T.J. BROWN BLOG

I’ve blogged about my apathy toward the holidays this year—It’s different. It’s different for all of us. So this weekend I made a concerted effort to do the things that usually encourage the Christmas spirit.

No one can say I’m not trying.

In between regular chores and holiday to do’s, we watched several Christmas movies-Christmas Vacation, Home Alone, Rick Steve’s European Christmas Special, Miracle on 34^th street and Rudolph. Miracle on 34^th Street and Love, Actually are my favorites. I’m saving Love, Actually for Christmas night for when my love and I are alone at the Powder House.

I knew I wanted to get the Christmas decorations out of the attic and put up a tree this weekend, but like everything else in life, certain things had to happen first. In order to put a tree in the back of the truck, we had to go to the yard debris and get the leaves out of the back. But if we were going to do that, we first needed to finish cutting the perennials, pick up the last of the leaves, etc., so we spent two hours doing yard work before heading to the yard debris. We then stopped on the way back to pick up the tree, but the tree lot had no good ones, we only had one mask and the subpar trees were 70.00 bucks. No, thank you.

After a quick lunch, we ran out to the country to find a farm and  discovered one we hadn’t been to before. The trees were fairly unkept, and after much dithering, we found one we both agreed on. Of course, the trunk was buried in mud and in a very Christmas Vacation moment, we borrowed a shovel from the deeply suspicious Christmas tree farmer and dug it out enough so we wouldn’t lose the bottom part of the tree.

We may have scored the tree, but the chores weren’t done because in order to get the decorations down, we had to reorganize the garage. We filled the jeep up with stuff going to the powder house and loaded my car up with stuff earmarked for Goodwill. Only then could we get the Christmas boxes down and since we were doing that, we might as well put the summer stuff away, so up went the fans and the cushions for the patio furniture and various and sundry other items that won’t be used until it’s warm again.

While all this was going on, I cleaned a bunch of veggies and put them out for mom to chop. I was dying to make soup out of the broth I had made. Once everything was down from the attic, I threw the soup together and then helped hubby put the tree up and decorate it. It was enjoyable and sort of sad at the same time. I was very conscious of past Christmases and the people missing from our lives… my dad, both of Alan’s parents, grandparents, etc. I am so honored to have my mom with me still. We put the plastic angel from my childhood on top of the tree, which deeply touched her. I found my children’s Christmas stockings and almost cried because I miss them so much… yes, they’re still alive and well, but I miss the babies they were… we had so much fun with them!

The soup turned out great, but the bone broth wasn’t as deep as I would have liked. I am going to try it again with a slow cooker, so I can leave it in for at least 15 hours.

Sunday was mostly running around. I planned my weekly menu, made my grocery list early and was at the grocery store at 8am to avoid the crush… Crowds during a pandemic seem counterintuitive to me. Then in quick succession, hubby and I finished up the shopping, dropped the stuff off at Goodwill and made a trip to John’s market (a specialty beer and wine shop) to pick up a gift. It was great to see so many people wearing masks and protocols being followed. Made me feel a bit safer, though Oregon’s numbers are still rising.

After returning home, Hubby retired out to organize the garage and I mixed up the dried fruit for the black fruit cake and put them in a jar to soak in rum. I’ll leave them there for a couple of days before mixing the cake later in the week.

Then I made a walnut olive oil cake…admittedly, my baking skills are a mixed bag (See my post about my disastrous pumpkin bread), but this cake turned out spectacularly. The cake is made from equal parts ground walnuts and flour and the extra virgin olive oil makes it super moist and rich. It’s served with a spicy orange syrup, a dollop of crème fraiche and pomegranate. It turned out so lovely that I immediately ran some over to the neighbors.

A really nice capper to a really busy weekend that was lovely and nostalgic and a bit sad. Things are not the same and I am trying to dig deep to court the meaning of the season without sliding into an abject depression about how different everything is. I remind myself that different isn’t necessarily bad. It’s just different. The pandemic is bad. Our political climate is bad. The holidays are just a blip in the bigger picture and that’s how I have to approach them.

Sometimes running away is the best way to find yourself.

The stress of (gestures wildly) everything has brought me right up to the edge of the abyss. There’s such an onslaught of happenings that I’ve had no time to process any of it—not the good, the bad or the ugly. It’s affecting me physically and my energy is so low that it’s difficult for me to even muster up the motivation to exercise. I’ve been having weird out of body experiences and sometimes my bones feel like they’re melting. Yesterday morning, I felt like I was going to jump out of my skin. Quarantine is hard, yo. When my husband took the puppy out for a walk, I finally texted him with I HAVE TO GET OUT OF HERE.

So we did.

Saying goodbye to mom, the cats, the dog and the chores, we headed west, first to grab coffee from our favorite coffee shop and then onto the freeway toward the ocean. Once in the coast range, we took the jeep up muddy tracks, down over boulders and through mudpuddles so big they could swallow a house. We weren’t going to grandma’s house; we were running away. We visited a drippy, lonely horse camp, found an epic walking stick at a hidden trail head and went in search of a waterfall that we never found. We checked out fishing holes along the river and my husband told me stories of taking our son to those same holes. We watched a man catch and lose a salmon. We got muddy. We gulped deep breaths of verdant forest air and let the mist settle down around us.

We never made it to the ocean. Instead, we grabbed a huge bag of delicious greasy food that included pork belly sandwiches, cheese curds, soft pretzels and tots, along with a couple of pints of cold IPA’s from Pelican Brewery and tailgated at Memaloose on the Tillamook Bay. We listened to classic rock and talked and talked about our kids, our new puppy and plans for our future. We didn’t talk about covid or politics.

I wish I could say our outing left me peaceful and rested, but that would be stretching it. It was, however, a lovely, much needed respite and I do feel grounded enough to survive the few weeks. Note to self. More of this please.

Remember my lovely weekend last weekend, filled with baking and joy and rest? Remember the birthday cake I made for my son that he stopped by to pick up along with a loaf of bread and his gift? He stayed for an hour and we had a nice cozy chat, the way that moms and sons often do when they don’t get to see each other very often… he stayed for about an hour, got birthday hugs and headed home to his family.

He had Covid.

Sunday, my husband headed off to North Powder to recover from surgery and get some R&R. We got the call Tuesday that fisher son tested positive for Covid and we should probably quarantine. I went and got a test, though in reality that only shows that I didn’t have Covid when I got the test. I’m most worried about my mom, who at 84, has asthma and COPD and therefore high risk. I am also worried about my husband who is still recovering from surgery and I am sick to my stomach worried about my kiddo, ill at home with his wife and my baby grandchildren. No one has any symptoms and its day six sooooo… we wait. Like so many other Americans, we wait.

In other news, I was offered and accepted representation from Laura Bradford from the Bradford Literary agency and got a puppy, so there’s that. Yeah, it’s been a week.

My lovely daughter went out for supplies for us. On the Friday before Thanksgiving week…she definitely gets daughter points. We were running out of groceries. Okay, beer. I was running out of beer. Though I did get into my wine collection, which was a nice change.

I’ve got homemade rolls almost ready to go in the oven, then I’m going to roast a whole chicken so I can make soup over the weekend. I think some chicken soup is in order, yes?

I started cutting back fall perennials and raking leaves this week. The weather has been awful, which makes everything harder. But, it’s lovely to work the earth and get the beds ready for winter in anticipation of spring. The earth doesn’t care who’s president. It only cares that the people working it, respect it. Okay, so maybe it does care who’s president. Ha!

Hubby isn’t showing symptoms and oversaw the installation of new windows at the Powder House. I am wildly jealous. It looks really good from the pictures. He’s on his way home so we can quarantine together.

That’s basically my plan for the weekend. Working in the yard,  writing, cooking and maybe baking an apple pie just because I can.

And waiting.

To say that I needed a weekend exactly like this one is an understatement. It was both productive and relaxing, healing and restorative. After the past three weeks, it was like a lovely breeze blowing away the fatigue and anxiety. I stayed away from news as much as possible, ate the frog early on Saturday so I could do as I pleased the rest of the weekend. (In this case, eating the frog was taking my mom to Macy’s to go bra shopping for both of us. At the same time. After that, everything, including cleaning out the fridge, was easy-peasy!)

I baked up several loaves of rustic buttermilk bread, one for us to have with the maple stout stew I threw together and one for each of my children and their families. I made my son a pineapple upside down cake for his birthday and between the cake, the bread and the slow cooked stew, my house smelled amazing for hours. Warm. Comforting. Homey.

I mostly kept away from politics, which is difficult in this house. When I did run into the noise on Twitter and such, I tried to let it go and focus on the positives, like the diversity of the transition team and the report that Deb Haaland, a Native American woman from New Mexico is being considered for Secretary of the Interior which would be amazing.

Instead of politics, I did a lot of work in my new planner and had several fabulous conversations with my husband about our respective Core Desired Feelings. After thirty years, we know one another so well that we could guess one another’s answers😊

On Friday night, hubby and I started watching The Queen’s Gambit. So, so good. The actresses are just phenomenal. We started taking out the New York Times again, so our Sunday morning ritual of drinking coffee while reading has been reinstated. I kept to the book reviews and the cooking pages this morning though, to keep this weekend’s no politics policy.

I also got a lot of cleaning done, something I actually like to do… when I want to do it. I can’t help it, Capricorn sun/Virgo rising, yo. I like my spaces to be neat and clean.  I scored some serious reading time in on the book club book, too. Reading about what the women’s liberation movement was like from Ginsberg’s and O’Conner’s point of view is fascinating and humbling. Women like them laid such a strong foundation and though there is still much to do, I’m grateful for the pioneers.

Oh, and I got some more writing in, as well. I’m like the tin man—I’m a little rusty but it’s coming back to me. I got a little affirmation bump this weekend in that regard which felt like a whipped cream top on the whole weekend.  I’ll share more if anything comes to fruition, but it’s nice to feel like I’m in the game again.

In planning out my week, I added more political action items… if we’re to build a compassionate equitable world, we all have to fight for it. After this weekend, I feel as if I actually have the energy to begin again.

Anyone who has known me knows that I love myself a good planner. I can’t help it, Capricorn/Virgo, yo. I’ve tried a lot of them, Erin Condren is awesome, as is the Best Self Journal which also tracks habits you wish to form. For the past couple of years, I sadly resigned myself to keeping an electronic calendar because my job demanded it.  I still kept a journal and wrote in it more or less daily, but I missed that nice orderly row of boxes with room for positive affirmations, a pretty to do list and a place to jot down what I was grateful for.

So I decided to get another planner, a hard copy planner that would encourage my desire for a holistic life. Because I have done so much at home work (And now days, who doesn’t/), I have always jotted down fold the laundry next to interview anecdotal source or finish essay for history next to write 2000 words for WIP. When I was going to school and working and writing, it would all go on the same weekly list and then get broken down into daily lists. I was an advocate of life work balance before it even had a name.

I am also not a do a little bit everyday kind of person. I like doing my gardening/yardwork or housework in two to three-hour slots. Not only do I feel like it makes more of an impact that way, but I like focusing on task for an extended period of time…which is one of the reasons writing 500 words a day is so difficult for me. I like a three-hour chunk in my day to write no matter how many words I get.

With 2020 being such a topsy-turvy screwed up mess, I felt the need to return to a hard planner that encompasses my whole life. I’ll still use the electronic calendar to keep my work appointments in order and frankly, my manager requires it as I work mostly remote now. But for the first time in three years, I found myself looking to buy a planner.

Friends of mine have used Danielle LaPorte’s Desire Map Planner for years. Her planners are like a combination scheduler, life designer, gratitude journal… oh, everything all together. Kind of like me. Kind of like you. The premise is to identify your core desired feelings first, then identify the actions that make you feel those things. The outcome is pretty powerful. And yes, that’s a lot of woo for one planner.

One good friend started using it and within three or four years her life is completely different. She left her very repressive church, started working out, getting outdoors, went back to school to get a degree in the medical field, divorced her husband, and came out as bisexual. Now, obviously, the planner didn’t do all of those things and I’m sure that much of what she went through was brutally hard. But it started with her being honest with herself about how she wanted to feel.

We have one life, people. (Or maybe many, but right now, this is the one we are in.)

I’m not looking for huge life changes. I’m really pretty happy with the life I have—the work I have been given and the people I am connected with—but I am looking to grow and I think this planner will help me do that for the next year.  And I just love planners. Like I told my daughter, my core desired feeling is to feel the way I do when a shiny new planner comes in the mail!