Sunset at 4:18 today

Woke up this morning with
a terrific urge to lie in bed all day
and read. Fought against it for a minute.

Then looked out the window at the rain.
And gave over. Put myself entirely
in the keep of this rainy morning.

Would I live my life over again?
Make the same unforgivable mistakes?
Yes, given half a chance. Yes.

by, Raymond Carver

Horse friends

What's wrong with this picture?

Two horses, hauled out, unloaded, tied in a parking lot waiting for something. How did they get there? Where's the truck?

The answer is, at that moment the truck was at a nearby garage, because a few miles from the horse park the scary "check engine" light came on in Dolly's Ford and the engine lost power. It sputtered along and we made it to the parking lot (with hearts pounding and hazard lights flashing) and got safely off the busy Snoqualmie-Fall City highway.   

Oh wonderful world of iPhones, because we soon had a nearby friend to our rescue with her big red rig, like a 911 call for horses.  So we unloaded the horses in the parking lot and unhitched the ailing truck, which was still running, thankfully. Then Dolly limped over to the garage in town while I kept and eye on the guys (above.) Jen arrived and we loaded the horses back in and she hauled us home to the ranch in Snoqualmie.  There we unloaded the horses, all our saddles and tack (again!) and cleaned the poop out of the trailer. As John likes to say, if you don't have enough trouble in your life, you should get a horse.

The horses were "good" through this big adventure, but they had nothing to do but stand around and be hauled back and forth like royalty. It was a day devoid of all the fun that goes along with horses, distilled down to just the trouble and aggravation. With this one exception-- these wonderful friendships you seem to make in the horse world.

So once everything was put away and the horses were back in the pasture without having to do a lick of work, Dolly and I drove to Fall City and got the lowdown on the truck:  bad spark plugs and possibly the "coil" (whatever that is.)  It would be repaired in a day or so. We drove home to Seattle together. Just one of those days.

Oh, Christmas tree

"The best Christmas trees come very close to exceeding nature."

Andy Rooney 

The weekend clicked by in a rush and most of Saturday was spent hauling a Christmas tree home from the hardware store and then pulling the decoration boxes down the trap door from the attic.  Among the many things to be thankful for, everything was dry up there after weeks of pounding rain on our 30-year old roof.  I spent the rest of the day decorating, and then cleaning up after decorating.

We showed more restraint this year. It's 20 bucks for a sheared Douglas fir any size at the Mclendon's lot, and out of natural greed we gravitate toward the monsters and cram them in the corner of the living room.  Our tree is slightly smaller than usual and we like it better--easier to decorate, easier to live with, and John had it in the stand in no time at all. And hopefully a third less dry needles to fall on the rug in the next 3 weeks.

On Saturday afternoon I enjoyed chatting on the phone with our friends in Missoula.They finally have fresh snow, we have more rain. Our mountains are getting hammered, and the ski areas are open.  Mt. Baker claims they have the most snow in North American right now with 160 inches. 80 inches piled up in the last seven days.

The major mountain passes look like this, which makes you wonder who has the energy and guts to drive up there just to ski.  Thousands of people, I suppose.  It was a better Sunday to stay inside, enjoy the Seahawks thrashing the Cardinals and have our delayed Thanksgiving dinner with Dave and "Lucy."

This was the first turkey cooked in my new convection oven, and everyone gave it thumbs up.

"As the snow lay round about"

On Thanksgiving weekend, I always dig out our Christmas music collection.  John buys a couple new CD's each year, so in 20 years it's turned into a big box.  The latest addition is Christmas with Marty Robbins (no kidding) originally released when I was 17.

The old albums are the best-- young Doris Day has a voice like a naughty earth angel, and Mel Torme's snappy version of Good King Wenceslas makes my eyes prickle every time I hear it. Along with Holly and the Ivy, it's my favorite carol. I can't explain why some of these old songs have such an emotional trigger. On the other hand, once a year is probably often enough to suffer through A Little Drummer Boy and The Twelve Days of Christmas. Especially at the grocery store.

This month the BBC Music Magazine had a good article about how the Victorians gave us our familiar Christmas music. For that matter, the Victorians gave us just about all our Christmas traditions, helped along by the family-oriented Victoria and Albert, and Dickens, in A Christmas Carol.  Before then, they say Christmas hymns were pretty dull, and Harvest was the favored church festival in early winter.

The breakthrough in Christmas music came to England from Finland in 1853, when James Mason Neale wrote new lyrics to a medieval spring carol and called it Good King Wenceslas.

In about 1850, the Swedish ambassador to Britain gave Neale a rare copy of a sacred songbook published in Finland in the 13th century.  Wenceslas was originally written in Latin, and the old lyrics went like this:

Spring has now unwrapped the flowers,
Day is fast reviving, 
Life in all her growing powers
Toward the light is striving...

And so on, you know the tune. But Neale, in a moment of genius wrote:

Good King Wenceslas first looked out, 
On the Feast of Stephen, 
When the snow lay all about
Deep and crisp and even.

It was the first time a Christmas song was associated with snow. All the ancient wassails and carols, even those from Finland, make no mention of snow. 

Along with an excellent tune, the carol has a good legend.  "King" Wenceslas braved harsh weather on the second day of Christmas (December 26th) to give alms to a poor peasant. When his page is about to give up the struggle, he continues on by walking in the melted footprints of the saint.  Charity, leadership, bravery, generosity, faith, trust and other good Christmassy things all in one carol.

In real history, Wenceslas was actually a Boehemian Duke, assassinated in 935, supposedly by his own brother, Bolesalv the Cruel. Duke Wenceslas was murdered during a feast at precisely the time Boleslav's son was born. Later Bolesalv was remorseful for the fratricide, and decided to educate his son as a clergyman. Wenceslas became a saint, his brother did not.

And a few more...

Amanda and Maya

Of my favorite things.

A few of my favorite things...

Cream colored ponies and crisp apple strudel,

Door bells and sleigh bells

And schnitzel with noodles...

Make that, schnitzel with homemade spatzele on a winter weeknight.  I suppose veal tops the list of decadent foods.  It's also expensive (as it should be) and quite a bit of trouble to prepare, so we don't have it often. John would say, not often enough.  But oh my, breaded schnitzel is tasty.  Must be the "fried in butter" part.