pellets of seasoning, so you can flavor your bird before you even get around to plucking its feathers. How’s that for convenience.
Maybe if I had to hunt and gather, I wouldn’t eat so much. And then there’s all the exercise that goes along with hunting and gathering. I guess I could go out and live in the forest. But with all of those other hunters out there I probably wouldn’t last long.
I have always been hungry. Only before this, I was able to find lots of ways to fill myself with satisfactions other than food.
I can smell the sweet bread baking in my bread machine.

Sometimes the only way to survive is to detach — detach your brain from the whining and complaining and criticizing, from demands and expectations and disputes.
The danger is, once you start detaching, momentum takes over.
I retreat into my own body, the senses that satisfy. I eat a whole package of Pims cookies, the kind with orange jam inside. I spray the scent of grapefruit around my room. I sit in silence, sweet silence.
I imagine great gaps of space between me and them. Distance.

There were five of us at the Cheescake Factory Sunday morning, jovially bantering with our cute young waiter and laughing our way through an assortment of brunch delicacies, from French Toast to a perfect Breakfast Quesadilla. And, of course, cheesecake. I’m addicted to Key Lime cheesecake.
We like to kid around with young waitpeople, giving them “motherly” advice, making them laugh, and managing to find out more about them than they realize. And then we leave a big tip. They are aways a major part of our dining experience.
The pizza and several glasses of wine the night before relaxed me so much that the kink in my back that’s been there for a week finally started to dissolve. Wine, laughter, and good friends with whom you share the same politics — that’s the best medicine in the world. We laugh at ourselves and we laugh at each other, reminding ourselves not to take ourselves too seriously.
We do take politics seriously, however, and the brunch was as much a celebration of the election outcomes as it was a celebration of just being together again.
In between the wine and the cheescake, I ran around buying stuff I needed in stores that we don’t have here in the mountains. I especially load up on my cat litter at PetSmart — Swheatscoop, which is make out of wheat and so it doesn’t get my cat constipated, as other litter does. Apparently, she ingests a certain amount of litter when she cleans her paws. The wheat just gets digested and doesn’t plug her up. It’s expensive, but, hey, she’s worth it. And, since her litter is in my one large room living space, it sure helps that there’s no odor!!
Leaving my mother with my brother on Saturday was like leaving a three-year old. She cried, cursed, used guilt, and had an elder-trantrum. But I went, and she survived just fine.
For the past several years, I have spent every holiday with my mother. But this Thanksgiving, I’m planning to go to my daughter’s. I’ll cook the usual turkey and mashed potatoes and “kapusta” and my brother can heat it up (or not) on Thanksgiving Day.
I’m looking forward to having the feeling of family.

Yep. There it was, up over the crags of the mountain, set pale and half-faced into the cool powder blue sky.
It’s strange to so clearly see the moon in daylight. It’s like looking out at an alien landscape. It moves ordinary days into dreamtime.
Tomorrow I drive up to Albany for an all-girls weekend — pizza and a gab fest on Saturday and a sinfully fattening brunch on Sunday. I’m looking forward to hanging out with my friends.
I’m also looking forward to NOT being on the same premises with my mother. I’m OK with her in the mornings, but by mid-afternoon I have no patience left….to show her for the fifth time where she has the small amount of cash we let her keep on hand….to look, again, for her glasses, her comb, her favorite photo of my father….to repeat at least three times, each time louder, everything I say……
I’m getting away. Even though it’s only one night, it will be enough to reset my frame of mind, give me hours of quiet driving time to meditate on seeing the moon at noon.

He did it. Can you believe it? John Hall, original front man for the 70s rock band “Orleans” has been elected to Congress. He represents the district just south of here — still not far from Woodstock. He sang as part of his acceptance speech.
Watch it here.
He’s balding and middle-aged. And he still rocks.
We need more musicians and other artists in our government. They know how to think with both sides of their brains. And they listen to their human hearts.

I blogged before about exploring essential oils for whatever use they might be in helping my mother, both with her mental as well as physical states. She has very bad arthritis in her hands and has painful synovial cysts on her finger joints. I had one and had to have it surgically removed. It was painful to hold a pen.
But this time, I combined lavender and eucalyptus essential oils with almond oil and rubbed it on her fingers. Believe it or not, the swelling and redness has subsided and she says the pain is going away. We’ll see.
There are dozens and dozens or essential oils, and if I went by the reference books that explain how to combine and use them for specific purposes, I would have to buy them all. However, I have found that lavender and eucalyptus oils are ingredients in many of the formulas. So I’m experimenting with them, especially since I love the scent of lavender.
I know that lots of people don’t like Autumn. I guess because it’s a season of endings. But I love the scent of that season — the mix of drying leaves and damp earth, the air adrift with the crisp scent of apples, the late night whiff of woodsmoke from a neighbor’s fireplace. Autumn is a season that opens to loneliness — a feeling that I embrace because I have always been able to center myself in that loneliness.
Where I live now, there is not much time and space for being alone. Just late at night. Like now. When in the silent darkness I spray my sheets with lavender and wait for Autumn dreams.

Tonight we hold our breath as we watch Congress turn Blue. As of this moment, 10:30 p.m., eighteen states have made official complaints about voting problems, especially because of the electronic voting machines. No easy breathing yet.
And from today’s Harper’s Weekly:
* a paper-shredding service truck was seen approaching the Cheney compound at the Naval Observatory in Washington, D.C.
* scientists claimed that at the current rate of consumption, global seafood supplies will be obliterated by the year 2048
* the World Meteorological Organisation said that the level of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere had hit a record high
* due to the Lebanon war, Israel was facing an eight-fold increase in the cost of marijuana
* United States said it would fund millions of dollars’ worth of abstinence-only sexual education for adults
* researchers in Japan captured a dolphin with legs.
* a cache of unsent letters to God was found off the Atlantic City shore
Meanwhile NBC just announced that Nancy Pelosi will be Speaker of the House. Whew. Wow!