K/S New Year's Eve, by Marz

On most of twelve New Year's Eves, I've posted this vid by Marz on my old blog, l'astronave. And now I'm posting it here. 

When she first made it in 2010, Marz wrote:

"Spock wants to know what Jim's doing for New Year's Eve but is - understandably - having trouble spitting it out.
The song is a Verve Remix of Ella Fitzgerald's 'What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?'"

A favorite vid of a favorite song set to my favorite fandom by a favorite person:

"Kirk/Spock: What Are You Doing New Year's Eve?" 
--by Marz, 2010


 
-- on Vimeo

Well, here's a curious and lovely thing. Looking up the composer--it's Frank Loesser––I read,
Although the song is typically performed in December, that was not the composer's intent. His daughter Susan Loesser explains:

"The singer, madly in love, is making a (possibly rash) commitment far into the future:
'Maybe it's much too early in the game. Ah, but I thought I'd ask you just the same – What are you doing New Year's, New Year's Eve?'
It always annoyed my father when the song was sung during the holidays".

2023: My Year in Review

Note: Not representative of the State of the World

BELOW: Self-portrait in convex mirror at the thrift store; perfect martini twist in Decorah, Iowa, (visit w/ sister)

BELOW: workmates Eric, Jesse, me, Em by the dumpster; bullet hole in store window

BELOW: left: bink & hand petroglyph (top) at Tsankawi, New Mexico, and (bottom) at the Santa Fe Museum of Folk Art;
right: Penny Cooper making her mask (top) and (bottom) wearing it at Tsankawi.

BELOW: visiting L &M in Santa Fe; I turn 62 [party photos at end of post]

 

BELOW: left, start of my collage collab (w Em);
 center: April, Marz turns 32; right: "walk among the stars" card by me. 

BELOW: Easter text message exchange, Sister > me;
Penny Cooper & "Just Do It Badly" bunny in annual Sydney Carton Memorial Tumbrel

BELOW: I expanded this small NYPL t-shirt w/ side panels: "What are you reading now?"; right: Bible that has wintered outside at George Floyd Square

BELOW: Summer Solstice Parade.
L to R: Marz, parade balloon attendant; me on ground; and bink making tiny drums.
Penny Cooper is grand marshall.

BELOW: Assumption of Mary (Aug. 15): bink gives girlettes angel leaf wings; more of my collage collab

BELOW: Julia Happify, mending at Penny's Café downtown; right: dino w/ bunny balloon apotropaic

BELOW: New book nook at work; my musical headdress in honor of Douglas Ewart's art opening

FORWARD into 2024:
Every Damn Day, Lighten the Fuck Up, for heaven's sake!

_______________________

R.i.p. Jody Williams, 1956 – 10/17/2023

____________________________

Birthday party, and other places
clockwise, L to R: with... Rebecca (bink behind), Allan; with Jill, Mississippi near flood stage; Nancy (Marcia & Maura in background);
center, at Maura's 60th birthday party: Per, Anne, Mark, Joe, Mark;
Annette, Carla, Neal, Karen

Previous Year-End Reviews at l'astronave

FORWARD... in short bursts

 For 2024, I borrow the slogan of my home state, Wisconsin:

I. FORWARD

Along those lines, Penny Cooper says,
Get a Pencil, and Write Down an Action Plan.

And Spike on my fridge says, "Nothing for it . . . but to do it."
(Next to Pope John 23's "Just for Today" list that I love--most especially, "Only for today, I will not claim to improve anyone but myself.")

These are the responses I am choosing, to face the many scary things that are/ could be/ will be happening, globally & personally (including some minor health problems).

II. Catch and Release

Setting an intention helps me.
Yesterday I was back at work for the first time since I set my intention to Treat Work as a Part-Time Job.

Very quickly, seeing the usual stupid stuff going on, angry thoughts arose in me, or, thoughts of how I could change something.
I was able to catch these thoughts, and let them go:
"This is your part-time job, not your mission."
[Related to "I am not the savior".]

Re: health. I also announced to my coworkers in the break room as they carried in the boxes of donated day-old corporate-bakery goods,
"I am not eating any of these in 2024. They are so–"
"tempting," Big Boss filled in–
"–full of chemicals," I finished.

It makes me angry--they are such chemical sludge. Their ingredients lists are as long as your hand. 
But yes, designed to tempt, for sure.

III. Short Bursts

Also--hill climbing! Here I am--my shadow--the other morning at the park near the store.

I was heartened to learn that SHORT BURSTS of exercise are beneficial:
"findings showed that accumulating several short bouts (about two minutes each) of vigorous activity at different times throughout the day might be especially beneficial."

IV. Presents

Catching up... Here are a couple Christmas presents that made me happy.

1. Marz looking through a View-Finder at a set of 1968 Star Trek slides (from the episode "The Omega Glory")--she'd never looked into a View Finder before!

2. Volunteer Becky gave me two boxes of ziplock plastic bags--I'm always scrounging for them to bag up little toys. She said it was a joke gift, but I was delighted, and I took one of the bags home for me.
My plastic bags are old and tattered, and it'll be a treat to have fresh new ones.

Happy New Year coming up, everyone!

Christmas Break: Day 4/5 Action Plan

This Christmastime, I've got a stretch of five days off (three paid, even). I go back to work Thursday--and today, Tuesday, is my first with nothing planned in the daytime.
In the evening, my old friend KG is coming over for dinner--leftovers. [Update--the rump roast never got moist, but drowned in gravy, it's not bad. Still, I'd never buy that fatless cut again.]

I should get some paperwork done, but I'd sworn I'd break out of my usual 3-mile radius, even if just to go see a movie downtown.
Downtown has not reanimated after Covid, when many workers  moved their work home and businesses closed.
But the movie theater downtown, the Main, is on the Mississippi River parkway--it's a great location for a walk before or after.

What's showing?
Aw, darn--Aki Kaurismäki's latest, Fallen Leaves, doesn't start for a couple weeks: "A love story set in modern-day Helsinki, two lonely souls in search of their first love meet by chance in a local karaoke bar." I always love his flat way of telling moving stories.

Hm... Ferrari?
Men who make machines are not a specific interest of mine, but the cast looks good--Adam Driver and Penélope Cruz.
Okay, yeah, I'll do that, I'll go see a matinee.

Going to a movie may not seem exotic, but I'm trying to break the inertia of the past few years, when (besides Covid limitations) I've given almost all of my energy to work.

Technically, it is a part-time job. It probably doesn't sound like it, and it certainly hasn't felt like it––it's been my brain's home world!––
but I only work 24 hours/week.

What if I treated it like a part-time job?

What else would I do?
At the very thought, my brain freezes, hunching down like a small rodent on the prairie sensing a coyote.
"What? Am I? To do?"

It's okay, tiny frightened brain!
You don't have to do anything, not nothing. At all.
Only, you can do something... if you want to. We can get a warm milky drink at Starbucks on the river after the movie. Would you like that?

Tiny frightened brain perks up.
A warm milky drink in a holiday flavor?

Yes! Hazelnut, or peppermint or.... EGGNOG!
Eggnog coffee latté grande, or something.

Okay! Action Plan ACTIVATED: I am taking myself out for a movie, walk, and holiday latté.

(Just a flat walk though—two days of hill walking—yesterday with Marz, in the rain—has made my butt muscles sore!)

That may not seem revolutionary, but getting myself up and out––for a spot of nothing much––is a bit revolutionary for me.
It feels like suiting up and stepping out, into the planet's atmosphere.

Tiny Frightened Brain (TFB) is like Guy (Sam Rockwell) on Galaxy Quest:
"Hey, don't open that hatch! It's an alien planet! Is there air? You don't know!"

[16-second clip here]

But TFB is Not My Only Brain!

I'm-Not-Worried Brain is like Fred Kwan (Tony Shaloub), who sniffs the air, shrugs, and says…

"Seems okay."

White Christmas (!) Roses

It's Christmas!
That ^ exclamation point is a hold over from childhood. I'm in a good enough mood this Christmas morning, but there's nothing exclamatory about this holiday.

Ooh--except for the amazing Orange Cake!!! bink made for dinner  at my place last night, below. It's made with whole oranges, peels and all, boiled until soft and blended, and almond flour.
So, so good, bitter and sweet--definitely worthy of three "!s".

(The fresh ginger cake, however, that I'd made the week before, tasted okay (all that ginger)--a small slice, anyway, with whipped cream and fresh raspberries-- but it was sodden and flat, like a dead wet squirrel.
Negative exclamation point. " –!")

Back on the positive side, white roses! below, waiting for people to come through the door last night.

Biking down a nearby alley yesterday, I'd seen a white rose sticking out of a church dumpster. I'd stopped and pulled out a dozen--from a wedding perhaps. They were a bit squashed but barely opened.
I looked up "how to restore roses":
cut their stems and soak the entire flower, head and all, in lukewarm water. I put them in the bathtub for 20 minutes. They continue to open this morning.

The roses are the "white" in this Christmas. What should have been a   Christmas Eve snowfall was rain instead, and more rain is due this afternoon.
bink said it feels like Missouri, where both of us had grandparents. Yes. Opossums, which I associate with my southern grandparents, live up here now too, having migrated north with the warmer temps.

Another exclamation, though, is awarded for HOW MUCH M.'s grand-niece, below, left, LOVED her stuffed lemur from the thrift store--she is literally screaming with delight. A package of these toys, new with tags, had been donated, and I'd nabbed some for M. They have velcro paws, so they can wrap and hold around things, like children.

One more"!". For a present, bink printed the story "The Last of Master" [links to online copy at Issuu] that I'd written and she'd illustrated during the Pandemic Shut-In, spring 2020. Since then I'd almost forgotten about it.
I'd just been thinking, in fact, what a non-starter I am at fiction-writing. I'd been going to write a ghost story for Xmas Eve, but the only plot I came up with was too disturbing and mean-spirited.

The plot had been inspired by a fight I'd had with my sister when we exchanged Christmas presents a couple days ago. She'd given me something I'd told her three times (3x)--each time she'd asked me--that I didn't want.
When she gave it to me, she said, "If you don't want it, you can donate it."
I said, "I will".
(I would have too, but she took it back.)

She got snippy, and I got snippy, and that opened up the Box of Sisterly Resentments Since Forever, which is full to overflowing.
And as I walked up and down hills yesterday, a very good revenge ghost story came to me.
But, I thought I'd better SHUT THE BOX [exclamation point].

Hm. Marz is coming over for lunch, and I just tasted the rump roast I'm crock-potting. It is so dry. So, so dry.
Luckily I'd bought the usual roast (chuck) to cook for pot roast dinner last night--it was as good and tender as always. But decided to try a rump roast, too. God. If I ever doubted that FAT IS GOOD, I do no more.
It is practically like eating pressed wood.

Speaking of fat, I'd written a while ago about intending to lose weight so I have less of me to lift off the floor:
but I decided to work on GETTING STRONGER instead.
Reading about it, that seems more important--and also, realistically, far more do-able for me.

My coworker who lost 40 lbs a few years ago told me what she eats every day:
1 boiled egg for breakfast; a salad for lunch; and vegetable soup for dinner. She cuts a protein bar in thirds and eats one-third between meals.

Yes, no.

I'd thought about joining a gym again, but:
1. I never go, and,
2. It's expensive.
But walking up and down hills is free! This city doesn't have a  lot of hills, but I live near a hilly park, and there's another near the store.
It's fun! Invigorating!
And mentally healthful: You can stomp off your resentments to old family members at Christmas!

My sister and me:

Ha, no, it's Margaret Sullavan and Jimmy Stewart, of course, in my favorite Christmas movie, The Shop Around the Corner (1940).

And that's my final exclamation point before Marz arrives to walk up and down hills with me and then choke down some tough roast:
I'd mentioned to bink that I wanted to watch TSATC again this year--I'd only seen it once--and a couple days later she texted that it was going to be playing at the local microcinema, The Trylon. "Let's go!"
We did.
It's so good!!! Better even than I remembered.

These two, sullenly decorating the shop window for Xmas Eve, love each other, if only they knew it.

And now, for 2024 I am adopting the Wisconsin motto: FORWARD. Or, as Wisc. comedian Charlie Berens says, "Keep 'er moving!"
!!!

I do this, I do that...

Michael (of Orange Crate Art) reminded me yesterday that not everyone's "I do this, I do that" is as interesting as Frank O'Hara's.
Ha, no kidding.

From O'Hara's "Getting Up Ahead of Someone (Sun)"

it is dawn
...
I make
myself a bourbon and commence
to write one of my “I do this I do that”
poems in a sketch pad
it is tomorrow
though only six hours have gone by
each day’s light has more significance these days

_____________

"Each day's light has more significance these days."

Yesterday was Winter Solstice and today, the daylight ticks for a tiny bit longer. Or does it? Does it pause for a while?

The timing was incidental, I suppose, but yesterday, Solstice, I announced (with a flounce) that I was ending my blog, l'astronave.
Some bloggers yesterday were complaining about their house cleaners:
well-off, well-meaning people complaining about the help. 
They don't say "the help".

A forty-year-old memory came to me of staying with a friend's parents (the Martyns--the dad was in insurance) in a wealthy suburb in New Jersey. Every morning at eight o'clock, a stream of black women in pastel maid's uniforms came up the hill to the wealthy houses. They had come on a bus from the big inner city. At five o'clock, they streamed back down the hill to the bus stop.
______________________

Solstice is a good time to make a change.
Pause, change partners, and dance.
I wasn't thinking about that, I'd just had enough of people writiting about other people doing their housework (not up to their standards).

My god. What do you say? "You missed some of my dead skin flakes here, and a little of my dog's body fluids there"?

In theory I could have —should have!—ignored those bloggers all along. But I didn't.
And they'd show up in my stats, which, again, in theory I could have not looked at. But I did.

Will this work for me, starting a separate blog?
Why not? FRESH START! Singing a new tune, a noodle toon:

ABOVE: a shelf in my workspace where I've been setting donated books about or by Jimmy Carter, to display when he dies.
He turned ninety-nine in October, and Rosalynn died recently, so I think he may leave any minute now.
Fly away, Mr. President!

[A fun thing I learned from the New Yorker article "The World of Frank O'Hara":
Frank O'Hara and Edward Gorey were college roommates. WHO CLEANED THEIR ROOM?]
__________________

I woke up feeling fine this morning, after being wiped out yesterday by the latest Covid vaccine--the fourth, is it, since 2021? 
I'd planned on doing errands yesterday to prepare for Christmas Eve's pot roast dinner (Sunday), but I was too achy all over. I'm glad I got the shot though, since bink had been so sick with Covid for two weeks, not having had the vaccine.

Next up--shingles vaccine. Gold star! to me for attending to medical matters, which I put off (and off).

When it comes to medical and financial things, I don't do this and I don't do that. I've taken a few paid days off over Christmas, and I intend to sit at my desk and clear some papers.
Intentions aren't very effective though...
Penny Cooper is advocating for making an ACTION PLAN!
This is such a good idea.
Here. Step one: I will mail my rent-rebate form.

"Hope is not an action plan", Jeremy Norton writes in his book Trauma Sponges. Norton is chief of the fire station I bike past on my way to work, in between my apartment and George Floyd Square. His truck was called to the scene of the 2020 murder, but Floyd was already dead.

Yesterday I wrote Norton a thank-you card and told him that his line about hope was a favorite. (Looking it up now, I see it's a common saying, but I heard it from him first.)
Also I said that his book helped because I saw myself reflected in it:
yes, this happened; yes, it was this bad.

That's the thing that bothered me about the bloggers I kept reading--perhaps their focus on housework comforts them--I can imagine it does!–– but for me, their "this and that" was not a reflection of or a helpful response to what I see happening in our times.

Fine, then walk away!
I have. And god bless and good luck to them.

Of course, doing little this-and-thats does help in these times. All times are unknown, and this-and-thats mark time like geographic coordinates.
And so does making an effort to celebrate the seasons help...
Below: bink helps Penny Cooper decorate the dolls and bears' Xmas tree.