Author: zenzalei

Into birds, music, nature, science, hockey, movies, fitness, books, chocolate, wine, and spooky things.

Holidailies 2025!

Hello, friends! It’s time for Holidailies! What a year it has been, so I will preface this by saying I’m not sure I’m going to be able to post every day, though I’m going to give it the ol’ college try. I’m moving at the end of the month, so between that, work, and not the best of health, I may miss a few days.

Don’t worry, it’s not my heart. It’s just other crap happening at the worst possible time that makes everything that much more exhausting to deal with. And it’s Gee, You’re Pushing 60 crap, at that. Like, I’m having a gallstone scare at the moment. Right. I’ve become the crone who writes about gallstones. The Gallstone Crone. Santa, if you’re listening, please bring me a new and healthy body to live in, kthnx.

As for moving, I still don’t know where I’m moving to. Oh, it will be somewhere in the county, but I haven’t signed a lease yet. Ye gods, people, what they put people through to apply for an apartment now. They want to look at the deposit history in my bank account, run a criminal background check, confirm my job and salary with my employer, and collect a pint of blood. I once had to get a State Department background check and it wasn’t nearly that much. I asked the guy why all of it was necessary and he said it was because so many landlords are getting scammed now. Beats me. All I know is that from what I’m seeing on the socials and message boards, this kind of thing has only cropped up in the past few years, because I didn’t have to do any of this four years ago. In fact, when I first moved back here 10 years ago from Long Island, I didn’t even have a job. The prevailing attitude was “No worries. If you don’t pay, we throw you out. Simple as that.”

So that’s a bit of stress I don’t need right now.

And now for a Holidailies prompt: What have you been most looking forward to this holiday season?

Holidailies, of course! It has become my favorite holiday tradition, a time to catch up with blog buddies and get into the spirit. I’m going to see the State Christmas trees on Sunday, so I hope to have pictures worth sharing from that. You know, if the lights aren’t green again this year. If they are, I’ll find something else to photograph and post.

In the meantime, here’s the first ornament I bought this year. I got it in Arizona while I was in Phoenix for a work trip last March. It’s a little more golden than yellow, but I had to use a flash so the surrounding lights wouldn’t muddy the other colors.

A Christmas ornament featuring a hummingbird, a cactus, and some flowers.

I’d never been to Arizona before that trip, and what little time I spent there makes me want to go back for a vacation. There is something healing and restorative there. Maybe in March. The weather was lovely when I was there and some locals told me it’s really the best time to visit, before it gets too hot. Something to think about.

Until next time, ho, ho, ho and please pardon any typos.

A Dimmer

My mind is a bit muddled tonight, like my brain is saturated in goo, owing to a whopping two hours of sleep. I just didn’t feel tired when last my head hit a pillow, perhaps because I forgot to turn on my blue light filter, f.lux. That app is a lifesaver when I remember to use it. It gradually turns your screen a dark salmon color as the sun sets outside. The idea is to keep your eyes from tricking your brain into thinking it’s daylight. Daywalkers need that like a hole in the head, so I’m glad for the wonders of modern technology that counter the other wonders of modern technology.

No, this is not sponsored content. I’ve been using that app for years. An ex-boyfriend who was partially color-blind hated it, so when I stayed at his place and wanted to keep him from looking over my shoulder while I was reading or writing, I’d turn it on.

See, one night, before you could stream YouTube directly out of your TV, I VERY STUPIDLY agreed to hook up my laptop to his huge flat-screen so we could indulge our sadistic humor with some FAIL videos. I had another tab open on my browser which just happened to display an old private blog of mine that had some randy fiction I had written when earthly pleasures like that still interested me. He clicked on the tab and the first line to the story on the screen was a doozy: Jake was always up for a good, hard fuck.

“NICE.”

“Oops. I had forgotten about that.”

“Who’s Jake?”

Ah, crap. Here we go.

“Don’t worry. This entire blog is fiction.”

“But who IS he?”

“It’s FICTION.”

“Who’s it ABOUT?”

“NO one.”

After about four rounds of that I said, “Will you look at the date on this, please? It was before I divorced my ex-husband.”

“So it’s about HIM?”

“No. I said it was FICTION.”

“So you made it up?”

“That’s what fiction is, yes?”

“I guess.”

I don’t think he bought it because for three months after that he kept trying to figure out who Jake was.

Anyway, that’s when I started turning f.lux on as a deterrent whenever I was reading or writing on my laptop at his place. That was about 12 years ago, so it’s an old app.

And this, kids, is why you don’t go poking around your beloved’s laptop when your beloved is a writer. You might up in said writer’s public blog years after you break up.

Now I need refreshment, so I leave you with this:

An oil slick, with a haiku that says "dark prism/slips over surface/suffocation"
Image: Ante Hamersmit on Unsplash

Batty Boo!

It’s the most wonderful time of the year again: Time for Horrordailies! This is the precursor to Holidailies, and while only a few of us have signed up for the spooky stuff, I’m looking forward to it. Check out my nifty bat tumbler:

It goes with my bat earrings, which have purple sparklies:

My plan for Horrodailies is to offer up a dark poem, likely a Haiku, with photos from photographers I think you need to see and, if they’re looking for work, hire.

Unfortunately, I got thrown off my plans already because of the not entirely unanticipated letter that was stuck to my door by my landlord tonight informing me that my lease will not be renewed when it’s up on December 31. It’s a long, ugly story, but the short version is that my apartment has had mold issues for three summers running and this summer they actually had to remove and replace panels from the ceiling and wall. So, rather than do what Virginia law requires of landlords who must do a mold remediation, which is put the tenant up in another unit or in a local hotel for up to 30 days at the landlord’s expense, they’re just not renewing my lease. This way they can take their understaffed crew their usual infernally long fix-it time to correct the moisture problem that’s causing it.

Am I sad? Not really. Not like I was about a month ago when it became apparent that I was going to have to move, either voluntarily or involuntarily. I’ve lost some minor property to mold here, things like a leather jacket that couldn’t be restored (that I didn’t wear anymore anyway because it doesn’t go with my vegetarianism), some old Salomon winter boots that were good up to -20 degrees F, and this summer, an ironing board.

But I also lost something VERY precious to me this summer, which was the box of birdie mementos from Inigo the Nanday and Jimmy the Green Cheek. I had cleaned Inigo’s wood perch after he passed, but one day this summer when I opened the closet in my home gym, I smelled something rank coming from the birdie box and it turned out that the perch was covered in green mold. All of the soft materials, like rope perches and palm and fabric toys, had spots. Then, when I opened the plastic baggies that held wooden toy parts, Jimmy’s old and smaller toys, and Inigo’s leftover popsicle sticks that he loved to chew so much when he was healthy, they all smelled of mold and mildew. I managed to save some of Inigo’s half-chewed toys, but the only toy Jimmy has now is one tiny blue wooden star with one tip chewed off that I put inside the little tin that holds his ashes.

To say I was devastated by this loss would be an understatement. And yet I am SO very grateful that last winter I decided to take the baggies of feathers from Inigo, Jimmy, Louise the Alexandrine (who lives my ex-husband), and an ex-boyfriend’s birds out of that closet and put them in one of my nightstands. The baggies are doubled and sealed well, and I believe my bedroom furniture is made with cedar, which is mold-resistant, so they’re safe.

At any rate, I knew this was coming and I cried my tears over it a month ago—enough so that the problems and annoyances I chose to overlook about the place are now on my last nerve. I even got annoyed that a seam on the light fixture in the dining room is where you can see it instead of facing a corner. I just didn’t expect to get this letter until Halloween, 60 days before the lease ends, but instead they gave it to me today. It threw me, even though I know it will work out in the end. New year, new apartment, and I’ll likely have to cheat on Holidailies and write a few in advance in December.

But first Horrordailies. Here’s an oldie but goodie vamp poem that I originally made with Magnetic Poetry online, titled “Velvet and Cake.”

More tomorrow, friends and fiends!