Happy ChrisHanuKwanSolstice everyone.
My hopes that the Winter Solstice here on the north shore of Long Island would be as balmy as it was in 2015 have been dashed.
It is slightly above freezing today, the first full day of Winter here on the north shore of Long Island. Top Cat and I will head out to our favorite beach and toast the return of light in about seven hours. This year, however, the champagne seems redundant since I’m still way high from last night. Whew. One benedryl at bedtime and I am still a bit loopy the next morning.
I should mention that on top of the benedryl, I had spent most of the day before high as a kite on Xanax, a drug that I would happily abuse if falling asleep while sitting up was my thing. Maybe I should back up:
Last Friday I had to take care of two bits of skin cancer. It’s not my first go-round with basal cell carcinoma, but the two times I’ve had it previously, the nasty bits were on my shoulder and on my neck: easy stuff. This time, however, I had a twofer, both on my nose, which is right smack in the middle of my face. And this time it was going to be Mohs surgery, which if you are into grossing yourself out you should definitely Google.
What I saw on the internet was so revolting that I asked my doctor for some Xanax that I could take for the operation so that I would be calm during the procedure and not scream too loudly. The Xanax worked so well that when I got out of surgery and glimpsed myself in a mirror and saw the pile of size of bandages on my schnoz I laughed and laughed and insisted that Top Cat take pictures of me. In fact, I was in such a good mood that I became convinced that this is how I should be spending the entire Drumpf presidency, loaded to my eyeballs.
All things must pass, and lo when the Xanax wore off, I was just a girl, with a very sore nose, once again witnessing the demise of our democracy.
Yesterday I went back to the plastic surgeon to have the stitches removed, a process that required another liberal dose of happy pills. I downed the Xanax and settled into a chair in the crowded waiting room and closed my eyes. I did not notice that my consciousness had wandered far, far away until one of the sea creatures that I was playing poker with looked up from its cards and said something in French, which I thought might be my name, and then I heard a distinctly human voice say it again and I knew it was the nurse wondering where the hell Vivian was and I realized Vivian was me.
I get chatty when I’m high. After rambling on about how I didn’t leave the house because of the huge stonking bandages on my face except to go to the liquor store and the library (because: priorities) I remember telling the surgeon that I hoped when the bandages came off that I wouldn’t look like Golda Meir. “Who’s Golda Meir?” she asked. Everybody is so young these days.
“A muppet,” I said, because I knew a coherent explanation for my reference was out of the question.
So now I have smaller, but still big, bandages on my nose and I have several more go-rounds of grafts and other gross stuff which makes me want to puke. AND I’M ALL OUT OF XANAX.

Mama cat Candy, the calico, with her boys Taffy and Lickety. You can see the family resemblance. The boys got their mother’s nose.
In honor of this wondrous day of Solstice I tried to paint a special 2017 ChrisHanuKwanSolstice picture for you all . . .
. . . but this kept happening:
So let’s look back on some of my favorite views of my beloved Long Island Sound, starting with this sun set from long ago:
P.S. I can see (above) that I used a paper towel to blot the paper to keep the yellow paint from bleeding into the blue paint and achieve some interesting effects. I haven’t done that in a long time. I should try that again soon.
I remember being very surprised that I could pull this off (above), when I was still in the early days of my painting, that is, do a picture that left so much of the white paper showing.
I have no idea how I got that diagonal color bleed in the sky. I should play around with my old Grumbacher paints more.
All these images are from my first book, When Wanderers Cease to Roam, and they are reproduced in the book in their original size in case you haven’t seen them before and don’t know that these pictures are very small. Bigger than a Triscuit, but smaller than a baby bunny.
But my ChrisHanuKwanSolstice wishes for you, Dear Readers, are bigger than the sky: I wish you all the adventure of mindfulness, the joy of discovery, and the wonder of living each day with an open heart and mind.
P.S. I am still totally high. I just realized that it seems that I published this post when it was supposed to be in draft mode so all the while I was working on it this morning it was live on the internets. So now you know how the sausage is made.