Happy New Year, all.
(Holy CRUD. 2007. Do you know what that means? That means that I graduate from college next year. That is scary.)
Today as I went home on the bus, I sat next to a remarkable woman. She was in her late thirties, her face somewhat stretched and craggy from hard living -- but she was beautiful nonetheless, and you could tell that in her youth she had been model-gorgeous. Her hair was so white-blonde that I couldn't tell if she was getting white hairs, and it was long and wriggly, falling all around her face in a halo.
We started talking -- Saddam, Iraq, and so on. We traded stories about relatives in the military; her son had just gotten sent home, with one of his fingers blown off. I told her about my cousin, who nearly died from a bullet to the head. No one's the same after that, we agreed. No one.
But just before we got off the bus, she took my hand; her hand was cold and smooth. She put my hand on her head and moved my fingers to where I could feel a crater -- an indentation. "Right there," she said, "Right there I got shot in the head. It's a miracle I'm here today. They say that domestic violence makes your life a war zone -- so you tell your cousin that I understand."
I can't imagine how anyone could survive a wound, where she put my hand. It was a few inches back from her forehead's hairline, in the side of the head. It was deep. It was old.
She let my hand go and smiled at me. When we got off the bus, I could still smell the ricey scent of her hair on my hand. I wish I could have done something for her, but she seemed like she was doing well, as if she had bounced back from whatever had happened to her. It would have been insulting to give her money, though she looked like she might need it.
Well, I'll be praying for her, anyway. I don't even know her name.
I'm back in Portland.
It's always disconcerting to come home to an empty house, since I have four roommates and usually the place is incredibly busy/bustling. It's also disconcerting to come home to a house that is still (still, STILL) in the throes of remodeling. They were supposed to be finished with the granite installation by Christmas, they were supposed to be totally done -- and they were also supposed to install a half door in the living room, so we could let the ferrets run around. Not done yet. Incredibly frustrating.
So, my grand plans of house-cleaning are put off another day.
On the other hand, it's really nice to be home again. To sleep in my own bed and be able to watch movies on a real TV and feel like I'm in control, you know? Tomorrow I go to work and it will be a nice thing to get back into that routine.
In any case, if you're in Portland, I've got no plans for the next month except working (only four hours a week: it puts no crimp in any potential shenanigans) and studying for my qualifying exam in Religion. Hit me up.
It's very disconcerting to come home, to go to a Starbucks (I wanted internet on my OWN computer, and there isn't any internet for my computer at my parents' house - irritating, because I don't like Starbucks' coffee) and see that all the people working there went to my high school. None of them recognized me.
Last night I went to a Lutheran 11 o'clock service with my aunt, who was raised Lutheran and went to eleven o'clock services her whole childhood. It was lovely.
Did you know that the words above the gates of Hell in the Divine Comedy are not actually "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here"? They're much longer:
The #1 thing I've been doing with my time when I got home, because seeing family is very draining (I love you guys, but there are SO MANY of you)...
Watching The West Wing.
My favorite clip?
One of the more involved of my family's traditions is making Christmas ornaments (or "Christmas balls," as we call them).
My great-great aunt made ornaments a little smaller than the one depicted to the right. For the fabric, she would use important dresses' fabric -- my mother has one from her sophomore year homecoming, her junior prom, and from when she was a bridesmaid in her friend Diana's wedding. In essentials, though, my great-great aunt's ornaments look like the one on the right, with a crown and a tail and so on.
A few years ago, my mother started making these ornaments. She's always gone all out for Christmas. For one thing, she makes a pudding each year, which is incredibly complex -- have you ever tried making one? The weather turns and the pudding falls in and then we're all in a tizzy because, for God's sake, it isn't Christmas without pudding and hard sauce!
Since she's been making them, she's found something of a market for them -- fine goods stores, specifically a French import store that sold her some of the vintage ribbons and beads and fabric she likes to use. (She frequently complains that they don't make such nice fabric as they used to, anymore). But most of them still are produced as Christmas gifts for our big extended family.
Just sharing one tradition. If you want to see more of her awesome Christmas ornaments, which take 10-20 hours of labor to make (each crystal is placed individually, by hand, with tweezers) some are here.
So, I was supposed to take the Coast Starlight to Sacramento two days ago (that is, overnight between Friday and Saturday). We started off with a rousing 5-hour wait, since the windstorm that hit the Pacific Northwest on Thursday night had shut down the tracks between Seattle and Portland. When the train finally got there, we all boarded (with a sigh of relief)... but when I woke up in the morning, I discovered that we hadn't even reached Klamath Falls. We had been stopped since 3 AM because the track had broken in front of us.
This, I think, is my favorite music video of all time (thanks, Ally!)
