The most important post of the year is at last going up: my Christmas Wish List!

Just kidding.

After being ridiculed and lambasted for still posting a Christmas wish list this far into my forties, I’ve decided that maybe the cynical and the grown-up among us are right, and the idea of me being high-maintenance, exacting and hard-to-please needs no additional fuel. I used to think that making a list with the precise links and sizes and colors of things I wanted was the easiest way for people to figure me out, but it’s time to see how well my friends and family have been paying attention. Because gift-giving is relatively easy when one listens and engages with their loved ones. 

I’m looking forward to all the pleasant surprises and unexpectedness that this season might bring, and seeing just how well people care to know me!

This evergreen stands in the yard of a neighbor, and is a focal point in our backyard view. It rises high above all fences and electrical lines, and it surpasses houses and antennae and weathervanes (yes, one of our neighbors has a weathervane). Its trunk and branches provide resting spaces and respite for all manner of creatures – squirrels, chipmunks, and birds of all kinds. I see them traveling along the wood like its some super-highway for critters. 

Right now, it dangles pine cones like it’s decking itself purposefully out for Christmas, and in the early-afternoon light of a sunset (too early for my preference) they glow against a cloud-scattered sky. Nature’s own way of presenting herself will always best any tree-trimming we humans might attempt. 

While things were kept sunny and cheery on the blog, this past week in real life was wretched. Across the board, it sucked, even while dinner and movie nights with Suzie and Skip respectively helped keep the tears at bay. Maybe it’s just the realization that with mid-November comes the irrefutable fact of winter up next, and after a summer that left such a chill in our hearts, I’m not sure I can handle what winter will bring. 

Driving home from work the other day, just as the sun was going down (because that’s what pushing time back does to us) I saw this strange color variation in the sky. This is not, despite what it might look like, a picture of the sun and surrounding clouds – this section of sky was a good distance away from where the sun was shining, so I’m not sure what was going on in the atmosphere, or how this might be explained because I’m not Bill Nye the science guy. At any rate, it made me stop in my non-stop day, and in that brief arrested state I wanted to weep a little because some days feel dark no matter how bright the sky may be. 

My grief of late seems to be taking a consistent and all-pervasive state of agitation and annoyance, when it doesn’t have me simply sleepwalking through the average day. The latter has always been worse than the former for me: I’d rather be agitated and annoyed than apathetic and completely devoid of engagement, but that’s where I’ve been finding myself. It’s not a pleasant place to be. When I was younger I would see people with the sort of vacant and unfocused stares I find myself giving out now, and back then I’d wonder at why they had given up. I can understand a little more these days, and that’s somewhat frightening. Maybe I am just getting old. Or older. More on that in one of the links below. 

As for this upcoming entry to the holiday season proper, I may just decide to go full Ebenezer Scrooge without the redemptive ending. Not to worry, as the great Alexander Dumas once wrote, “I’ll bury my grief deep inside me and I’ll make it so secret and obscure that you won’t even have to take the trouble to sympathize with me.” On with the weekly recap, albeit abbreviated!

Open 9 to 5, what a way to make a living.

A fall fragrance puts things back in the saddle. 

Bedtime by Madonna.

Glen Powell got all naked and nude for Men’s Health. 

Sassy betrayed me.

I’ve still never seen an entire episode of ‘The Simpsons’.

Is it snarky if it’s true? Or is it snarky because it’s true?

We gardeners are not crazy.

After everything else that went wrong this week, I also got assaulted at Supercuts while getting a fucking haircut. 

While the world burned, our Friendsgiving weekend in Boston (which now feels like it never even happened at all) filled the posts here, giving the impression that all was well. Those fun days got recapped in this post, so I won’t bother you with them all again. 

Now, who the fuck is ready for turkey?!?

I hate getting a haircut. Ever since my grandfather died on the day I got a haircut in high school I’ve had an aversion to it, which seems at odds with the high-maintenance/perfectionist persona I pretend to peddle. I also never take it too seriously, and thus far it has always grown back, so I’m perfectly content to run into Supercuts once a month and hope they do a quick ten-minute job just cleaning up the back and sides.

Yesterday morning, I worked up the courage to get a cut before the holiday season begins in earnest, and found an available stylist who eagerly took me into his chair, beginning with some small talk on what my weekend plans were. 

Then, the assault happened. As chunks of gray hair fell about my shoulders, this person chose violence:

“I hope my hair comes in like yours when I’m old.”

I managed to temper the shock with a bit of genuine laughter as he hurried to try to put it a better way. 

“I meant the gray looks great! I just mean I hope my hair looks that good when…”

“When you’re old,” I finished when he paused. “Yeah, I got it.”

Out of shock, exasperation and the realization of reality staring at us both from the mirror, I laughed. Richly and genuinely. In self-defeat, self-acknowledgement, and self-effacement. After I paid for his services and unsolicited commentary, he had the audacity to give me his business card. 

And that was the day there was blood on the barber shop floor.