November notes

This is November. This unexpectedly (or perhaps what should have been expected even if it was not predicted) gray day teasing you with a drizzle and just as you sigh and pick up the paint can to go indoors, ending its tease so that you’re back at it until the next time and the next.

Isis regards all this as highly unpleasant. He rarely leaves the sheep shed. If he does come to the farmhouse he may take me up on the offer of a drink,





...but immediately after he’ll run back to his own place at the shed, burying himself in an open drawer of a dresser where Ed sometimes remembers to put away clean shirts.


I joined Ed in the painting project today. It’s the only way. At first he grunted, but not for long. In fact, he moved his white paint to my yellow paint so that we were within a breath of each other, so much so that we stumbled and got in the way of the other, but in a pleasant sort of way.

In the distance we heard the gunfire of November’s deer hunt.

Ed repeated the journey comment (see post below) and I began to think that he does really take pleasure in this particular task – this prolonged journey around a building, replacing warped boards, patching this, scraping that.

I remain goal directed. That’s November for me: get it done, finish the lectures, write the exams, get the painting finished before frost sets in, buy the holiday foods, check off items on the list, get it done!

Alright. Let me slow down. One week at a time. And I got a good one coming up: Thanksgiving. Daughters come. We cook. This year and maybe every year henceforth, in the (almost) yellow farmhouse.