So, yesterday was the annual Tree Lighting Celebration at Westlake Center, which happens every year the day after Thanksgiving. And, if I happen to be in town, I always go. Sometimes with Shobhit, sometimes by myself—but this year, Danielle joined me. She had driven from her home in Rento up to Seattle—a 32-minute drive without traffic; it can take as much as 45-50—for Thanksgiving dinner on Thursday, drove back home that night, and then drove back into Seattle yet again yesterday. To be fair, I have no idea how inclined she would have been to come back the very next day if not for a client she already had scheduled in Ballard, for her new side hustle giving people IV infusions, so she was going to be back in Seattle again yesterday regardless.

Either way, it made two days in a row we hung out, a rare thing indeed. We even pondered, while we were together last night, how long ago it might have been since the last time that happened. And, before I started writing this post, I figured it out, so I could send her this series of texts:

I scoured my archives to figure this out: the last time we hung out two days in a row, we had to travel together to do it: Las Vegas, September 29 - Ocotober 1, 2019. So, that was actually three days in a row!
Last time we hung out two days in a row in Seattle? March 8 & 9, 2019, when we went to the Smith Tower observatory, because you stayed the night.
But! Even that's not quite the same, is it? The last time we hung out two days in a *without* traveling *or* spending the night at either of each other's places was ... August 22 & 23, 2015! That was when, the first day, you came to Seattle for the outdoor movie showing of Edward Scissorhands at Cal Anderson Park; the next day, I took transit down to Renton to go to the "Ho Ho Ho Down" summer Christmas themed party at your friend's house
I just spend a stupidly inordinate amount of time figuring this out

Side note: you cannot embed links in text, obviously. I just included them for reference purposes in this post.

Anyway. I had originally planned to take myself to a movie yesterday afternoon, but when Danielle said her appointment in Ballard would end around 3:00, I knew I wouldn't have time to see the movie and write the review, so I bumped the movie to today instead.

I certainly managed to keep myself busy until she got here otherwise, though. First, I uploaded my Thanksgiving photos to Flickr, then I wrote my blog post about it. And after that, I went down to the storage unit in the garage, and brought up all the Christmas decorations. I put up the Christmas lights around the windows, and then set up the Christmas Tree—now the ninth year I have used that artificial white tree. That makes a record for a single tree, as the much taller, green artificial tree I had between 1998 and 2005 was eight years; the tiny, potted live tree I kept far longer than I should have was between 2006 and 2013, also eight years. I've had this white tree, which looks largely pink with multicolored lights on it, since 2014. Eight plus eight plus nine, that makes 25 Christmases in Seattle to date (or, technically, once Christmas Day actually arrives this year). Damn. I'm getting old.

I did something slightly different with it this year, deciding to stand it on top of the usually-unused tall white wire chair that has been standing next to our entertainment center for ages (I can't even remember when or where the hell we got that, or why). I actually found a perfect wooden board, from one of the several boxes Shobhit brought home from Total Wine & More for his gardening, to set on top of the stretched-wire seat so it would be more stable. I should probably get a detail shot of the chair and stand for future reference.

In any case, with only one exception with this tree, I have always stood it in front of the southwest-facing Bay Window, theorizing that it was easier to see from the street at an angle; centering it in the middle of the bay windows would only have a maximized view from the building across the street. The one exception to this before now was 2020, when I did center it in the bay windows, and I don't even remember why. Perhaps because we were still in stay-home orders and even by December in 2020 not as many people were out traveling the streets? I mean, there were still plenty. But whatever: I did that again this year, as you can see in the photo at the top of this post. Standing it on the wire chair was new this year, though, and so was putting the love seat right in front of it, rather than scooting it to the side like I always did in the past. Also, using the chair allowed me to keep use of both of the end tables for lamps; in years past, I always had to clear one of those end tables for the tree. I actually think this works better.

This was also the first time in ages that I hung the musical bells strung along the nails near the ceiling on the TV wall—something that was visible in the original photo before I cropped it to an aspect ratio more to my liking for Flickr. For at least the past seven years, I have strung another line of Christmas lights up there instead. The most recent year in which there weren't lights up there that I can find is 2014. It doesn't show the bells though, and I just spent way too much more time trying to find a photo showing them, and coming up short. Oh well.

I did have to throw away a string of lights that wouldn't work. In another year or two I'll probably have to buy more. I do still have plenty though, and am not using all that I have. I listened to Christmas music while I set everything up, including my classic "Christmas the Way It Was Meant to be Heard" playlist, which used to be a cassette recording of songs from Mom's Christmas records. I digitized it many years ago, complete with the record surface noise and occasional skips that have long been a part of my nostalgic listening of those songs. They also always make me think of Mom, though, so hearing it is often very bittersweet. This is now the third Christmas since Mom died.

Danielle's dad, Reg, died five years before my mom did, so he died in 2015. It was very difficult for Danielle, in what I would call a very different way from my processing of Mom's death. Still, every once in a while something will trigger a weird pang of grief when reminding me of her, and these Christmas songs can be an example of that. I thought about asking Danielle yesterday if she still experiences that sort of thing with the memory of her dad. Then I totally spaced it and never did ask her. It may have been best not to anyway, I don't know. Having Christmastime be a trigger for memory of death is a strange thing.

Shobhit knew Danielle and I would not be home before he got home from work, and he knew I had let Danielle into the garage to park in our spot while she was here. She had said she was going to try and make Rylee come along for this, and I totally expected her to be coming, so I made three hot chocolates to go—and then Danielle showed up alone. I left one of the tumblers full of hot chocolate for Shobhit, which he never drank, and he let me take it to my movie today. I poured it into a mug to reheat in the microwave before leaving, but it also had vegan marshmallows sitting in it since yesterday. So, protip: don't do that. It totally disintegrated and separated what had been left of the vegan marshmallows, making a very weird sort of separated-elements hot chocolate.

The hot chocolates Danielle and I had yesterday were very tasty though. Danielle asked if there was booze in them, and I said, "There is in mine!" I had added two shots of peanut butter whiskey to mine. When I thought Danielle was coming with Rylee, though, I didn't bother putting booze in hers. But, I then put three shots of rum in hers, and a third shot of peanut butter whiskey in mine. I had mine done shortly after we got downtown.

We walked, both of us bringing umbrellas, because it had been raining and was still lightly raining when we left. I had already told her that the forecast had the rain stopping between 4:00 and 5:00, though, and that forecast held. I was very happy about that; it made for a brisk, dry evening for the celebration at Westlake Center.

"I'm so glad I didn't ditch you," Danielle said—no fewer than five or six times yesterday, or some variation of it. When she woke up in the morning and it was raining she considered canceling. I'm also really glad she didn't. She was also super happy to get the exercise out of walking downtown and back. We even walked all the way down to Victor Steinbrueck Park, via Pike Place Market (under a stunning sunset). She wanted to smoke a joint there at the park for a few minutes. We then turned and made our way back to Westlake Park.

We had a lovely time, and I was thrilled to have someone to join me, as otherwise I would have just gone by myself, as I have done many years in the past. The key difference this time was I wasn't walking straight there from work, and was able to walk at a leisurely pace (although to be fair, Danielle kept asking me to slow down; I'm a fast walker) from home. I'm now writing this on Saturday night, only one day left before I return back to work on Monday. And although I'm happy to be getting back to work, this was the first time I have taken a full week off of work for anything other than travel or my Birth Week. Although I still had plenty to keep me busy, some of it was actually still going to movies (today's was the third I saw this week), and a lot of it was finishing up this year's calendars. Whatever the case, this was a "staycation" that I truly loved, and which proved that I would have no issue with being retired and filling my time. Write a novel? Ha! Good luck finding time for that anymore, with this lifestyle.

The ceremony itself did not seem to last all that long. but that was fine. We walked into a couple of stores on our way back home, including Old Navy, where she almost bought a sweater but then changed her mind and put it back. Once we got back to the house, Shobhit had recently returned from work, and he had leftovers from Thursday out on the kitchen counter. All three of us partook from it, so Danielle basically also had dinner at our place two days in a row. Only now are the leftovers nearly gone.

I walked Danielle out, and also took my binoculars to take the requisite outside shots of the Christmas Tree. Every time I do this each year I wonder what people passing by think, seeing some rando taking pictures of the windows of my building through binoculars. Then, I drove Shobhit's car from its street parking spot back into the garage.

I just realized that not only is this my 25th holiday season in Seattle, it's my 47th ever. But I'm still only 46. Goddammit!

[posted 10:20 pm]