Sunday Morning, 13 February -- Palm Springs Days Five and Six

1) Friday morning I woke early and allowed myself just to Start the Day and witness Dawn tint the mountains with her Rosy Fingers. There is a beautiful spot to see it at the other end of the pool. It’s a sight one does not see in New England. At least I haven’t . . .

2) Friday the first of two Big Events was a jovial lunch at 8Four9 with two Interlochen-affiliated friends. We sat on their beautifully shaded patio and there were laughs aplenty.

3) Afterwards I got to tour their beautiful mid-century home. Thank goodness I was able to keep from salivating over their cabinet of Fiestaware. Like mine, they were family heirlooms. Unlike mine, they’re in mint condition. I don’t know what Mother’s family did to their Fiestaware that it is so dinged, chipped, and cracked, but . . . oh well.

4) I got to ride in a convertible!

5) In the evening a surprise dinner of Chinese takeout for Hochmina’s birthday. Most excellent takeout, but I confess that after one of Martin’s cosmos I had a little difficulty following all the conversational cross currents at the dinner table.

6) Saturday, yesterday, there was a pool party here, for which the pool was specially heated starting sometime on Thursday. Roughly 18-24 men, friends of my hosts and a few friends of mine they hadn’t met. A pool party is, in fact, just a waterborne cocktail party, and the same sort of maneuverability between groups is needed — just don’t splash pool water into anyone’s drink.

6a) I got to witness more PS life with a quick trip to Townie Bagels,

7) I remember Fresca from the late 1960s as basically like drinking acid, so it’s sort of a surprise to find it a staple of Palm Springs home entertaining. The Vodka Fresca is quite the popular drink here. And, I’m told, when out and about, the Vodka Press is in demand: vodka, club soda, and a press on the soda gun for Sprite or 7Up.

8) The party hours were 1:30 - 5, so at 6:15 or so a small handful were still on hand enjoying good conversation. Afterwards five of us went off for cheap Mexican food and margaritas, sitting outside at a large tile table and making jokes.

9) Sunday we are going off to polo (!), so who knows what that will be like! I gather it is more casual than East Coast polo . . .

Friday Morning, 11 February -- Palm Springs, Day Four

1) Rumors to the contrary, I am also experiencing the flora and fauna of Palm Springs. The dominant feature of my hosts’ home is a type of oak tree I’ve never heard of before, a silk oak or silky oak. There are actually two here, but the one closest to the house is less than half the size of the other.

2) Ravens are the dominant bird life, swooping about and cawing and making me hope there’s no male child in the neighborhood named Damien. Yesterday morning I saw a smaller and sleeker bird with a hooked beak perch in the silky oak, which was identified to me as a Cooper’s hawk. Quite a beautiful bird in silhouette. When it moved into the tree foliage, three lesser goldfinches popped out of the top of the tree, flying away with alarmed twitters.

3) Eggs Benedict is one of my favorite “special breakfast” dishes, and my host’s homemade eggs Benedict pole vaults to the top of the list.

4) One of my hosts gave me a choice of activity for the midday: estate sales, or a light hike through the Andreas Canyon. I chose the latter — estate sales are everywhere, but there’s only one Andreas Canyon — but first, drive-bys of beautiful mid-century homes in the Deepwell neighborhood. Everything so white or natural stone, with a brightly-painted door and house numbers in a Neutraface font. Driving through one veddy veddy exclusive subdivision we saw two white French Provincial chairs near a front door, and I heard myself say, “Finalmente, curves!”

4a) In all this beautiful town, only one house made me raise my eyebrows, surrounded by brick walls of battleship gray and with a bright blue door. The wrong sort of blue. It looked so marine for a desert town.

5) Driving and hiking through Andreas Canyon brought the kinds of new sights and sounds I have been craving during the pandemic. Barren landscapes of green tumbleweed and heat, narrow river oases of gigantic palms, cliffs that look like medieval parapets made of faces. And many opportunities to twist an ankle on this one-mile circular trail, but we emerged unscathed.

5a) Note: Fine dirt on rocks makes them slippery.

5b) We also noticed one little cairn of four or five flat stones that a hiker had constructed. Noticing a sign at the end that hikers were warned not to do this made me glad we saw only one.

6) The afternoon brought my first Palm Springs pool party, a unique local form of hospitality that is basically a waterborne cocktail party. Because shade is an ever-present consideration, we were fortunate that the pool was in shade during that period of the afternoon. There was a great deal of tossing the ball for Gizmo, who took great joy in fetching it and returning to drop it into the pool. Sometimes he would manage to get it back, otherwise he’d make a bit of noise for attention.

6a) They say no one in Palm Springs drinks gin, but I must say I enjoyed my gin and tonic. Also the magnificent homemade guacamole.

7) Pizza at home for dinner, and by 9 PM I had fallen into bed sawing gourds.

Thursday Morning, 10 February -- Palm Springs, Day Three

I write this account of yesterday curled up by the pool with my second cup of coffee listening to the breeze in the palms, the bells on the wind chimes, and the gentle trickle of water over a four-four-tall black stone monolith fountain. I do not feel like I deserve this.

1) It was simply impossible to come up with new material for Etiquetteer yesterday, so I published one of the Lost Columns from earlier volumes, and then had my entire notify list bounce back due to some tech issues. #tedious.

2) The big event of the day was to get in a Lyft with a very friendly and chatty driver and go to Pinocchio’s for lunch al fresco with my friend Kyle, unseen since well before the pandemic, and just off the plane for a short stay in town. We got a table right at the sidewalk, bottomless champagne (they don’t mess around at Pinocchio’s), and a club sandwich for me. You can never go wrong with a classic. After so long we both had lots of news to share, and the conversation never flagged.

2a) Nor did it with the trio of ladies at the next table who were very eager to see what we ordered (which always makes me uncomfortable) and who I got to teach the Dickensian custom of “taking wine:” when you look meaningfully at each other, raise your glasses a tiny bit, and drink. With your pinkies in. Kyle totally backed me up that the eye contact is the most important part of this, which it is. They were actually a lot of fun.

3) I drifted in and out of the shops after lunch, casually searching for peridot jewelry, but not really finding anything that interested me. And of course I saw the famous statue of Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, which - why is it even here? That movie was made in New York.

4) In Palm Springs pool maintenance is a fairly constant topic, particularly heating, and I understood why when I came home and waded into the pool for the very first time, a bracing 58 degrees they told me. It was actually wonderful — for about 45 seconds, which was all I needed. The rest of the afternoon was spent on email and a little tete a tete with one of my hosts.

5) 6:00 PM cocktail hour featured a shaker of whiskey sours, some tasty little meatballs arranged by Walter Gropius on the plate, and a portable table lamp straight out of the Jetsons. Also a large moth, drowning in the last half of my cocktail. Not the sort of roughage I need in my diet. I fished it out with one of those bamboo cocktail skewers with a loop at one end and prayed the alcohol would kill of any residual cooties.

6) For dinner we drove to El Tropicale, a long-established PS restaurant that has significantly and beautifully expanded its outdoor seating in the back due to COVID. My hosts knew the staff well. An inclination to small plates led us to the bar menu and a) angus sliders, b) popcorn shrimp with remoulade (OMG, fabulous), and c) truffle garlic fries. Also, for dessert, a slice of “mile high” chocolate cake so large I thought it came from the rib of a cake dinosaur.

6a) The joint was jumpin’, as they say, and my hosts noticed one randomly assembled table of eight men that they said looked as though they were all staying at the same resort, met around the pool, and said “Hey, let’s go to dinner.”

7) From the hot tub after dinner I got to watch two lanterns like silk balloons floating over the surface of the pool and changing colors, one a couple seconds later than the other, from gray to white to rose pink to purple to deep red to blue to green and back to gray. A beautiful image for the end of the day.

Tuesday Evening, 8 February -- Palm Springs, Day Two

1) After a leisurely morning of indirection and indecision, Hochmina came to call for me a little before noon to go to lunch someplace outside. He is spending the winter here, luckily for me!

2) We ended up on the very large white-furnished patio of Eight4Nine, next to a party including a Gentleman Older Than I who kept not seeing the salmon salad on the menu instead of the chicken salad. I was getting so caught up in that drama that I rather wished we’d been seated at some more distant part of the patio — but in Palm Springs, where the shade is going to fall is of greater consideration.

2a) At any rate, they finally figured it out.

2b) On our other side was a pair of ladies with two tiny dogs in a stroller — I think one of them was a Malted Poo or something — blech! — but we had a nice discussion with them about the doggies and Gizmo.

3) Aperol Spritz + Cobb salad = predictable + delicious.

4) We strolled down the street popping into interior design stores. This being Palm Springs, everything is about mid-century modern, mid-century modern derivitave, and sleek clean lines. Not one curlicue in the whole place, much less any gilt. The closest thing we got to fringe was a chenille throw pillow.

5) Then I actually had a mission in the world of Fashion Retail, which can be very depressing, and was: the search for swimwear. Of course I would rather not be bothered with it at all, but even so, the locals all seem to entertain in the pool, and a) dangerous to assume, b) Fashion sometimes overtakes Style, even here, and c) one might wear rags to the beach in New England, but that is clearly not a West Coast Thing.

5a) That said, few entities are as pitiless as a dressing room mirror. But I left Division with two suits that work.

6) Hochmina brought me home via his place so I could greet Martin and Gizmo, which was Most Pleasant Indeed. And then back to my little casita for a NAP. My hosts are also proponents of naptime. I have found my people.

7) I also discovered the lemon tree behind the casita, next to its bright yellow door, and my host pointed out a rose — currently in a state of suffering — that blooms a brilliant yellow. So of course I have dubbed this charming cottage the Casita Rosa Limón.

8) To say thank you, I took my hosts out to dinner at Chi Chi at the Avalon Hotel, where we sat poolside in the most quiet and refined atmosphere one could hope for. I had some sort of cocktail involving whiskey, ginger beer, and the essence of a few woodland herbs and flowers, I don’t remember precisely what, oysters, and a wonderful strip steak.

8a) Our waiter, who was also the host and serving in a couple other positions that night, could not have been more delightful and enthusiastic. We three were admittedly underwhelmed with the way the dishes had been described on the menu, but one friend asked the waiter what he liked. And he began “When I’m light hungry, I like [Insert Dish Here with Descriptive Rapture]. When I’m medium hungry I like [Insert Dish Here with Descriptive Rapture]. But when I’m bottomless hungry, I get the New York strip steak with fries and without the usual sides.” And I said, perhaps too loudly, “YES!”

8b) Did I mention they were garlic fries?

8c) The dessert, which was not on the menu, was a salted chocolate caramel brownie with pistachio ice cream and extra pistachios. Om nom nom.

9) Once home, talk of watching Down With Love dissolved in the satisfaction of the beautiful cool evening watching the half moon in a black sky flecked with stars, a half moon with a bright rind and darker center — very much like a slice of watermelon, or lemon. Someone could make a neon sign out of that moon, and it would be a hit.

Tuesday Morning 8 February -- Palm Springs, Day One

1) My first time on a plane since August, 2019, off literally in the middle of the night for the first leg of my first trip to Palm Springs, to stay with friends who retired there last year. Friendly Lyft driver — a basketball coach from the North Shore — and of course no traffic.

2) Not having traveled by air for so long, I was disoriented by tech and procedure changes. Security went smoothly. The rub, though — having gotten through security by 3:30 AM and with a flight boarding at 4:25, nothing was open where I could get coffee or sustenance of any kind! Thank goodness I was able to tuck into a large omelette at O’Hare.

3) I am happy to report that, contrary to all the news stories, I didn’t witness any bad behavior around masking.

4) At Palm Springs, we disembarked not through a jetway, but in the old-fashioned way in the blazing sunshine down a ramp. The glorious views of the mountains! Turns out most of the airport is also al fresco, delightful.

5) My friends found me in baggage claim, cutely carrying signs with my name on them. A drive of only ten minutes brought us to their little jewel of a house! I have been installed in a small, perfect guesthouse with every comfort and immediate access to the hot tub. This is going to be a wonderful week.

6) Following a tour of the house filled with many stories, we whisked off to Bongo Johnny’s for an al fresco lunch, and then a spot of antiquing in the midst of errands. Under the circumstances I think I showed admirable restraint.

7) By this time jet lag was telling — I really hadn’t been able to sleep on either flight — and I fell like concrete into bed for two hours. I needed that.

8) After more storytelling — we haven’t seen each other in quite awhile — it was time to accompany one friend to Ralph’s, the — or a — big supermarket here. Driving there at night down these wide streets of low houses made me think of the Old Hometown, Lago di Carlo, and so did the supermarket. “Well, you know Ralph’s is really Kroger’s, right?” That explained it!

9) Cocktails on return, rye manhattans served with homemade cheese puffs. And then dinner, a rich and luscious Yankee pot roast. And a tumbling conversation of many threads and much excitement.

10) But then the time, for me, of serious sleep came, and I had to retire to my little casita. Waking periodically in the night I noticed how dry my throat would feel, and I remembered stories of “Las Vegas Throat,” when unacclimatized singers would be unable to sing after a week of performances in Vegas. Hydrating is going to be very important this week!

11) When I finally started the day around 7 AM, twin experiences offset each other. The view of the pool outside, calm and shadowy with a beautiful tree, and the mountains beyond, coupled with my snore score of 124 (very high) and recorded proof that I was trying to compete with the Palm Springs airport for a noise ordinance.

12) This is the start of a week with new experiences and old friends, my first real travel since the pandemic, and I am ready for it!

Wednesday Night, Groundhog Day, 2022

1) Last night just before bed I had the horrifying, enraging discovery that not one, but two fake accounts on Instagram were using my photographs and words. And based on the experience of other users, Instagram just does not care about these fake accounts.

2) This afternoon’s dental appointment brought me by ye Instytytte’s new Welcome Center in Kendall Square, which made me think about the Very Old Motto “Tech Is Hell.” Because that Old Motto is helpfully evoked in the New Windows! I had a good laugh over it.

3) En route home I stopped by a pen shop downtown to see what could be done about two wooden pens I found in the vase I keep on top of the piano. One was very easy to fit with a replacement cartridge: a pen made of the original stage flooring of Boston’s Symphony Hall and given to me by the Boston Pops staff when I retired in 2019. The other was a felt tip pen made of rosewood that had been given to me when I graduated from high school by my sweet beautiful cousin Margie Bess Tims in Mississippi (may she rest in peace). Made by Hallmark, that pen’s cartridges are no longer made.

3a) That said, the pen shop’s entire staff of four got involved in everything to do with both these pens, and seemed delighted to see out-of-the-ordinary writing instruments. And one of them did some internet research and found that the rosewood pen could use a cartridge from Levenger. So now I have that to pursue. What fun!

. . . it entirely depends on your perspective!

Friday Night, 28 January -- Pre-Blizzard

1) Gurrrrrlllll, I am so ready for this. Taking my blizzard cues from Sarah Bernhardt.

2) Seriously though, I just took out the trash and my street, usually respectably full of parked cars, is nearly empty.

3) I’m afraid I’ll spend most of this blizzard reading, writing, and washing dishes.

Tuesday Midday, 25 January

1) Something new always arrests my eye when I walk through the cemetery, and yesterday it was this tombstone by the lake, marked by a harvested sheaf of wheat bound with ivy. The wheat sheaf symbolizes resurrection and immortality, while ivy, of course, means marital fidelity. So let’s hope the husband and wife buried here really did enjoy a happy marriage.

1a) Interestingly, my copy of Kate Greenaway’s Language of Flowers (purchased in junior high school at the local mall’s Wyldyn Books [long since closed]} only gives the symbolism of a stalk of wheat, which means Riches. I guess Miss Greenaway didn’t expect any swain to woo his beloved with an entire wheat sheaf.

2) This morning, in the midst of email and dishwashing, I have been reaching back into the deepest recesses of my YewTybbe favorites list, and this came up — which, well — let’s just say it currently has an added importance to me.

2a) And then there was this poignant clip of Kathryn Grayson singing about the murder of Vienna, which, well, feels more current than I’d like.

3) Everyone’s chattering about HBO’s new The Gilded Age, which reminded me that France kind of missed out on the start of World War I because they were distracted by a high-profile murder trial. Admittedly it’s a big deal when the wife of a high government official assassinates a prominent newspaper editor in his office and is then driven in her chauffeur-driven limousine to the police station, but still . . .

Friday Afternoon, 21 January

1) Sending out love to everyone who needs it today. Sure, it’s National Hugging Day — I ask you — but over and above a Frivolous Internet Holiday, I’m seeing a lot of anger, sadness, and despair out there. You’re not alone, dahlings. I’m here for you — shout out by DM if you need me.

1a) Because, in the the words of the late Mae West, “I’m a lion tamer, not a mind reader.”

2) Etiquetteer turns 21 — 21! — at the end of the month, and I have finally — finally! — started going through the big box of email that Daddy printed out for Mother to read, because it includes a lot of my early columns to which I no longer have access. All that, and the baby books and photo albums she created (much of which Laura has) — what a valuable record of my life she prepared and preserved for me. Fitting to think of it since her birthday was yesterday.

2a) Some of that early material makes me cringe now, but some of it has stood up rather well, “with a bit of trussing here and there,” as Auntie Mame said of Agnes Gooch’s figure.

3) This morning, while I was absolutely not thinking about my former life as a reunion planner, I got an email from an old volunteer looking for advice. Thankfully my network has remained vigorous enough that I could refer him to volunteers from another class who already do very well what this person was asking about.

3a) I have actually been invited back to speak at a class reunion event in May for one of my old classes of which I’m an honorary member. This has resulted in several honorary classmates subscribing to my notify list.

Tuesday Morning, 18 January

1) I love how just one morning meeting of no more than 30 minutes can leave one spinning sparks like a pinwheel with ideas.

2) This also gave me a chance to revisit one of my favorite quotes from Hawthorne, from his “Old Esther Dudley” in “Legends of the Province House,” part of his Twice Told Tales: “Then with tottering feet, which age and tremulous joy caused to tread amiss, she hurried down the grand staircase, her silks sweeping and rustling as she went, so that the sound was as if a train of spectral courtiers were thronging from the dim mirror. And Esther Dudley fancied that as soon as the wide door should be flung open, all the pomp and splendor of by-gone times would pace majestically into the Province House, and the gilded tapestry of the past would be brightened by the sunshine of the present.”

3) It is so easy, so very easy just to slouch through the day in lounge pants and a sweater, but I dressed for this morning meeting — dress shirt, bow tie, cufflinks, actual trousers — and I must say it made a difference. In these trying times we have to take our motivation where we may.

Monday Morning, 17 January

1) Because you never know what the day will hold, today started with learning more about the Fabergé Sandringham Commission from Edward VII of all the farm animals at Sandringham in semi-precious stones. One of my English friends brought this to my attention, part of the big Fabergé exhibition at the V&A. I wish I could be there to see it!

The Fabergé Dexter Bull from the Sandringham Commission.

2) I am eager to add a recaptcha to my Contact Etiquetteer page, and having found the info page about it on ye Squyrespyce’s website, I thought I could get it taken care of with relative ease. Well . . . as Sidney Greenstreet so memorably said in The Maltese Falcon, “Well sir, we mere men should have known better.” ‘Cause it turns out you can’t just add this thing, first you have to enable it via ye Gyygle.

2a) And you can’t do that without “registering your site,” which in my case would be a new website.

2b) And you can’t do that without “getting started with Enterprise,” which means watching a video that explains nothing helpful and then “agreeing to ye Gyygle’s Cloud Platform Terms of Service and the terms of service of any applicable services and APIs.” All I want is a step-by-step guide, and instead I’m getting a Gilded Age marriage contract written in four-dimensional chess.

2c) So I guess it’s really a question of who’s going to strip-mine me for personal information: corrupt spammers or Big Tech.

3) Feeling snug at home during this storm — but this late in January it does feel spooky not to see snow on the ground.

Saturday Morning 15 January

1) It’s one thing to start the day by butt-dialing an entire Facetime group when entering the bathroom and then not being able to end it because the X button wouldn’t appear, but it’s quite another to start it by butt-dialing an entire Facetime group when entering the bathroom, failing to end it in time, and then nearly breaking a favorite coffee cup while fumbling taking it out of the cupboard.

1a) I’m going back to bed.

2) Really, I ought to take down the Christmas tree today.

3) As long as I can get it done before Zoom tea at 4 PM.

Thursday Evening, 13 January

1) Yesterday was so happy, it was difficult to realize this morning that one reason it was so happy was that I had completely forgotten to go to a dentist appointment first thing in the morning. Oopsie.

2) With temperatures risen into the low 40s, I took a brisk constitutional through the cemetery this afternoon. Walking up the long drive to the entrance past what looked like a stalled funeral procession was a little discomfiting. Later in my walk in what I call the Back Forty I was surprised to hear a car radio, and then to see someone (not apparently a staffer) cleaning the insides of his car doors down one of the roads.

2a) More picturesque was the hawk (or hawklike bird) that flew over me, showing its underside of warm tan and fluffy white feathers.

3) Another Zoom tea, this time Connoisseur Master Blend from Grace Tea, a good strong black tea, and a dozen of those very good chocolate drop cookies I made earlier in the week. Two hours of unflagging conversation on such a wide variety of topics: Bloomsbury, the Souls, Isadora Duncan, family heirlooms, the tarot, scent, Gladys Deacon, Ruth Draper, Victorian murder, Elsie de Wolfe and Edith Wharton, urban life — not in this order.

4) You know, friends, I’m just not hanging out on ye Fycebykke much, so I apologize if I’m missing major life events you share only there. It’s not that I don’t love, it’s just the algorithm.

Wednesday Afternoon, 12 January

1) It’s a good day, for a few reasons. Being able to accomplish something significant by 11 AM on a writing day always helps my mood, and today I am pretty pleased with my column.

2) On a deeper level, a Fascinating New Personality has come into the picture, and I predict a lot of afternoon tea and cookies in my future.

3) Finally, after a retreat of nearly a year, an internet friend has resurfaced, so that I am resuming my role of Wise Elder. Simultaneously, another Friend at a Distance is taking on a similar role with me. I can’t say “Wise Elder” in this case because I think I’m actually a whisper older. Let’s say he’s an Auxiliary Brake. A message of reassuring caution from him this morning helped put a strong foundation under my good mood today.

3a) Long story short — grateful.

Tuesday Morning, 11 January

1) Steadfastly not complaining about the weather, but why not sprinkle a bit of tarragon into your eggs this morning, for the taste of warmer seasons?

2) Yesterday, having been warned about the significant drop in temperatures for today, I took a brisk vigorous walk through my happy place, the cemetery. And as often after snowfall, I saw things there a little differently than usual.

2a) I also noticed a hawk gliding from tree to tree, and hoped it would just keep gliding and perching and pay no attention to me.

3) What kind of world do we want to live in? What do I want to make of this particular day in my life? The big questions crowd close sometimes.

This plot marker, one of four marking a family plot, is very much of its era. Remember dahlings, what is fashionable is not always stylish.

Tuesday Morning, 4 January

1) Wakeful in the night with troubled thoughts — it happens sometimes — I got up very early for coffee, morning pages, and devotional. You know I practice bibliomancy, and this morning I held Mother’s Bible thoughtfully for a few moments before opening. When I did, I was brought to Psalm 140, and I instantly knew this was my proper answer. It begins: “Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man; preserve me from violent men, Who devise mischiefs in their heart; continually do they stir up contention.” Read the entire psalm; it’s just 12 verses, and it may inspire you or comfort you.

2) Mauve lustreware and blue denim is of course the sort of combination you might expect to find in my house.

3) Yesterday at last I mailed out the last of my Christmas cards, just in time. And in the incoming mail I received more, from friends to whom I had sent cards a week ago. Also a lovely note of thanks that squeezed my heart a little.

Monday Morning, 27 December -- A Shining Week

1) I love the week between Christmas and New Year’s, which has a radiance the way Christmas morning did when I was a child. I always tried to take this week as a vacation from the office in the last 30 years. It’s a time apart.

1a) I’ll admit this week radiates a little more brightly when there’s snow on the ground, but “we already have the moon, let’s not ask for the stars.”

2) If we weren’t in the midst of a pandemic, I would want very much to get together with friends one on one or in small groups for lunch out, afternoon tea in, drinks, dinner. But we are in the midst of a pandemic, and I have deliberately kept my schedule a blank. At the moment I have a ticket to visit the MFA (on my own) one day, and Friday a friend is coming by for a morning coffee. Otherwise, I will be isolating.

3) Instead I want to do some serious planning for 2022 — writing, travel, domesticity, etc. — which will give me a blueprint. And the other thing I really want to do is read The Economist special year-end issue to look at the year ahead. When I was still flying home for Christmas I’d pick that up at Logan Airport and still be reading it on the flights home a week or so later. It’s a nice year-end ritual for me.

4) Today, however, I need to direct my attention to the remaning Christmas cards that need to be sent, since I virtuously completed all eight of my thank-you notes yesterday.

5) I really can’t take an hour for granted, because the nice shiny feeling of a new week usually expires by Tuesday evening. Onward!

Christmas Eve 2021

1) Again I awoke earlier than expected, after a dream involving an old enemy, and again I realized why it’s not a good idea to scroll social media before writing my morning pages, as I got drawn into a (neutral) exchanges of messages with a different old enemy. These things do little to clarify one’s thoughts.

2) I ended up reading the news for a couple hours — I ended up avoiding the news the last few days — and then settling down to write more Christmas cards, with Alastair Sim as Scrooge to keep me company. Almost all my inventory of Christmas and New Year’s cards are now gone! And many more addresses left on my list. Oopsie, should have prepared.

2a) That said, as I scanned down my list, I had to ask “Who on earth are these people?” Maybe it’s just the pandemic, but I have not heard directly from a lot of people in a very long time. Is this the case with you?

3) Back to Centre Street to run more errands: post office, Chi Chi Foo Foo Upscale Market for eggs (after discovering a shortage in my kitchen), dry cleaners (she is so nice!), and then the local bookstore to pick up an order and to buy more holiday cards.

3a) The staff at this store are really doing all they can to prevent COVID spread. Aside from big plexiglass shields by the register, they also have a low wire barrier by the door to keep customers from barging in and out on their own, and they insist on everyone using hand sanitizer on entering. As luck would have it today, everyone in the store wanted to shop in the same ~36 square feet, which included the entrance, the registers, and — important for me! — the holiday card display. It felt . . . a little chaotic, which is not really unusual for shopping on Christmas Eve.

3b) What’s interesting about progressive bookstores is that there are so many titles that prompt “I ought to read that” and not “I want to read that.” There’s a significant difference.

4) Murder, as I’ve pointed out so often, is very relaxing at times of stress. So I picked up Dashiell Hammett’s The Thin Man earlier this week (after an ugly online exchange) and almost finished it this afternoon. The story takes place over Christmas, 1932, in New York, but Christmas is only a minor piece of the backdrop to the action — which of course is detecting and excessive drinking. As much as I love the original Myrna Loy/William Powell film, and as opposed as I generally am to remaking the classics, The Thin Man is due for an update that doesn’t leave out any of the seamy side of New York at the time, or of the story. Really, Nick seems to have slept with most of the women in the story, and Hammett also paints a vivid picture of Nick and Nora’s New York social circle that could be brought out more. Not to mention the gritty nature of some of the speakeasies they hang out in.

5) This being National Eggnog Day, of course I was going to attempt Granny’s eggnog again, now that Cousin Mary has sent it to me. This year it was still quite tasty, but the textures didn’t work out. I should probably make just one serving at a time — but that’s a lot of work to fill a small glass.

6) And this being a Friday, the besties and I ended up having a Friday Facetime, but a little later than usual. Someone made the point that we hadn’t been together in person as a group since Thanksgiving, 2020, and it does underline the toll of the pandemic.

7) Christmas Eve — I am not consumed with the past, but eager Christmas dinner tomorrow at Craig’s. All my life I’ve spent Christmas with my family or on my own, never outside the family — Easter and Thanksgiving yes, many times, but not Christmas. And while I have been snug as a bug these two years since Mother died, I am happy to be doing something different tomorrow.

7a) But family are present in my thoughts. Tonight Laura texted me photos of her children, the Nephews and Niece Who Must Not Be Tagged, and Little Layla, barely two months old, happily gathered together. And on this night in 1954 a surprise Christmas gift in the living room on Kirkman Street revealed to my father’s family that he and Mother were engaged, at which there was much rejoicing.

8) I wish you joy this Christmas, but mostly I wish you health and safety. I keep telling myself that the 1918 pandemic ended at some point, but . . . when will this burn itself out?

Thursday Morning, 23 December -- Errands

1) Working a little harder to find the good in every thing, and it turns out the good in waking up at 5:45 AM — much earlier than planned — is getting to the post office very early and running other errands on Centre Street early and thereby avoiding Larger Numbers of People during Omicron. And let’s face it, I do love that darkest hour before the dawn in wintertime — when I’m snugly inside anyway.

1a) Post office to mail the last Christmas gift requiring mailing, bank, CVS for sundries, Chi-Chi Foo Foo Upscale Market for heavy cream (because tomorrow is National Eggnog Day, half and half will not suffice, and CVS only had half and half), and ye Blynchyrd’s — also sometimes known as the Island of Lickastowa — to stock up on champagne for New Year’s.

2) I like my little town center on Centre Street, where I can do everything but buy serious groceries. And today I happened to notice what the sales clerks were wearing. The nice postmistress had on a beautiful silk headscarf of large red and orange dots on a white ground with some sort of line drawing — perhaps a fish. The very tall male clerk at the CVS had on a white T-shirt over a long-sleeved shirt that read “Merry Christmas Ya Filthy Animal,” which made me laugh. And the nice lady at ye Blynchyrd’s sported a fun, busy-looking Christmas sweater.

2a) Even having lingered over a (very savory) breakfast sandwich at the Chi-Chi Foo Foo Upscale Market, I still got to ye Blynchyrd’s ten minutes before they opened. As I walked in I said to the lady behind the counter “I promise I’m not here to get my drink on! I just had other errands to run!” and we had a good laugh.

3) Returning home, I witnessed neighbors with school-age children across the street talking and overheard “And today our question is ‘Why is there a District of Columbia, and why Columbia?’” Which was something I knew something about, and we had some pleasant banter. A nice way to conclude an earlier-than-usual outing.

3a) Now, on to more Christmas cards!

Wednesday Morning, 22 December

1) Finalmente, the installation of new ceiling fixtures is now complete. The stained glass fixtures in the parlor and dining room look just as I imagined them, and the unexpected need to paint the ceiling can be put off until later. It is such a relief to have this done, and the boxes those fixtures came in tossed out.

The dining room.

2) The new toner cartridges arrived, too, and I installed them. And the computer recognizes that a document is being printed, but nothing prints. Ho hum. I am going to have to send out my cards without my Christmas letter, which is tedious.

2a) The other odd techy thing: for the second Wednesday in a row, almost the entire Etiquetteer email list has been rejected and bounced back to me with my usual column notification. Curious . . .

3) Of greater concern, the number of people I know — mostly internet friends, but also one or two in real life — who are testing positive or coming down with full-blown COVID. Please everyone, be safe.