"unseen and unseeable"

the house is nearly ready for christmas, another vacuuming or two (or five or six most likely), a little more organization, and we'll be ready for company, for more snow, for turkey, for fruit slush, for santa. i'm still in the midst of a sewing frenzy with hopeless hopes of finishing tonight. i hate it that i put things off until the last minute.



the front garden is a pumpkin graveyard, full of the sorry things, once autumnal, earthy, etc., they sink heavy and frosted, a little bit squished looking, in the weirdly drifted snow. having been gleefully flung (frozen) from the balconies by ernie and henry when they were putting the storm doors on the house i was sure we'd have a splattering or two in the yard below but there was only a dent here and there. we really should bag them up and put them at the curb since we've no compost pile, no garden to speak of in the works for spring, summer. and yet there they sit in a sunlit sparkle of snow as i put off the clean up. i'll be sorry, waiting until the last minute, when they're mush and pumpkin water on a warm april afternoon, stinking up the yard, the neighborhood, sending the neighborhood association, the city council storming up my sidewalk, kerchiefing their noses as they demand we dispose of the rottenness. certainly i'll be sorry and muttering as the the pumpkins bleed and ooze on my birks, my pants, my winter white hands. and yet somehow there are too many other things to do, like stitch and [complain], brew espresso and squeeze too much chocolate syrup into the thing, read old stories to new boys, wrap presents until they shine and dazzle, utilize mistletoe, bake cookies, stuff stockings, multiple viewings of the polar express, etc., etc.

"the most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see."