I Sit Beside the Fire and Think

[Some days are different; they stand on their own, undone from the regular wheel of life and these are the days I most like to write about...]

It was strange to wake up in a dark room and look at the clock and find it so late and wonder if Tasha was going to come to bed soon when I was just about to get up. It was nine-thirty at night and so I got up and found it had snowed and my men had gone away. They are off to Missouri. Then I found Mom in the kitchen and she was making something for the dehydrator, so I joined her and made something for the dehydrator, too. She went to bed and I ate a salad. It was good, not like eating salad at all. It had onions and mushrooms and tomato and baby spinach and cilantro and vinegar and olive oil and butter, then I mixed in some avocado and homemade mayonnaise. Many people I know dislike every one of those ingredients, and shame on them, cause those things together make a pretty good dinner. Then I squeezed some oranges and had orange juice which mostly was pulp, the way I like it. Then I felt still like making something, so I invented some hot chocolate without the milk. I made almond milk in the blender, then put it on the stove to warm up while I broke pieces of 90% dark chocolate into it, added vanilla and sweetened it with honey. I drank a little. It’s ok. Someone else can have the rest.

For two months, maybe, I’m not allowed to eat grains, milk, cooked meat and eggs and most any other cooked thing. But I’m doing ok. It’s good fun being an inventor in the kitchen and trying things and making do and finding new recipes. I rather consider myself a decent cook nowadays. And I’m learning to be good at baking, because my family loves cookies – chocolate chip anything cookies.

My little tiger has come to see what I’m doing. She was locked in Dad’s office on accident and Tasha has only just let her out. Silly thing.

Last night was a good one. It was the premiere of Act of Valor, a movie coming out middle of this month. Incredible movie. You’ve got to see it. It makes me think of my brother and wonder –where will he be five years from now? I wonder if he’ll be doing something like that – something amazing that he can’t speak of.

It was also good meeting up there with old friends and friends even older. My oldest friends are friends of nine years –it’s like as if my life has only been that long, because everything before it was so very different I can’t compare it with my life now. It’s like my existence began nine years ago when I met so many good people. In my new country. Like the old one doesn’t exist.

Last night was longer than just a movie outing, because after that I went to babysit on a night-shift with Nay. We had a grand old time. We sat together on the couch in the basement next to the little child-friend where she slept attached to the oxygen machine and heart monitor and we chatted. A couple of times we sneaked up stairs to get a bite to eat – sneaking only because we didn’t want to wake the parents of the parents of the girl who was sleeping. There’s always such a variety of food in someone else’s house and not one’s own. Why is that?

After watching a Sherlock episode (a really scary one) on my ipod, we went to sleep on the couches at 3 or 4 o'clock, I don't know which. When I woke at eight, Renee was gone and Mom was there to take me home. 

I find it hard to write about things I’m musing, so I shan’t try. They might sound silly and would only confuse you.

Someone said to me last night that they think I am Autistic, or the milder form of that, which sounds something like “Assburger.” She was a friend – is a friend, that is to say. She says she thinks so because I can do complicated things like draw and play music and write, but can’t remember such things as my street name. It’s all rather interesting. I doubt I’m Autistic, though sometimes I wonder if I am a little different in the way that I take things in and view the world. Aren't all artists just a little different?

I think I shall post this now. I must clean up the kitchen.

Sweet dreams!

You may go, too, after you have read a poem by Mr. Bilbo:

I sit beside the fire and think
of all that I have seen,
of meadow-flowers and butterflies
in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossomer
in autumns that here were,
with morning mist and silver sun
and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think
of how the world will be
when winter comes without a spring
that I shall never see.

For still there are so many things
that I have never seen:
in every wood in every spring
there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think
of people long ago,
and people who will see a world
that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think
of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet
and voices at the door.

.    .     .