It was a cold and misty day here today, of the sort that makes me extremely glad that a) I work from home and b) my work can be done from bed, without ever changing out of pajamas. I wasn’t feeling well in the first place, so the fact that I could be productive and cozy at the same time was the only thing that kept me remotely sane. I’m not sick, I don’t think, as much as just a little tired, a little cranky, and getting overly excited about Christmas. I love Christmas. I celebrate it largely secularly, but I totally buy into the magic.

I like misty days for the same reason. There’s something magic in mist as well, in the way it lets you see the world through a soft filter, blurring sharp edges and gentling colors, and giving even the steadiest of lights a bit of twinkle.

I like that twinkle. I like coming home in the mist-wrapped darkness and seeing the reflection of lights in the rain-slicked pavement, and witnessing the way our neighborhood, especially on the streets around the park, turns from a normal suburban environment into a veritable fairyland at this time of year.

Speaking of twinkles. I like the twinkle in the eyes of the neighborhood kids as they race around on their bikes and scooters and skateboards in the afternoons, and I like the way they stop and wave when I’m walking the dogs, and ask how they are, and know their names. I like seeing even the “coolest” of them let out their personal bubble of delight when they enter the park and the lights are on. I love that even though we don’t have kids, we live in the kind of neighborhood where it’s safe for them to play basketball in their driveways, and even in the streets, because cars don’t speed here.

Wednesday night, there’s a concert in the park. It’s the annual Christmas fete thrown by the HOA, and it’s free to anyone who lives there. “Bring cookies to share,” they ask. And so tonight on the way home from playing elf for a friend of my parents, we stopped so I could stock up on chocolate chips and red and green sprinkles.

As we drove back home, I stopped talking, and watched the lights. This weekend will see the peak of the neighborhood decorations, but when we get home they’ll have started to take them down – some of them.

Fuzzy pulled me back from the door as I was about to open it, and smiled at me, and kissed me.

I think he could see me twinkle.

I’m in the process of making my annual Christmas CD for friends and family. Last year, I did an entire cd only of female artists. This year the collection is heavily acoustic, mixing coffeehouse jazz & folk, classical, pop, & country. Want a taste? Then here:

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I have never been a particular fan of pencils, and when I did have to use them in my early school years, I was particular about them. Those fat training pencils they give to very young children were never my style. My hands are small, for one thing – the average sixth grader has larger hands than I do – so I don’t like thick pens either, and they were never sharp enough. When I write, I like the words to come out in definitive black, not non-committal gray.

My pencils, then, were always sharpened to a needle-fine point, and while they were the No. 2’s that make ScanTrons happy in all corners of the universe, they were also brilliantly yellow, and smelled of cedar.

Actually they tasted like cedar, too. I know this because, I admit, I used to be a pencil chewer. Most of us had some kind of oral fixation in grade school, I think. For many it was gum. I’m not a gum chewer. I don’t see the point in food you’re not supposed to swallow, and frankly, I think gum is too much work for too little payoff. So, there were pencils. Not that they were a snack food, because of course, they weren’t. But when you’re thinking hard about something having a pencil between your teeth helps a bit. It’s the schoolgirl equivalent of being given a bullet to bite in order to distract yourself from pain.

I mention all this because I’ve bought pencils twice in the last two years. In October, 2006, I bought pencils to put in the survival kits I made for my WriMos. They were pencils in fashion colors – blue, maroon, mauve – points not included.

I bought pencils again, yesterday. Ten boxes. Presumably these are the yellow kind, but the color really doesn’t matter. I bought them because yesterday was Day 30 of the WGA strike, and there’s a campaign to flood the offices of the six corporate entities that represent the “bosses” in the strike. I support the WGA as a fan, because without writers there are no words for actors to speak. I support them as a writer, even though I’m in no way connected with the industry, because I know how much working writers really earn. I mean, I am one. Also, I like creative protests. I mean, picketing is all very well and good – it makes your point very visible, and all that, but sending mountains of pencils has an element of the absurd that really appeals to me.

So I bought pencils. (I also bought a tent-sized t-shirt to use as a night gown, because I’m the kind of girl who prefers big t-shirts to lacy lingerie, really. Cotton rocks my world, and all that.)

If you’re a fan, or a writer, you can buy pencils, too, for a buck a box.

[Image links to Pencils2MediaMoguls]

This isn’t meant as a rah-rah support the WGA post. It’s really just me sharing part of my day yesterday. If, however, you are inclined to read more about the strike, I suggest the following links:

• Speechless – a series of video spots featuring prominent actors.
• Fans4Writers – Fan support site. A bunch of folks from Whedonesque started it.
• United Hollywood – exactly what it sounds like
• To Live by the Pen, by Doris Egan, one of the writer-producers of House, as well as a novelist. It’s a fascinating piece of Hollywood history, as well as being a concise explanation of why these people are striking.
• Ethical Bloggyness, by Tanya Huff, Canadian author of the wonderful Blood Ties books, which Lifetime TV turned into a series.

In a box of family pictures, one always makes me smile. It’s a rare picture of me that I like. I’m about four, bundled in a lavender snowsuit with gray and white faux fur trim, and I’m lying on my back on a field of snow, making a snow angel. It’s a scene re-enacted on lawns around the world, whenever the snow is clean enough, deep enough, fresh and white and compelling. On the surface, there is nothing exceptional about this picture.

Except for the blue at the edge. Blue-gray, really. It’s the Atlantic Ocean, winter cold, colored that slate color that means instant heart-attack should you go in, and it’s lapping at the shore of my snow field, because I’m a beach baby from a long line of beach babies, and even in winter the sea draws us to it’s edge, calling our names with the foghorns and the sound of wind and surf, wooing us with the thought of a steaming mug of cocoa or hot tea afterwards.

It has to be tea if it isn’t cocoa, you see. The basic black Lipton stuff, with the word BRISK on the label, or G. I. tea (when I was that age my grandparents still did all their shopping at the commissary at Fort Monmouth), is actually welcome after a day at the snowy beach, but Earl Grey is acceptable as well. (Irish Breakfast and English Breakfast are not, they are too soft – Earl Grey is a sturdier blend.)

I’m not a particular fan of Norman Rockwell, but I remember a painting in his style, if not from his hand, of an old sea-captain type with his weathered, thick fingers wrapped around a mug of tea. My grandfather was Army, not Navy, but he loved the sea, as did my mother, as do I, so even though he wasn’t a sea captain in life, in my head, he fills that role. He snapped the picture I mentioned, and my mother stood by, and watched me. She’s in the picture too. There’s a second one, from the same day, with me, walking hand in hand with my grandfather. I’m tiny, still sporting snow on my pants, and he’s wearing his fisherman hat an a great pea-coat that looked like the word “warm.”

In my heart, he’s still sheltering my hand in his.

Image by Carmi Levy of Written Inc.. Used with permission.

Chess is loaded with ritual, I said to a friend over IM the other night. I didn’t elaborate, ended up riffing on the subject of old men in Greek Navy caps, playing chess in parks, their thick overcoats keeping them warm, their gnarled fingers moving each piece. I’m not a chess player myself. Or rather, I’m a bad chess player, on the rare occasions when I play, but I used to love watching the little kids playing with the giant pieces on the board on the ground at Santana Row.

There’s a ritual in that too, in being a kid. Lots of rituals. Little rituals like making a plaster hand print, posing for school pictures without having front teeth, writing a letter to Santa Claus, and bigger ones: first dates, first cars – events, yes, but rituals as well – though the ritual is in the planning, the saving, the practicing until you know how to kiss, know how to park, get your license, get the guy of your dreams.

I stand out on the deck each morning, each evening, and just let the outside air sink into my skin. I listen to the birds and small animals, hear the neighborhood sounds. This grounds me, but it also lets me know the way the neighborhood should sound. For the dogs, my practice of strapping on my pink digital watch is the beginning of their Going Out ritual. First the watch, then the jacket, then their leashes. They know which jackets and shoes are for walkies, and which are not. They’re that attuned to me.

But back to chess.

There’s structure in chess, and order. And yet there’s passion, too. Of those three things (passion, structure, order) Ritual is born. Watch the chess players caress the pieces as they set up their boards, some time. They have such reverence as they go about their stylized war games, plotting strategies and planning defeats while the chessmen slide and click against the board.

Magic in numbers, magic in squares, magic in two small dogs knowing that the Reeboks mean walkies and the pink Converse All-Stars do not.

Everyday rituals.