intermission

Either I’ve been a very naughty blogger, or the blog has basically taken a little unannounced intermission.

I didn’t even swing by to wish you a Merry Christmas.  Well, I did over at the other blog, appending Booty’s very Grinch-like face to my greetings.  (Boy, does that cat hate to wear a Santa cap!)

But, see, I’ve had my reasons.

Reason Number 1: I got married.

Reason Number 2: F. and I were given a free honeymoon by a friend.  A totally amazing and unexpected gift, which, due to a confluence of factors, we could only take advantage of the week before Christmas.  Of course we went for it.  I felt like it was the universe signaling to us, “Good decision.  Now go ahead and celebrate!”

I didn’t take many photos on our trip.  Almost none until the drive home, really.  That’s probably a sign of a darn good honeymoon; don’t y’all think?

Reason Number 3: I had to work.

I bet you thought I was going to say it was the holidays, and I got busy.  Well, I’d finished all the holiday prep before leaving on the honeymoon, which was some kind of miracle and made me think I was just about superwoman.  But this illusion persisted only long enough to come back home and realize, oh, no, the work has accumulated in my absence and is threatening to overwhelm the house.

My day job is done on a freelance basis, out of my home office.  And yes, that sounds fantastic to most people still working for the man out of a faraway building requiring a daily commute — but at least the man usually offers vacation and sick days, and the salary is steady.  If I don’t get the pages done, and billed, I don’t get paid.

Plus, clients could get pissed off at me.  I hate that.

So it’s really not that I turned my back on y’all.  It was just an intermission, some time for the musicians to get a drink of water and the dancers to catch their breath.

Here is F., turning his back on me to go play in the snow.  It was the first real snow he’s seen since he moved to the United States, having spent almost all his time in the Deep South.  He did not wait for me to bring the car to an actual, complete stop before dashing out into it.

I was not quite so enthusiastic about the cold and wet.  I suspect I got my lifetime quota of snow filled when I lived in Montréal.  Fini!

Great photo op, though, at the tail end of our trip, passing through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.   This park was absolutely incredible, with breathtaking views of faraway mountain ranges, crisp, invigorating air, and a spectacular native forest.  We plan to go back soon, and not just to drive through it, but to really delve into all it has to offer.

Truly, though, it was good to come home, too.  The garlic was up, the yard was full of cardinals and chickadees and tufted titmice, and I heard my owl again last night, for the first time in over a month.  (I slept with the heat off and the bedroom window cracked, making F. think his new wife is cracked.  Oh, well.)

I don’t have the right equipment to capture a live cardinal on film, it seems, and I’m far from having developed the skills of a true nature photographer.  But I did manage to get a shot of this ultra-slow-moving cardinal recently.

In the next few days, it may seem as if this blog is ultra-slow-moving.  This blogger, too.  I’ll be playing catch-up, for sure.  But the lights have finally dimmed, the audience has settled into their seats, and the concert master is sounding the A.

Intermission is officially over, and I’m back.