Stages of Decompression

Stages of decompression when I get home:

Stop in the driveway, sit back, listen to music and Brian barking in the driveway and revel in the fact that I'm not at work anymore.
Pet all my dogs and praise them on the way to the door.
Greet my family, or if I'm home alone, check out all the animals and the garden before I go in. Take deep breaths because I'm home.
Take off my shoes. Ahh!
Pick up Veronica and turn her upside-down, tickle her tummy and play with her feet. (For new readers, Veronica aka The Poop is a cat.) Let her up on my shoulders and walk around the house with her. Put on my music if I'm home alone.
Check my email. Take off my socks if it's warm, put on my slippers if it's cold. Ahhh!
Make and/or eat food. Yum!
Open up the doors and windows if it's a beautiful evening.
Write, design, do art, listen to music, or play Bejeweled ... sometimes all at once.
Take off my bra and put on snuggly sweat pants.
Write/work/play some more, until I'm sleepy.
Bath with fragrant, luxurious soap, and bed. Decompression complete!

Because it takes all night, having lots of days working at my day job in a row or just one day off (split weekends) are tough. My day off doesn't start when I leave work, but when I wake up in the morning. And now I'm laughing because I'm imagining doing my decompression routine extra fast. Veronica would not be a happy kitteh at all!

Is it just me or is it awfully quiet around here?

I've been quiet lately, mainly because my DH and I are working daily on putting the house back together. Yesterday I finished all but one door transition, and I filed away a bunch of paperwork.

Two writers generate a lot of paperwork.

And then I have the writing projects, and book covers, etc.

Enough excuses.

Speaking of quiet, our house is very quiet. The new laminate floors have made it less quiet--sound travels easily across that slick surface--but there's not a lot out here to make noise. We don't have a lot of cars go by, for example, and there's not enough traffic for anyone to honk at anyone else unless they're being particularly dicky. Our animals make sounds, but usually not all day. The chickens sometimes get into spats, or they'll make noises after they've laid an egg. The goats only bother to make noise if they see us and suspect that we'll bring over some food. We don't keep the tv on. Not that it's actually a tv tv--we don't get any reception out here and I don't want to buy a big antenna, so we just plug in a dvd (no commercials, yay!) when we want to watch something. We might watch 2-3 hours a day. Sometimes I have the radio on for half an hour, but that's not even a daily thing. Once a week, at best.

It's so quiet that when my DH grinds coffee, it sounds really loud. When I'm in bed and he needs to grind some, he muffles it with a dish rag. We can hear our refrigerator cycle on and off. The fan on my computer is the loudest sound in the entire downstairs unless a badly tuned truck races by or one of our dogs walks over for a drink of water near my window.

When we first moved here, I loved the quiet, but it took some to get accustomed to it. I still wake up at the sound of slight noises sometimes. I wouldn't want to go back to more white noise, though. I like being able to hear the jays across the street at my neighbor's vacant property chatter to each other on the way to our bird feeder. I like being able to close my eyes and hear the faint sounds of my family doing breakfast stuff. I like that I can hear our postal carrier pull over and drop off mail. Sometimes I even hear the click of the mailbox shutting.

I wonder what our ancestors experienced, with few or no walls, no modern insulated windows, nothing, really, to soften the silence. Was it beautiful, or empty ... maybe both ....

An Enjoyable Evening Drinking Poison

I'm enjoying my first glass of wine in several weeks and it's very, very nice.  My fave, Fetzer Gewurztraminer.  I've backed off all alcohol considerably and it's nice to come back to, at least for tonight.  

I've always complained that there's no good denatured wine out there.  Vintners refuse to ruin perfectly good wine by denaturing it so just about everything I've tasted tastes like diluted prune juice, and the exceptions are flat, and remind me of vinegar without the sharpness that makes good salad vinegars interesting to sip.  

My love of wine, unfortunately, will have to be celebrated with the real stuff.  Same with cognac and rum (how I loooooooove a great rum--I will make recommendations on request.)  I've had pretty good luck with virgin mixed drinks, though.  The mixture helps disguise the flatness, usually via sweetness, saltiness, sourness, sparkle, or a combination thereof.

I've voluntarily retreated from my indulgence for several reasons which will, over the course of time, lighten up and allow me a little more leeway for indulgence.  Firstly, I have no adult backup after dinner to comment should I start drinking a bit too much.  Second, although I don't feel depressed or anxious I know I'm going through a stressful time and that will make my self-monitoring of alcohol intake suspect.  Third, I'm hoping to lose a little weight this summer and alcohol has tons and tons of calories.  I know a couple who stopped drinking and lost most of their excess weight in just a few months with no other change in diet or activity level.  Wow.  Fourthly, I'm going through some mild medical side effects of a TMI procedure that will only be aggravated if I indulge due to dehydration (not to mention that I won't be able to take ibuprofen if I start cramping bad.)  And last, alcohol (with the exception of my beloved Fetzer Gewurtz) is pretty darned expensive and I'm trying to be relatively frugal until I'm no longer living off of savings.  Even if it wasn't expensive it's a luxury item.  Of my luxury yummies--booze, chocolate, ice cream, cream, red meat (especially ribeye steak,) cookies, cream cheese, pre-sweetened breakfast cereals, juice, bacon and/or ham, and white/sweet breads in all their myriad and tasty forms--I don't need to have all these things on stock at all times.  Certain times of the month, chocolate is valuable for the survival of my offspring.  Occasional juice is healthy for the raw vitamin supplementation.  The rest I can (and do) take or leave.  And alcohol is the one that's left out in the cold first and the most often when things are tight or I start feeling unhealthy.  It's a poison, after all.  It's a happy poison with some health benefits, but there are health risks too and none of us need it.

For tonight, however, I'm happy to enjoy my fave wine and do a little late night writing.  No school tomorrow, so I can have a bit of a late start with no bad repercussions.  I can't stay up too late or go overboard with the wine, though, because I have a long day of writerly activities and I don't want to be groggy, dull-witted (at least not more than usual) or short-tempered.  I also plan on having my fave (yes, I have many faves) pear cider tomorrow and I don't want my liver to be screaming for mercy.  It comes in pints!