Chilling Out

It is like twenty below zero today. I am sooooo glad I don't really have to leave my house at all. The cats keep wanting me to let them out. When the frigid air hits their nose they look all offended, cast an ear off to one side, and expect me to fix this deplorable situation.

I just noticed my tree seems to be leaning a bit to one side. That's ok. It's kind of an off-kilter Christmas around here so far. I was thinking about trees of Christmas pasts. The first year Dan and I had a place of our own we bought a real tree. We thought they'd cost about $20. Wrong. Don't ask me why we went through with it, but after getting the $50 tree, we couldn't afford decorations so had to make kindergarten-y construction paper ornaments and string cheerios & marshmallows etc.

One of the most unique trees I ever had was at a place I lived with a coworker for a while (Dan and I were "on a break" for about 6 months-- I'd gotten totally sick of living with all his friends). It came with a piano that no one wanted to move down the steep narrow stairs. It was an apartment above a bullet riddled "electrical repair shop", that we were pretty sure was just a front for a drug operation. Homeless people squatted in the stair wells, which had no light. When you came home at night you'd have to check for vagrants on the steps. It was always a panicky dash up the stairs and you'd get that hairs-on-the-back-of-your-neck-standing-up sensation of someone right behind you as you madly fumbled for your keys in the pitch dark. Across the street were a suprette/liquor store where they made their own sausage (?-- I know... weirdness abounds) and giant malt silos, so the entire neighborhood smelled like spicy meat and yeast. Disgusting.

There was a guy who lived across the street who would smoke under the street light and stare up at our place. There were huge windows running the entire length (the place was huge, disgusting, but huge), and we could only afford blinds for the two bedrooms, so you could see right inside. He'd stand out there and smoke and stare and not even pretend otherwise when we'd bust him.

We decided to start putting on little one act plays for him which usually involved pretending to murder each other. We'd chase each other around with a giant butcher knife and have pretend karate fights and shoot-outs with toy guns. These invariably disolved into hysterical laugher, after which we'd take theatrical bows, jumping in front of the windows as if coming from behind the stage curtains. Sometimes by the time we'd look out to see his reaction he'd be gone. It entertained the heck out of us anyway.

We had ornaments- she did, but neither of us could afford a tree. I got some fish line from work ( I was a display person at the time) and I made an invisible tree by suspending all the ornaments in the conical shape of a tree. It was pretty freaking cool for something cheap and improvised.

Today is a writing day. #2- working title "munched" is rolling along. #3 is whispering in my ear-- but #1, #1 is getting a face lift. I decided to rework the first chapter a bit, just the opening basically, but it will wind-up shifting some stuff around that will affect the whole first chapter.

Stay warm!