The Joys of the Fake Fireplace

Ever see a fake electric fireplace like the one my boyfriend's parents had in their basement "rec room" in the 1970s? The "flames" were a piece of paper like a piano roll with a light bulb behind them.

But now I have one and it brings me incredible joy. First, it's a rather long and large "fire"; second, I can change with the remote control the color of the "logs" and "fire" to suit myself; third, I can make the "flames" larger or have them burn low; fourth, it has built-in bluetooth speakers that really rock. It offers heat, if I want; warm air will blow out of its vent, and there's a temperature control and timer. It works and is very energy-efficient -- the problem is insufficient electrical wattage in the Divine Cabin's system, and when it's overloaded the warmth shuts off automatically. But the fake fireplace also offers fire without heat and I like it.

Look -- a fireplace. No chopping, buying, or carrying wood, no poking at it, no worries that the chimney or the house might catch fire. Everyone with a wood-burning fireplace -- although it is the most romantic of housing features -- must build and tend fires carefully, and get a chimney sweep and safety inspection, and keep the kids away when nothing attracts kids more, and even better, the fake lets no woodsmoke into the atmosphere. Around the holidays here, the usually pure air gets thick with the neighbors' woodsmoke, and very unfortunately I've grown allergic to it. (I can't even stand incense. The irony. I mean, there was a time when INCENSE was my LIFE.) When I first moved here I got an estimate to fix the awesome native stone Divine Fireplace so it would burn propane. $8K.

This will do. A friend liked mine so much she bought herself one -- not so rustic-looking, more vertical and tailored and classic. They have fake fireplaces that fit in corners now. For those who like nostalgia, today's fake "woodstoves" look and act very real.

I taped down an orange runner rug right in front of it to "extend" the fire.

The Middle

Thought about it -- but this is all I think about, so here it is. I trimmed the photos to reduce TMI and here's the evidence of the shrinking and much stronger middle. I attend 2 or 3 classes a week at a studio called Barre3. Began in the first week of October 2018 because strenuous exercise helps me beat the winter short-daylight cold-outside people-are-dying blues, and the "senior" classes I took were too easy and held at hours that affected my workday. One-hour barre classes are given from 6 a.m. to 6:15 p.m., and I attend when work and energy and drive time allow. Gosh, the endorphin rush and pink face after the hour is over! Guaranteed unretouched homemade photos. Bother you? Imagine it like a January thaw.

After 2 classes

after 6 classes

After 11 classes

After 16 classes

That last photo was taken in mid-December. I'm even stronger through the core today while eating, holiday-style, twice or thrice the normal allotment of cookies and pastries.

Recovering from my very first session took a week. Now it's only two days. I'm the worst participant and must clutch the barre for dear life or fall over, but am game. This sport is less social than the senior scene; most attendees are young wives or mothers, and an occasional youngun wears a tee saying "Sweating for the Wedding." In all the classes so far I have seen exactly four men, one the instructor's husband. I'm among the few over-60s.

Three Surprises

Every once in a while a year really stinks, like 2009 (and 2008), and 2017 was one of those, but nonetheless as the year ends, dusted off, back at the gym, weight normal, ambitious, I am actually joyous all morning as caffeine carols through my veins, and then I started looking at my Facebook friends' postings and at the Washington Post headlines and came to a dead stop.

I said, I'll cheer up after lunch with a close friend and then to the feed store, which I've always liked because it smells like hay, and stop by the town optometrist who online found parts for my damaged favorite specs, and I'd have them next week. Overjoyed. . .and then poof. . . I looked at my phone. . . so depressing. . .and I kept scrolling through the phone at the coffeehouse. Oh very low indeed although I sat next to the artificial fire and gulped two and a half cups of nice and hot, plus a scone.

At home, because I have to go there, an Amazon box is on the stoop. It's a gift from my sister, brother-in-law and niece: a brand-new, bright red wild-bird feeder. This replaces the green one rusted and peeling, bent from falls and obese raccoons, and it did not once occur to me to buy a new one and I am delighted. Surprise!

Two of the three surprises.

Then the phone rings. It's my niece. "I have kind of exciting news," she said: She is engaged! And I was excited, and she texted me a photo of her ring, and that was thrilling. Engaged at Christmas! What's more romantic?! That's surprise #2.

So I sit up and write two articles -- good ones. (I write four per week for my employer.) Takes until 10:30 p.m. I finish proudly. Because of coffee I'm still awake and thinking of all I must do. I make a list and start joyously checking off items.

Get off Facebook
Unsubscribe from Washington Post
Write four  articles by Sunday
Finish book and sell
Finish novel and sell
Update website
Update blog
Update website blog
Write a new research paper (this past year I wrote two)
Write a new book

What a relief to start on my to-do list (ain't nobody gonna do it for me).  Then there's the more important "to be" list:

happy
joyous
creative
contented
healthy
thriving
appreciative

This morning I lay in bed drinking coffee and couldn't see outside because of window insulation. But eventually I get up and the light in the kitchen looks awfully bright. And from the window I see: Surprise! An inch of snow! It's beautiful!

And I feel like a new person, happy all day! I'm rockin' those rose-colored glasses! All I need to thrive is good surprises!

Trying to Give Money Away

I've always hated tipping, thinking I always do it wrong, just as I hate splitting restaurant checks 50-50 and seeing in my lunch-mate's eyes that they feel screwed and think less of me because I had wine or dessert and they didn't, and I also hate the math of figuring how much to the dime I owe, or pulling out the calculator. You know what I really really hate? A first date who takes me for coffee, and I always order only a coffee (rarely, if I'm hungry, a roll too) and he pays for mine and his, like, $5.50 total, and then he takes the receipt and CAREFULLY FOLDS IT, like, with two hands, actually taking his time creasing it, and carefully tucks it in his wallet, and elaborately restores his wallet to his back pocket with the air of having just sacrificed his firstborn for the good of the tribe, and next time that happens I will run away screaming.

Ahem. 'Tis the season to tip the mail carrier and the trash-pickup man. The trash truck arrives about 12:30 on Thursdays, and when it does I plan to trot down the hill with a holiday card and envelope with money and wish him "Much Joy," he whose fate it is to smell my trash all year, and once it had maggots and I hope he will forgive me. Outside starting at 12:15, so I won't miss him, I do some raking and yard work, glancing downhill toward the road, hearing cars approach and pass, but not the trash truck's snorting and apnea.

I am in fact deeply ashamed because the last few years I have not tipped him. Things were too tight to give a proper tip; it might be insulting if I gave less. The trash-truck driver had for a couple of Christmases left a blue envelope wishing me season's greetings, signed Dale, and I filled it only once, and I wanted today to make up for that and be appreciative. Somebody loves him. (I always used to say when construction workers blocked the roadway and Demetrius, who was driving, would swear and mutter mean things about their bellies: "Somebody loves him as much as I love you.")

Twelve-thirty passes and the truck does not come and still does not come. Finished raking, I commence sweeping. It's been a half hour. Has he already made his rounds and the trash bin at the foot of the hill is empty? I go and check. No, he's not been here yet. He's late. I don't know him. It doesn't matter. I'm tipping today.

Everyone knows, right, that if you want your name to be called or your bus to arrive, you go to the lavatory or get a drink of water or light a cigarette, and the minute you do that here it comes. So, at about 1:30 I slip indoors for a drink of water, watching out the window all the while. Outside I keep the weather eye -- dark clouds blanketing the west and southwest -- holding the card in hand, and finally I hear a truck and walk down the hill. The mail carrier's vehicle pulls up to the mailbox.

I have no choice but to hand the envelope to the mail carrier with good wishes; she's truly the greatest, and I bet she makes four figures in tips at Christmas, and walking uphill with mail I realize with chagrin that I wrote on that card "Waste Management," but a tip is a tip, and my heart's in the right place, and I guess it's okay.

Maybe, I think, I got the pickup calendar wrong and the trash truck won't come at all today. In the house I prepare another card and envelope with money in it, and just as I rip open the day's mail, the trash truck roars up and halts with a great squeal of brakes. I grab the envelope and lope down the hill waving it, calling "Wait, wait!" And the truck pulls away without emptying the trash and goes on its way!

Did I look crazy or threatening? Is a 60-year-old lady wearing sweats and rhinestone specs running toward your vehicle and flailing a terrifying vision? (I can see how it might be to a guy in his 20s.) Did he interpret my signaling as "Don't take my trash"? Had he perhaps not showered today and felt he wasn't fit for human contact? Did he know it was a tip and he is one of those too proud to take anything? Did he think I might have an emergency and he didn't want to get involved?

Now I must phone the trash company and tell them he didn't take my trash. Or rather, so he won't get in trouble, phrase it in the passive voice: "My trash was not picked up."

The Relatives Visit

There were four, two men and two women. Two were twice my size, one vertically and one horizontally. They paraded in with tons of hiking boots and flip-flops, sleeping bags, clothes, Easter baskets, personal electronics, and gifts for me of an Elvis mug and a marvelous egg-shaped motion-sensor night light truly needed in the bathroom. Moving their stuff from the van into my house and getting settled took a full 20 minutes. They arrived hungry.

I love hosting them every Easter. My possessions vanished beneath theirs and a ton of wet towels because everyone shampooed and showered daily in my half-bath, the only bath there is, so I got in there before 6 a.m. or after 10:30 p.m. My Missouri provided beautiful weather, flowering trees, and birds. We ate barbecue, Steak 'n' Shake, frozen yogurt, homemade pot roast with mashed potatoes and gravy, Chinese buffet, Trader Joe's mac 'n' cheese, dyed Easter eggs, chocolate cake, a truckload of bagged snacks, and for Easter dinner came yet another person for a truly full 1100-square-foot house that rocked with fun. My brother-in-law read aloud from an inspirational book called Jacob the Baker and I rolled on the floor laughing to bust a gut.

They flung themselves out on carpets and snored. They relaxed and read or scrolled through their Facebook or strolled around the property or sat around the firebowl. They freaked when they saw ticks on them. (I showed them what to do.) We visited antique malls, Walmart, Trader Joe's (they'd never been to one), the farm store to see live chicks and baby bunnies, the Methodist church, and a state park.

The morning they packed and departed they granted my special request to vacuum the vacated rooms, and cheerfully did so in a few minutes, saving me 2 hours of my life, and with those hours I laundered all the towels and ate all the foil-covered little chocolate eggs they had brought.

And how was your Easter?

Yule Log

December 19, 5 p.m.: I wished everybody at the astrology club meeting--Christians, pagans, Jews, New Agers, etc.--a blessed Yule, the holiday for the Winter Solstice.

December 20, 12:30 p.m. I shoveled out the fire bowl and selected a Yule log from a woodpile that's been in the garage since I moved here, and had it set up when I'm told it's going to rain that night. I covered the bowl and logs and most of the kindling with plastic. It does rain that night. The wood stays dry.

December 21, 2 p.m.: Yule. Neighbor Terri and I meet for Yule lunch. It happens to be 66 degrees. We have ice cream.

Terri's natural ornaments

3:45 p.m.: While there's still light, Terri, who is an artist, brings over a beautiful collection of handmade natural ornaments made of feathers, fungi, and acorn caps, balls of suet wrapped with jute, and more, and I've made ornaments too, and we hang them on a bare little serviceberry tree not far from the firebowl, and it is adorable.

4:00 p.m.: I try to light the fire.

4:15 p.m.-8 p.m.: Using sawdust starters that were homemade by her son Patrick, Terri lights the fire and keeps it alive and flaming for hours while we sat in folding chairs and talked and threw dried herbs on the fire and burnt little slips of paper with what we want to leave behind and what we want for the future, and drank wine in glasses printed with stars and moons. And said goodbye to the sun when it set, and admired the moon and moon shadows. And moved our chairs ever closer to the fire, which took on several shapes and wonderful colors as wood was added. Then it got rather cold to stay sitting still and we went back into our respective houses.

10:45 p.m.: I'm outside in the moonlight setting up dozens of bottle rockets to fire at 10:48 (time of the solstice) and fire those and more until I'm tired of firing them.

Joy to the World, the Solstice Comes

So worn out, with no energy. All I cooked was a bowl of cherry Jell-O, an impulse I could not explain because I never eat it. I dragged myself outdoors and in the woods hacked invasive Japanese honeysuckle away from oaks and felt a bit better; it saves their lives. At 4:45 the sun set. I remembered the winter solstice was coming at 5:03 p.m. and wanted to be doing something special at that moment, like setting off bottle rockets. Or should I whip some cream for the Jell-O? Then, at 5:03 I hear what I've never heard before: singing. Caroling. "Joy to the World." Coming closer until it's right outside my door. I open the door and get the surprise of my life:

My neighbor Terri (top left), who is musical, had organized her children and grandchildren to come down the road and carol for me! I've never seen and heard anything so sweet!

Not only that, but they brought me a present and a bowl of grape/apple/nut/marshmallow salad--perfect with the Jell-O!

December's Garden

Temperatures have been in the 60s and 70s most of the fall, including last week, meaning that the fall vegetables my neighbor and I planted in September haven't frozen yet, and today I plucked up and scissored four scarlet radishes, and small lettuce, spinach, and kale leaves, holiday colors, enough for a full salad bowl. Not only that, but while I was at the store I saw and bought 1/4 of a watermelon because I have so missed the taste of it. Except for tomatoes and hummingbirds I can still pretend it's summer. First snow predicted in a few days.

The sunsets now are pretty, too, but the best thing about mid-December-- it's only two weeks until the days begin to lengthen.

Easter, the Bunny Holiday

City friends Suzanne and Tom, invited for lunch, brought an Easter basket they custom-made and wrapped for me. They even curled the ribbon. I almost cried from their thoughtfulness. No malt-ball eggs or nougat stuff here. Pure chocolate bunnies and Bissinger peanut-butter-chocolate eggs -- and a three-pack of microfiber quarter socks in bright pink, blue and teal green! They are great! These are the kind of friends to have over on a holiday -- or anytime -- even if they do think a woman living alone on 100 acres is eccentric and in a bit of danger. Au contraire! A woman alone is not looking for trouble. She is looking for transcendence.

In return they got ham au gratin and banana cream pudding made from scratch, a Florida recipe, sort of Southern and not often served here. Missourians aren't pudding people. But it blew away every dessert expectation anyone could have. The whole thing serves 12 and it contains exactly two tablespoons of sugar and no more. Next time I make one, I'll be sure to take its picture before anyone gets at it, and also post the amazingly simple recipe.

This happens to be post #500 in Divinebunbun's Rugged Rural Missouri blog, begun in June 2007. Celebrate by eating marshmallow chickens and chocolate carrots and putting on bright socks.

A Toast to the New Year

Reeve, my close friend who has 100 head of cattle, is usually very busy, but he took time out during the holidays and he truly does wish us all a very happy new year on this little blue dot of a planet.

Reflections

In fall, I can't help but become pensive. Summer was easy. October was beautiful except it lost us 72 minutes of daylight. Now, as my companion plants lose their leaves (these are sycamores, reflected into the LaBarque Creek) and freeze, the warm-blooded creatures withdraw into deeper woods, some into hibernation, some into the house, warmed by propane. And there I further withdraw into myself and think of the late autumns and winters past: holidays, snow, cold, long unbearably dark days, days with watery sun --now fifty years of them to look back on. The soul-food Thanksgiving. The Thanksgiving of cheap sausage and beans. The Christmases with no one. The Christmases I made myself cream of cashew soup, sauteed monkfish, fine vegetables, and homemade orange spongecake jellyroll. The Christmases with very special people. The Christmas snowed in. The warmth of soup and baking. The glassy look of sky and water, like ink drawings of autumn.

I'm My Mother's Valentine

"For You, Daughter," says my mother's Valentine, which I received today. On the front it's got ten hearts, each pierced by/giving birth to a sturdy rainbow; the words "For You, Daughter," are in script type and silver foil. She'd phoned me to say it was coming, and added, "Just because I sent you a Valentine doesn't mean you have to send ME one."

Printed inside: "Valentine's Day/begins in the heart.../so every thought of you/ Makes it seem/ like Valentine's Day/ each day the whole year through. Happy Valentine's Day with Love Always"

Now I know I'm gettin' old because this chokes me up. There was a time when the word "family" made me sick to my stomach and I couldn't get away fast enough. It's more than thirty years ago now that I left home, went to school, got married, lived in the city, got single, moved here to the cabin. The only person still sending me Valentines is my mother.

Dear Mom, of COURSE I will get and send you a Valentine. Mom is now 76. Hard to believe, my mother, whose cool and smooth powdered cheeks and lilac perfume I remember from when I was very small and she was in her 20s -- now nearing 80. But she gives as good as she gets; when I fly down to visit she treats me like I am 9. Guess that's love.

Winter Pleasures

Yes, when I was a kid, fifty years ago now, I got the classic orange in the toe of my Christmas stocking, and I hope you did too. I don't hang stockings anymore, and my Christmas trees are right outside, but I have never loved anything in quite the way I love fruits. All of em. Divine shapes, colors and scents. In winter, the citrus fruits, which are improbably abundant this time of year. When I drew in pastels that's all I drew, could spend all day just admiring an orange and its blue shadow. And not only this, when you open it (or rip the skin off) YOU are the first person ever to see the inside of it. And to top it all off, it's good to eat. Here's a bowl of winter sunshine in winter sunshine. Happy New Year.

See My Christmas Present

See the overgrown brush? I'd planned on hacking at it two hours a day for four months until I cleared it. (See entry "My Machete," Dec. 19, in menu at left.) This is the "before" picture.








See my friend and hero Reeve? As my Christmas present he brought his gas-powered brushcutter and cut all the brush and briars from hell's half-acre in one hour or less, and then made a bonfire of the debris, using just one match.

The "after" picture. (The fallen branch along the bottom is the same as in the "before" picture; there's just a lot less of it.) Best Christmas present. Reeve got a big omelet, a big hug, and other good and valuable consideration.

Sammy Strikes Again

Remember Sammy, unsuccessful suitor of Shelley? Well, he snuck down our road in his blue pickup this morning, and I knew he was fixin' up yet another holiday display for the woman of his dreams. Garlands, ribbons, wreaths, tinsel, Santas, etc. This photo ain't the half of it. True love. I hope Santa brings poor Sammy a new girlfriend. This year Santa brung me David, and I don't want nothin else.

Celebrating Steve the Handyman

On this Labor Day: on Friday I photographed Steve the handyman and his tools when he came by to install a new window in the Divine cabin. I put it here to remind myself that "labor" isn't a synonym for "people overseas," and also to honor all labor, even mine, and its contribution to prosperity, health, and contentment. Labor these days seems to be taken for granted -- why, we hardly use the very word anymore unless we're talkin about babies. Let's change that right now.

In Love with the Analemma

The Analemma is the path the sun travels through our skies during one year. Its path, when photographed, reveals itself as a lovely, offset figure-8 shape -- set with diamonds. At the farthest ends of the Analemma are the solstices of Summer and Winter. Here is a sample photograph of the Analemma, from the wonderful site Astronomy Picture of the Day.

The Analemma such an exquisitely beautiful phenomenon, displaying the universe's absolutely perfect design, that a gardener friend of mine and I fell in love with the Analemma and in particular celebrate the Solstices -- the crucial turnabout days in our solar calendar. The Winter Solstice this year is on December 22 at 06:08 hours (GMT; for Missouri that's 12:08 a.m.). Fireworks are legal out here, so we explode the loud ones, and dance around the sparkling ones, howling and welcoming the trend toward brighter days and spring and summer. We can hardly wait!!

Friend and I have taken "Earth Names" in honor of the Analemma and the solstices. He, a gardener, is "Demetrius," which means "priest of Demeter," because a gardener is a priest of the Earth. My Earth Name is "June," for the month I most passionately love. You take an Earth Name, too! And dance!

Why I Hide from Salvation Army Bell-Ringers

They're out in front of the grocery store, the Wal-Mart, the K-Mart; they're on the streetcorners downtown, uptown. . . And I will turn around and abjure the groceries or whatever I need, and go home, and return at an odd hour when the Salvation Army charity-bucket bell-ringers are sure not to be there. Or I won't return at all.

I'm not the only one that cringes upon hearing the unceasing dink-dink-dink-dink that starts in November and lasts into January. At a supermarket that had two entrances rather far apart I saw most customers avoid the entrance where the bell-ringer stood, and enter and exit the other. The bell-ringer picked up his red bucket and moved to that entrance, trying to nab the sneaky shoppers -- who again escaped him, through the other door.

I suppose many of us enjoy giving to charities, especially good and noble ones such as the Salvation Army. But I am tired of being begged for money, to give more and more of it, when I have less and less of it. In fact I am falling behind, being forced to pay $3/gallon for gasoline, $365 a year to park in my own employer's lot, $700 for a tank of propane, $500 deductible when a carefree trucker let debris fly off his trailer, smashing my car's front end; $25 for a haircut so that my students won't say, "Did you know your hair is a half-inch longer on one side than the other?" (I tend not to look that closely at myself, but students see everything, including cheap clothes and assembly-line haircuts.) Our employer even volunteers to deduct from our paychecks funds for those less fortunate, via The United Way, and plants a United Way rep right in our office to guilt us into giving.

I resist where I can. Rarely, I salve my conscience by dropping into the bucket a quarter or a buck. Or if I pass the bell-ringer as I enter, I might promise, "I'll give when I come back out." And then I'll sneak back out, if possible. Either way the ringer -- poor brave shivering fellow -- says "God bless you."

I'm blessed in countless ways, including the fact that I don't have to take charity myself. But I need to be blessed with more money so I'd feel glad to give -- instead of shamed because I can't.