— पांच हजार अस्सी-नौ —

Alexia was able to meet up with my right after work yesterday to check out the very last day of the Festival of Trees at the Fairmont Hotel—she walked from home and I walked from work, and we met at the entrance at about 5:00. I rather wish they had waited to start packaging up their Christmas Trees, but unfortunately being the last that that's exactly what happened—probably between a third and half of the trees I had seen on display on November 20 were either gone, or found in a corner somewhere without their lights on and wrapped in semi-translucent plastic. I should have taken a photo or two of that and I didn't think to.

There were plenty of trees still up, though, so I think Alexia found it worth the time. The trees just inside the front entrance were still on display; a couple in the back hallway were taken down; a good half of the ones on the upper level around the huge atrium space that serves as the main checkin lobby were also gone. At least I had some cool photos from my earlier visit to show her. (The full photo album, 49 shots after adding 5 new ones last night, can be seen here.)

I was delighted to find that, at least, my favorite of the trees was still up: "Nightmare Before Christmas." Alexia was quite taken with it herself, and said it had been years since she last watched it—I have it on DVD so we may watch it together sometime soon.

And now that I have experienced the Festival of Trees properly, which I have known about for a few years, I will be better prepared to plan for a visit, hopefully again with Alexia earlier than its final day, next year. And for this year at least, I love that I have this photo album as a replacement for the beloved Gingerbread Village, as it's a very similar event: creative displays put on annually at a hotel, as a fundraiser for a good cause. In the case of the Festival of Trees, it's Seattle Children's Hospital. Gingerbread Village was canceled due to COVID yet again this year (which makes sense; it's massively popular and would garner untenable indoor crowds), but god damn, I hope it can finally return next year. In which case next year I'll have photo albums for both.

I'm well on my way to a rather large number of Christmastime photo albums for this year's collection, though. I don't know if I'll match last year's record number of 10 albums, but it'll be close: I've already got five going and it's only December 2. More will get added to at least three of those later, and future albums guaranteed to get added include Victorian Country Christmas at the Washington State Fairgrounds, which I am going to with Alexia on Saturday; "Holiday in the Park" at Volunteer Park on Thursday next week, which I am also going to with Alexia who has never been (unfortunately Shobhit will be working; he was hoping he'd be able to come for the free hot chocolate and cookies); and of course Christmas itself. That alone guarantees at least eight Christmastime photo albums this year; nine if we check out "Oly Lightstravaganza" before heading home from Olympia again. And, I'd really love to go to the WildLanterns display, new last year, at Woodland Park Zoo, in which case that would match last year's record of ten. If I do another walking tour of Capitol Hill Christmas lights with Alexia, it could even be eleven!

Anyway. Another new holiday photo album started from photos last night was this year's "Seattle Holiday Lights and Delights," the wonderful light sculptures at Westlake Park, again in lieu of the much-missed Holiday Carousel. It will be interesting to see if, in the event that the Holiday Carousel can finally return again next year (and, who the fuck knows—we all basically assumed last year that all these things would be back this year, and yet here we are), whether they still do these holiday light sculptures in the park. I kind of love them, and I really loved that they did them differently this year from last year. (I will need to go back for screenshots of augmented reality stuff, which was previously listed online as starting December 5 and now says November 26, but you have to use Snapchat now and I could not figure out how to make it work last night.)

In any event, the second and third photos in this post are from the Westlake Park displays. I was curious as to whether there had been an in-person Lighting of the Tree event this year, as that had also been canceled last year—I was in Palm Springs last Friday and thus not in town to know. Alexia told me that indeed it happened. I did some scouring online and found that it was clearly not as packed as a normal year, but it was still crowded enough to trigger a lot of people currently spooked by large gatherings. I likely would not have been, as I remain very little concerned about COVID when outdoors.

— पांच हजार अस्सी-नौ —

— पांच हजार अस्सी-नौ —

Once Alexia and I were done looking at the displays at Westlake Park, we walked back to Capitol Hill together—our first walk from downtown back to Capitol Hill in many months, though it was something we did regularly last year—and, at her suggestion, went out for dinner at Aviv on 15th Avenue. I knew getting the pita sandwich on my own would be too much—seven falafel balls is too many for just me—so she agreed to share an order of the falafel bowl and just get an extra pita. This meant no lettuce, but beyond that I was able to construct my own pita sandwich with three of the seven falafel balls. There had been one ball left and Alexia said, "That one's yours," so I ate it. I asked if there had been eight balls and she said there were only two: "I tricked you into eating four."

We walked back to our building, and said our goodbyes until Saturday. Ivan up and decided he didn't want to go out for dessert after all; I offered to take him out for dessert as a thank-you for looking after the cats last week, and then he asked if I wanted to do Wednesday or Saturday. I have plans with Alexia Saturday so I suggested Wednesday, which he accepted as the plan at first. But when I texted him on our way back up the hill last night, he responded, Another evening please. He wouldn't tell me why, which is characteristic for him: he can often be cagey about things in a way that is crazy making. I was like, "What, do you have a date?? and he just responded with No. I have a theory now that it has something to do with the state of his face after this deep skin peel treatment he went to get the other day, and he just didn't want to say that. I did overhear him telling Shobhit it "takes ten years off your face," which is completely untrue and Ivan wastes far too much money on beauty treatments that never delivery on their promises but whatever. He clearly has long been uncomfortable with the aging process. He's nine years younger than I am, to the day, but even at 36 he's not all that young anymore.

When I got back from dinner, no one was home; Shobhit was still working and I had a new theory that maybe Ivan had gone to a movie. Then he came in the door minutes later, calling out "Hello!" so I went out to say hi to him. And also say, "What's going on?" but he still wouldn't tell me why he changed his mind about dessert. He clearly had the time and availability so I don't get it. All he would say was, "Let's go another day." He's not working this weekend but apparently he's going to Portland on Sunday, so who knows when we'll make this happen. It's fine though, I need to let it go, this is truly not that important.

So, fine, I went to the bedroom to spend the rest of the evening, which amounted to a couple of hours, working on the calendars. Somewhat to my surprise, I actually finished them. I didn't order them last night but I got that done this morning; sixteen calendars total that cost me cumulatively more than four hundred bucks. It might have been closer to $300, except I had to pay shipping on all of them this time: I had spaced the fact that I can no longer go to a Costco store to pick them up, as Costco closed all of their photo centers last year. This was precisely why I had switched to them as a calendar printing service, so I could save on the shipping costs. And their templates suck. I may bag the notes I was going to take for doing these again next year to attempt creating less work for myself, and find another service that is hopefully cheaper but even more importantly has more customizable templates to work with. Having to pay Costco shipping fees now makes dealing with their restrictive templates far less worthwhile.

That said, I did order the ones for Christopher, Nikki and Becca to be shipped directly to them, so at least I don't have to bother with taking those to the post office myself. Thank god for that. Well, except I do still have to find a way to mail Uncle David and Mary Ann's calendar to Australia, when USPS has suspended standard deliveries there. If I use USPS I'll have to pay $46 just to ship the fucking thing; I need to find out if UPS is any cheaper. Shobhit kept telling me to see if I can have them printed up by a Costco in Australia, but this morning it looked like I would have to have an Australian account. I mean, I did see that my card is supposed to be valid in any Costco around the world, but my login is only for U.S. Costco. I tried to create an account for costo.com.au and it wouldn't let me. So, that calendar is being shipped to me first and I do need to figure out how to get that one mailed to Adelaide.

Shobhit was whining about my not spending time with him. I was actually going to sit with him for a few minutes before bed, but he had the Christmas lights off, and when I came out to sit down, I turned them on again. He seriously flew off the handle, literally shouting: "Don't turn those on unless you're going to sit out here!" First of all, I truly don't understand why he hates them so much. He never used to, but now he acts like it's somehow causing him physical discomfort or something. Secondly, I don't have any idea what he thinks he's accomplishing by behaving that way. In what universe is flying of the handle going to achieve his supposed goal of me spending more time with him? The more he pulls this shit, the more I think about finding an apartment to move into. I turned around and just went to bed, because fuck this.

I keep thinking about growing old with him, and wondering if I can possibly be happy doing it, in the long run. It's becoming a buildup of things. I grew up vowing that I would have Christmas decorations all of December once I was old enough to, and Shobhit keeps wanting me to turn them off. He's also consistently insisting he doesn't want to get any more cats after Guru and Shanti die, which I am not ready to accept, nor do I feel he can just arbitrarily make such a decision for me. Also, the more the years go by, the less time he wants to spend with family on holidays. My hope for a future that I can enjoy is diminishing, and it's feeling like he's slowly sucking the joy out of my life. And all of this is not even to mention his temper, which regularly has him quickly turning irrational.

Now, don't get me wrong. By and large, things are fine. But the thing is, that's for now. I'm looking forward. I just don't know if I want to spend the rest of my life with all of these things just getting worse. At what point does it stop being worth it?

— पांच हजार अस्सी-नौ —

[posted 12:38 pm]