Yesterday I thought, “I haven’t been to Lone Elk park in ages. I should go there.”

Evidently, I am part elk, specifically a lady elk looking for love. Because it seems it is elk rutting season. They had to close the park until further notice because there’s a bull elk just ramming his horns into all the cars.

Supposedly, black cars are a special target. He sees his reflection in the black paint and thinks the Escalade or Mini Cooper or whatever is a rival.

Hope he gets some soon. Trees are turning and this would be a great time to visit.

It got chilly enough to trigger my Christmas ornament urge.

This year was the year we were cited by the county (the SHAME) for feeding the furry wildlife. (Gary is defiant, but I am ashamed. My lord, what my Dad would say about me.)

We also bought two telescopes, one of which Gary dropped the first day outside, so it doesn’t work now. (Unless you want to look at a prism.)

So here’s a bi-purpose ornament.

Gary switched from feeding dozens of mammals to hundreds of birds. I could have had any number of glass hummingbird ornaments, but that seems destined to break.

Some person in Turkey carves blocky wood hummingbirds, though.

Both have a hint of sadness, though. But what else happened to our little family this year?

This is what it was last week:

This is what it is now:

This is what it is supposed to be:

So not done.

My god, how many years have we been promised this blue wave, the bluenami that would sweep away the chaff.

I thought it was a myth, like a brokered convention.

And now … what happens? I’m sure the governors’ races are a net win. It’s just frightening to think that all the Congressional power is on one side, isn’t it? Even if it’s ‘my’ side. I trust some of them, but power corrupts, and surely some individuals are out for revenge.

Are we just going to end up with the same uncooperative nonsense?

Well, the glow lasted almost a day, anyway.

Look at Der Sausagehaus in a box!

I had to buy, then I had to assemble, and now I have to review.

Buy: At our local store, the Dierbergs.

Assemble: Initially easier than a Gingerbread house. There’s no frosting or sugar mortar: it’s cheese.

It looks big, doesn’t it? No. It is not. The footprint is about the size of an index card.

But, that’s why it didn’t collapse. Half an hour after unboxing I had the basic cracker house above, assembled with the cheese spackle.

But then the decorating began.

If you ever need to be put off of charcuterie, decorate with it. The sausage is greasy and clumsy. Parmesan cheese snow stinks compared to powdered sugar snow. And any effort spent decorating will push the structure apart.

Eventually though, I developed a light touch, and came up with this:

and this …

Review:

It was great at first. Easy success up front. The opposite of a gingerbread house, frankly.

The decorating though … very off-putting. Had I not decorated it I would have gleefully chomped through the peak of the house like Godzilla. But if you are the person snipping the cranberries into window panes and delicately gluing them on, then you aren’t going to want to ever eat a cranberry again.

So, I suppose, good for guests, bad for hosts: my Mom’s very description of a great party.

One: Friend Anne teaches me about literature.

The Barber piece included a poem by James Agee. On the way to the symphony, I said to Friend Anne, “I am fond of Agee because he wrote A Death in the Family, which included a chapter with nothing but ‘My mother is a fish,’ and that was in 10th grade and it was the first time I read something where the author didn’t spell it out for me, and I figured out the puzzle.”

Anne: “That’s Faulkner in As I Lay Dying.”

Me: “You are wrong. They wouldn’t have us read Faulkner in high school.” Checks. “Oh damnit, you are right.”

How is it possible that Faulkner, the man famous for a page-long sentence in The Bear also wrote a sentence-long chapter? And seriously, what curriculum threw that book at me in 10th grade?

(It might have been my Free Reading hour. I might have read As I Lay Dying by Faulkner and A Death in the Family by Agee at the same time. I don’t remember being a death-obsessed Goth, but it’s possible. I also didn’t remember Knoxville: Summer of 1915 is the prologue to A Death in the Family.)

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Two: Anne teaches me a new word.

So, James Agee wrote the words that were set to music in Knoxville: Summer of 1915. Supposedly he was playing with improvisational writing: write once, no second draft. (I gesture expansively at this blog.)

At one point the piece serves up this line:

People in pairs, not in a hurry/

scuffling, switching their weight of aestival body.

Ooo I thought, new word. “Aestival.”

At intermission I mentioned to Anne that I doubted Agee improvised the word “aestival,” because no one pulls that word out of their butt. (Butt, not ass, because I was at the symphony.)

Anne: “Aestival, pertaining to summer.”

She placidly pulled “aestival” out of her butt AND used it it a sentence AND probably would have spelled it correctly without having to look it up every time as I have four times now.

I gaped at her, and then gaped more dramatically, and she smiled the happiest smile I have ever seen her smile.

Anne: “Most animals hibernate, but some animals aestivate: they sleep in the summer.”

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So, I suppose that pumps the TWIL count up to three, because I just looked up what animals sleep in summer.

Aestival animals are: Fish, reptiles, amphibians, invertebrates, Fat-tailed dwarf lemurs (sleeping in tree hollows using tail fat reserves), select hedgehogs, and Unita ground squirrels.