Happy V Day! Here, Let Me Stab You to Death

Here's an ominous Valentines Day symbol for ya: Check out this video taken from our study window just now. I video'd it instead of just snapping a picture because... it's SWAYING in this stiff winter wind. LOOK OUT BELOW! [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmn3SXck-B8&feature=youtube_gdata_player]

Love This Month

January is the month of the plain days, when we return to our right minds, the way that old Prodigal Son did, waking among the pigs. I’m guessing that happened in January too.It's the month when we breathe free again, for behind us is December's delirium; behind us the scorekeeping, the anguished thoughts about just exactly who we exchanged with last year and should we buy them all gifts again this year?Now it's Plain January and January's no month for keeping score.January's the month for letting go and letting it happen.Cold happens in January. Sometimes it happens in such a big way you can’t wear jewelry without causing the flesh it touches to freeze in sympathy.  Last weekend my ears looked like two little dried apricots just pulled from the freezer, even without the steel posts of earrings skewering their lobes.Snow also happens, as the folks in Cordova, Alaska can testify with their house-high amounts.But snow too we just have to have to let wash over us.In fact that’s all we need do in January: endure the weather and try to get to the Superbowl without giving ourselves coronaries.I love the month for its blankness. It’s like the yearly planner before we fill it with all our appointments. I love it for its rhythms, the 31 days all alike with one welcome holiday weekend smack in the middle. I like the way we can set our alarms for 6:00 or even 5:00 and then just lie there a while in the pre-dawn hush. Because even a full month after the shortest day, it’s still not light until 7:00 and there’s something cozy in that early morning darkness.Sometimes I rise from my bed at 5:00 and see old Orion, armed to teeth, and leaning in my window. “Go back to bed, fool,” he seems to be saying. “Can’t you see it’s night still?”I follow his orders and dream just one more dream.So though the days are short still, there is something nice in that fact. It lets us not be fibbing when we tell our pillows, “Be back real soon!” And in another four weeks, a muscular young sun will be pulling our covers right off us, impatient as a puppy eager for breakfast.That’s true, hard as it may be to believe on this 22nd day of January, when just halfway through the Patriots-Ravens face-off, our little patch of earth will be plunged once again in darkness. But think on this; just think on this: Right now, the Almanac says the sun came up at 7:15 A.M.  A month from now it will be up by just after 6:30. And by the 21^st of March? By then, we’ll be two whole weeks into Daylight Savings, with sunset not due until 7:30 P.M.In sum, I love this month for its message that all we need do is snooze and wait, just as the seeds are doing in their deep earthy beds. Then one day, when we’re busy with other things, we'll turn and spot that one frail crocus blossom and see that Life really is as ever-regenerating as the poets have always told us.

just look at that blue sky and tell me it's not thinking 'robin's eggs!'

Mama Bear on the Move

Nature, that big old mama-bear, is starting to wake up. Who can doubt it hearing those winds? It was almost 60 for two whole days around here last this week. Not much melted. The picture here on the left shows the view from our kitchen window after this latest dusting last night.And this is the view from inside the Pilates room at the gym I go to four times a week. We're still cave dwellers there as you can as you can see. It's often hard to see progress but I guess that doesn't mean  there isn't any; the parents are the lasts one to know when their child has grown an inch, right?  It's because they're too close.Anyway by the weekend temperatures had dropped 30 degrees so we felt less teased.Also the wind was so fierce it pulled the top one of our trees off hurled it like a javelin and planted it right-side up in the snow. See? It's the spindly one.But ah what the wind did with the last light dusting! 45 miles an hour and it waved those veils of snow around like an exotic dancer might do. Click on this and see if you don’t agree: that mama bear Nature may still be snoozing but she’s GOT to stirring now! 

Snowed In

It was like a snowstorm from the distant past, starting as thick white flakes, then, as the temperatures dropped, becoming like grains of icy sand in a blinding sandstorm.Either way it sealed us in. It sat on our chests and stopped up our mouths.Anyway it stopped up mine.Every day of my life I get up at 5 and write 'til my back hurts. Not yesterday. Yesterday I woke at 7, took this picture, and got back into bed where I basically spent the whole day reading and dreaming. No TV.  No phone. No internet.David stayed home too but he shoveled four times, then cleaned out all the kitchen drawers and by  noon was seated at the dining room table getting a head start on the taxes.“TT!” he would yell cheerily every time he came into the bedroom. “Lazy old TT!” he would say. But I just looked up from my pillow and smiled a guilt-free smile.  Finally at 5, I lit this candle and watched the night come on. I knew we could lose power any minute with the high winds but I figured by then he'd be in the bed too and it would be like my favorite fantasy. “Pretend we’re in a boat on a tossing ocean,” I say when we curl up together. “Old Mr. and Mrs. Astor going down with the Titanic,” he often says back.We were sealed in all day and night and it was loveliness itself.

Hibernating

Man I’m lovin’ these nice blank days you get after New Year’s. I got so relaxed yesterday I went to sip my coffee and poured it right onto my clean white shirt. Didn’t care either. Just wore it all day and told people it was the map of Chile. (Right there: that’s the beauty of not being a kid. You’re finally free of the What Will They Think of Me’s. Nowadays I even wear a fanny-pack when it suits me and what do I care if my favorite shirt is a hand-me-down from one of my daughters? And she got it in the early ‘90s? From a junk shop called Dollar a Pound? It’s comfortable - as soft as a sweater made of baby kittens.)I got some gorgeous loungewear for Christmas but I haven’t taken it out of the plastic yet. Sunday and most of yesterday  I wore my Abominable Bathrobe all day, a fuzzy oversized thing really made for a man. Because how many hours of the  day and night do I go around tightening my core and sucking in my gut? It’s all they talk about at the Y, which I go to six days a week or anyway two.What fun for once to bum around all day in PJs!  I hadn’t done that since the time I drew some measles on my chest to dodge the big math test my second year of high school. Normally I’m all dashing about, setting the world on fire, etc. while Tightening The Muscles of My Pelvic Floor. These last two days though? Nuh-uh. Maybe I just have a temperature in which case great. Mothers never get sick; I haven’t thrown up since the early 80s. What fun if it really IS the measles this time and I get to lounge some more with my dear dog Spot!

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(Or wait, maybe that's mu husband David. He knows how to have fun himself)

Shortest Day

Today is that shortest day you felt coming way back in  summer. Now there'll be brighter mornings, and longer afternoons, with the snow all  coral-colored in the sun, pale indigo in the shadows, like this picture, snapped one morning after a snowstorm.Maybe you love the early dawns of summer, but it's funny: sometimes you love these dark mornings more. You wake early and lie a long time thinking. Maybe you remember your babyhood; remember lying in your crib, having your pants changed, sitting in your high chair. Not many can do this but you can and sometimes, sometimes, on these dark dark mornings you think you are little still and it’s all getting ready to start again, like movies do at the Cineplex.Instead you are what? Three-quarters, four-fifths of the way  through your  life? In the mirror you still look like yourself but not in photos. Not in shop windows. It shocks you to see what time has done and you understand finally what your mother meant about all young people being beautiful with their full cheeks and their strong white teeth.On summer noontimes this change might bother you but not in this early morning darkness. You lie in the bed and the room is cool and the street it utterly quiet. Tomorrow  Nature wall begin her great slow cartwheel and you will ride on her back into your future. Not today though. Today you're the child  not yet born, all calm and still and patiently waiting.

The Hunger Moon

Nineteen degrees again today and the ground is bare and the birds are hungry. This minute-and-a-half of silence brought to you by the spirit of the word 'glean', which means to go back over land planted to grain  in search of what the reapers may have missed.[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hqgZrgpztlA]

Sneakin' It In

It’s a big day for all of us in the northeast corridor with mad wind and snow due in. It's not supposed to start here ‘til tonight so everyone's all rushing around trying to sneak in just ONE MORE trip to the novelty store for nuns in boxing gloves and such.This is my girl Annie sneakin’ out of  line at the I-Max to score some popcorn. And speaking of all this sneaking maybe we should all just forget our lists and go see  Avatar today, though you’d think a guy who made Titanic which I know I never get sick of seeing (when the ship finally hikes up her hips and knifes straight down into the cold North Atlantic, ah!) You’d think a guy like that could figure out how to make the characters look a little more ….lovable. And I know, I know. I heard him say on late-night TV that Neytriri and her boyfriend Tsu'Tey have "smokin' hot bods" (James, you nerd) but what’s with the way their faces look like they were never quite joined in utero? That’ll take some getting used to! Plus sitting on your fanny for two hours and 46 minutes? Not me. Not today anyway. Sometimes I’m actually glad God made me a little manic, I get an awful lot done Now let’s go punch some nuns.

Flashers Beware

Woo! So cold the flashers are describing themselves today and what did I do but lose my nice old strangling gloves fine as a second skin which I wear from October to April in these chilly climes.  Gonna be plenty cold the next few days with that wind out of Canada and here we are all are rushing to and for when we should be home under the covers with a warm dog. (Contest Question One: Name that singing group.) And here’s another question for ya and a wonderfully ugly Christmas tree ornament from my special collection of What Was I Thinking Seasonal Ornaments to any and all who get it right. What is THIS a picture of below? (Hint: I took it three hours ago out in my driveway.) undoctored photo too!