progress

I guess I am making some, despite my best efforts to stay in the place I know, which is not going anywhere.  I know how this goes.  I do it all the time.  Grow a bit and be content to stay there for as long as possible.

The car which saved me four years ago when I locked myself out of the flat and had to climb the car and throw myself through a window.  I still love that whole experience.

Anyway, it needs replacing and I am going to add some roadside assistance thing to my car insurance and wait until it just completely dies. 


There is not any reasonable way to winterize this place.  I should have been suspicious when the landlord demurred and changed the subject when I wanted to know the heating costs.  Turns out that the stairway up here is enclosed in a small attachment to the house, kind of like and outside staircase, but one that has walls and a roof.  Yeah, but that is all it is.  It is a cobbled together thing and has no insulation, huge gaps between all the pieces of the darn thing and is so cold that just outside the actual door to the flat that the water I left there last week was frozen and exploded the next morning.

The heating vents on that landing are drawing air directly from the outside.

So, there is a rug unrolled and against the porch door.  Tarps over all the windows and blankets rolled and stuffed along the bottom of the landing door and the door to the basement.

It has to do.  It is now too cold for me to think about moving, but I will do so as soon as the snow goes bye-bye.

I am feeling rather chuffed at figuring out what needed doing to close up this place and plug all the holes and gaps that let the cold air and wind inside.  To be honest, even standing up against the windows and such did not reveal all that pass-through air, but now that every possible vertical surface is fully tarped, blanketed and taped, it is noticeably  warmer in here.  I will still be wearing all my spare clothing (think of the little kid in A Christmas Story after he is packed into his winter outdoor play gear; yes, that is me, including a hat) and lots of socks, but I should see a lower heating bill next cycle.

I am nearly finished with my holiday gifts, with just a dozen or so left to make, and I am wanting so much to bake cookies or strudel, especially strudel, or fruit cake, which I truly love, even bad fruitcake.  A few years ago a friend sent me a small Christmas cake, which is what fruit cake is in Australia.  Other place as well, I am guessing, but here in the US it is the much maligned cake of fruit with just enough dough to hold it all together. 

One holiday season I made cakes for everyone.  They really did like my fruit cake, I swear.  Anyway, the ingredients kept increasing and I ran out of bowls and had to go to the hardware store to buy a big trash can in which it mix it, stirring with a barbecuing spatula.

It took a day to figure out that nothing I had would hold the dough.  A second day to mix it all together and a third to bake all of them.  Well, more like twenty continuous hours.  Tiring, but it was divine and if I want to treat myself, I can make a small one and simply not share it with anyone.

I am still struggling with sleep hygiene and will write about how difficult it is, as well as why I am unable to release all of the zillions of memories when I feel that I did not do well enough, or the right thing or whatever the heck is holding all of that nonsense in my head to be endlessly played in my noggin whilst I try to sleep each night.

This is not something I am doing all that willingly, it is at the behest of my therapist, and I truly am able to see the benefit of it, but I will do it.  Mostly.

I am hoping to do some marketing on the way home from work on Thursday, haul up enough food and stuff to last several weeks and just hunker down here.  I have turned down invitations for xmas and new year get-togethers, although I will groove with my daughter and the guys at some point.

Other than that, whilst I am out on Thursday I need to buy a new keyboard, as this one is full of sticky maple syrup that my pancakes were kind enough to share.  So, any wonky spellings are because I missed them when the keys stuck together to make new ways to spell words.

Peace and happy holidays to all us, because even if we think we are undeserving of good things, we are.  Deserving.