Chaos Attraction

Return to Victorian Christmas

2019-12-16, 8:32 p.m.

So yesterday, Dawn, Loretta and I went up for Victorian Christmas in Nevada City. I haven't been in several years (Mom no longer wants to go and she has given me a lot of agita about me driving back from there in the dark in winter enough so that I won't do it), but this time Dawn drove, so it was all good.

It was lovely. A few of my favorite stores (bead store, sigh) were gone and one of the bookstores moved, but was still there, thank goodness. I bought two books in the Harmony bookstore, so that was a thrill. I checked out some new hippie stores, there seem to be a lot more of those since I went there last. There's one bee-themed store upstairs on the main street that had a seating area, free hot drinks and cookies, and even a bathroom they were letting people use, so we hung out there for a while. I got a free resin heart and bought a fancy magnet there. We watched an "aerial" performance on ropes for about five minutes, so that was new. I also got a really cool blue morpho butterfly patch.

I wore my "Bah Humbug" sweater, and hat, and new pin I got yesterday at Dickens Fair that has a spinner and has the options of "Happy Christmas," "Cheers," "Bah Humbug" and "Bugger Off." It was much admired by many people and I was occasionally sent out to find someone's husband to show it to. I had considered wearing my Dickens Fair outfit there until I checked the temperature, but now I think they have much fancier outfits (and hoop skirts) there already, so I might as well not!

I have a circumstantial friend, Nicole, who runs a used bookstore there. We always talked about astrology when I was in (she specializes in that stuff) and I felt bad I hadn't been in there in years. But she never wrote back when she told me to email her, so....circumstantial friend. She seemed completely unfazed one way or another to see me after it'd been years, I guess I would have expected her to be more excited! She was pleased that Mom has a boyfriend, at least. I also talked to her about Uranus in Taurus and my lack of love life for years and how things have changed one way or the other since that transit started, to which she said something like "eh, just wait it out." It's interesting how people IRL tell me to wait it out with this fellow and people online are all "Get over it, gurl!" I know, I know. Anyway, what with the crowds, we didn't talk for very long. Oh well. I guess I don't feel so bad about having been gone for years now?

It was pretty reasonably temperatured up there (i.e. my coat was frequently off) until it went dark, at which point then it got cold. The windows of the shuttle we took to get back to the car were very fogged up. While in line, one lady was razzing her kid for being difficult and threatened to auction him off, and the guy behind me was all, "Five dollars!" He took it back after the kid did/said some other stuff I no longer recall, though!

On the way home, we stopped at the Dancing Tomato Caffe in Yuba City. Now, we used to have a legendary Italian restaurant in town called Caffe Italia that got forcibly closed last year and is still missed, but the owners still have a similar restaurant an hour away. We decided to go there and it was absolutely delicious. We all ordered the chicken cordon bleu and lemonberry cake, and it was all delicious. They also still had drawing on butcher paper there, another thing I miss doing, so I drew a picture of a Christmas tree and Baby Yoda underneath it. (I also started making Baby Yoda while in the car.) They have funny photos in the back and a sign about how come aliens pick up the dumbest people. While I was photographing it, the light behind the sign made it look like someone was beaming up, hah.

We listened to "Holly," the Sirius XM station for "modern" holiday hits. They repeated songs fairly frequently, playing John Lennon's "Happy Xmas" and then the Maroon 5 version like 2 songs later. Bruce Springsteen's "Santa Claus Is Coming To Town" started and ended our drive home. To be fair, there were some new songs, such as "Christmas Tree Farm" and Britney Spears's "My Only Wish (This Year)," which is ah...reminds me of "All I Want For Christmas Is You," sigh. But I did also think, "Why are so many people recording the same old shit, Billy Mack style?" Did we need the Maroon 5 version of "Happy Xmas," which isn't really doing anything different with it? No, you did not. They also did play the less rapey version of "Baby, It's Cold Outside," so at least there's a purpose for that one!


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