thanate | 40 years of monoliths and mammoth bones (or perhaps just 40 thousand)

As of mid-morning, I have now been breathing air for 40 years, so here's to a new year of me and the continued functioning of my lungs and assorted other biological systems. I'm presently curled up into a rather small space by my bed between stacks of unread books and a box of patterns to get rid of (anybody want some women's clothing/costume patterns ~size 8-10?) typing, while my child watches paw patrol somewhere else and my husband (after getting escorted out of the DMV-- sorry MVA, stupid maryland-- for asking multiple times if it were possible to get a replacement title *today* instead of having one mailed from the kiosk) has reputedly gone back to sleep on the couch & thus is not available to decipher the titles of the paw patrol episodes. I said, "sound it out," and her Megatheriosity concluded that it was easier just to watch that episode rather than do work to figure out if it was the one she wanted in advance. This is about normal for the household these days, I guess. ("We have a child for whom 'Cambrian' is a sight word, but who can't read 'ready'," as her father said yesterday.)

Christmas went pretty well (in fact, despite a really ghastly first half to the month, grauwulf's brain has been almost kind to him for the last week and a half) and the Megatherium, who made certain that I knew she wanted gum in her stocking about six times in the last few days, is now half-way through the first of four packs of it. (I said, "Did you tell Santa Claus?" b/c she'd mentioned doing notes to Santa in school since they had an elf-on-the-shelf in the classroom, to which she replied, "I told you!" She also mentioned being mad at her classmates when she couldn't convince them Santa wasn't real, so, yeah, fair enough.) The day before we spent most of the day repeating a conversation where I asked her to help clean up & she said she didn't like cleaning so I should do it, and I pointed out that I didn't like cleaning either but we weren't having christmas until the living room got cleaned up, and everyone was cranky. Eventually grauwulf suggested she could help me by sweeping, and she did and rediscovered Cinderella's lost shoe, which has been missing since the day after she got the doll for her 4th birthday party. This is why we have multiple adults, because that sure hadn't been working for me.

Anyway, that's where we are. I went out to the annex last week and unsurprisingly didn't want to leave again once I got there. I scared some deer, wandered down the hill, took a bunch of unsuccessful pictures and a quite nice bit of video of the little rill leading down to the creek (those on twitter might have seen that), and left uprooted garlic mustard hanging from the shrubs as trail sign. There are a lot of invasive plant infestations, but the garlic mustard on the hillside is actually fairly minimal so far. There are bits of the creek I recognize from the last time I was down there; I still have no idea of the perimeter, but I will be back. So that's one thing.

In a week I can make grauwulf hie himself to the doctors to work on his brain issues, so that's another thing.

In smaller quests, I have far too many library books that I need to read or decide not to read. I have been enjoying journaling, so I hope to continue that. I still want to creep back up on writing, which is beginning to appear possible. I am slowly digging back out of the creep of stuff that got put down places b/c it didn't have a home; I read something a while back about selfie & mom/cooking/etc blog culture leading to a skewed impression of people with perfect lives and make-up and spaces, so I've been consciously posting the occasional picture of the appalling mess my desk has got to or how tired I look today on twitter. It would be nice (in these enlightened days where I take my pictures with my phone, which doesn't talk to my computer since I refuse to update itunes) to figure out some way to get those pictures here, as well.

I-- as I always seem to-- had a brilliant cards-to-send-people idea around the 15th of December. It deserves its own essay, I think (tho... I just turned up two little bits of paper outlining essay posts I didn't write from a year and a half ago) but the gist of it is tarot-style cards with little soundbyte items in the vein of little things you can do that *actually make a difference* to ecology or climate or whatnot. Besides turning off the ---ing water when you don't have anything under it. Most of the big things are at government or big corporation level; misinformation on what helps at an individual level is rampant; even things like cutting corn-fed beef and air travel only help in aggregate b/c they're still going to fly that plane even if you personally aren't on it. But. Even if Baltimore Harbor is awash knee-deep in 20 years, that's still 8-12 generations of chickadees you can make or break by what you plant in your small suburban yard and what you do or don't spray on it. There are Things You Can Do to change lives on a small budget of time or money. Little Good Things. So I want to work on this, and perhaps send some out in February. Or whenever, because plans around here...

Judging from my grandmothers (& my mother's record so far) I hope to have at least another ~45 years of functional time barring the unexpected & disasterous, so perhaps I'll get something done eventually.