We’re expecting one inch of snow overnight and they already closed the schools for tomorrow.
I wonder if the federal government will also close.
The D.C. area really has become the epitome of wimpiness.
“But it’s the ICE!”
Well, we’ve always had ice. The difference is that it actually had to be on the ground and too thick for sand to offer traction on it before anything closed. I remember schlepping to a job that was a 10-minute walk from Union Station, basically skating across Stanton Park in my boots, and stopping to marvel at the unfortunate beauty of budding cherry trees encased in ice half an inch thick.
And yet, nature looks toward spring, even now, in mid-January. This morning Pierre the Northern Cardinal flew up into the tree after Balcony Breakfast and sang his first courting song of the year. It moved me to tears for being alive to hear it.
He kept stopping and starting as though learning and practicing, thus confirming for me that he is a young one and maybe even a surviving son of the pair who nested in the holly bushes last spring. I don’t know where they went or what might have happened to them, though I fear that their second clutch failed because of the sprinklers and they might have abandoned the site. They also may have divorced (it happens about 20% of the time) or perhaps perished of natural causes, including predation, as the average Northern Cardinal lifespan is a heartbreakingly short three years.
I love that Pierre has grown–perhaps in part because of his visits to the balcony?–and I’ll cherish hearing him for the next few months as he establishes his territory and seeks a mate, even when he routinely wakes me up before 5:00 a.m. next month. I hope a lovely lady Northern Cardinal finds his song as charming as I do.
Long day of cleaning, laundry, and cooking, and I decided to put up my tree this year, so this will be a short one. I’m putting up my own tree just to celebrate the fact that I survived the heart attack. The decorations were amassed over the years and my travels, inherited from my parents, or given to me by friends, and I want to look back on all of it in gratefulness for the joy I’ve known in this life, while also looking forward to many more years of life, lawd willin’ and the creek don’t rise.
Here is Washington, D.C.’s tree for the year, going out to a whole bunch of people–Don, Mark, Scott, Haisam, Amanda, and Cyndi.
Washington, D.C.’s state Christmas tree, 2023. Click to embiggen.
As long as I’m posting D.C.’s tree, I’ll add the National Christmas tree as well, since all of these trees are in D.C.
The National Christmas Tree, 2023. What a hot mess.
Yes, it’s looking a little rough. It fell over and had to be hoisted back up with a crane. I don’t think they did too much to fix the lights or the streamers. When I first took a good look at it, I thought someone had TP’d it.
Then there is the other extreme, the tree in front of the Town Hall in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia. A smaller tree down by the water in Old Town looked the same. I guess they don’t believe in putting anything on top.
Christmas tree in front of Alexandria Town Hall in Virginia.
To be honest, I prefer the National Tree. I prefer a wild, hot mess to stringent precision. Pretty sure that’s how my own tree will turn out tonight, too. Usually I weave the lights through the branches one at a time, but I don’t have the patience for it so it’s a rather loose weave. By the time I’m done with the lights I might be done for the evening and have to put off decorating the tree until tomorrow night, but that’s okay. No one is going to see it but me, and it’s worth it.
Ah, California. A state I’ve been to many times, although not in recent years. I’m definitely more a northern California type and prefer San Francisco to Los Angeles—although San Diego is quite lovely.
My ex-husband proposed to me in San Francisco actually. He meant to do it while we were on a horseback ride at Half Moon Bay, but when he tried to bring his horse parallel to mine, it trotted away, taking him and his grand proposal with it. It was kind of funny to see, as he had precious little experience with horses, if any, where I had been a mere 20 years out from not only Camp 4H on Long Island, where I took classes in equitation, but also starting a horseback riding club at my high school. Riding a horse is not unlike riding a bike, in my experience. You never really forget how. Therefore, it gave me a chuckle to see him bouncing in the saddle as his horse trotted up the beach.
Our guide was not amused, however, and it took some doing to turn my ex around and back toward the group. Instead, my ex proposed to me just outside the Legion of Honor, where there was a view of the Golden Gate Bridge.
That’s kind of how things were with my ex-husband. He’d always just forge ahead, figuring he’d learn as he went, and it often ended up in some kind minor and eventually amusing catastrophe. I was into downhill skiing, and as he was open to trying new things, when we were dating we took a ski trip up to Mont Sutton in Quebec. I firmly believe in the saying “friends don’t teach friends how to ski” and figured that went twice over for romantic partners, so we took lessons, my ex to learn and me to refresh my skills. Well, the first time we took a lift together, when he got off he didn’t stand up. Instead, there he went, skiing in a squat right toward the back, ungroomed side of the mountain.
“Dan! DAN, FALL!” I yelled, choking back tears of laughter. “FALL DOWN!”
I haven’t seen anything that funny on a ski slope since. However, in his defense, getting off the lift is often a challenge for beginners. I learned that when you’re not sure what to do and you can’t control where you’re going, it’s usually a good idea to just lean over and fall into the snow. It’s better than crashing into another skier or a tree—or skiing off the back side of a mountain. (My beginner moment was NOT falling, and instead skiing right into a tow-rope operator who caught me just before I skied into a stream at Sunday River in Maine.)
My ex and I went to Jamaica for our honeymoon, and when we rented a canoe he paddled us out too far and then capsized the canoe. I was able to dive down quickly enough to grab my wallet, so I didn’t lose my ID, but I did lose some sunglasses I was rather fond of. When we got back home he gave me a gift certificate to get new sunglasses, and that’s how I came to acquire the pair of Ralph Laurens that I still wear to this day, 22 years later. It was quite a memory. Some naked guys sailed past us from the nudist resort next to where we were staying. There’s nothing like reconsidering your brand new marriage while clinging in fury to the side of a canoe, and just when you think help has arrived, you look up to see a pair of hairy arses sitting on the edge of a sailboat while the owners of said arses laugh at you as they sail by. Eventually the safety patrol at the resort came out to get us. Quite embarrassing.
My wasband had a great sense of adventure, though, so I have to give him props for just getting out there and doing new things even if they didn’t always go as planned, like marriage to me.
Anyway, here’s the California state Christmas tree, complete with a few ornaments showing the Golden Gate Bridge, my favorite bridge in the world. Click to enlarge. This one is dedicated to my friend Susan, who has made not one but two trips to see Poets of the Fall not only fun, but super coordinated and easy for me to plan and navigate, first to Prog Power in Atlanta in 2019, and more recently to Warsaw, Poland, just last September. Susan, I promise, one day I WILL take a picture with Jaska!
California’s state Christmas tree, 2023. Click to embiggen.
zenzalei 