different

Every now and then, we've been finding small puddles in the basement. At first, we thought it was the pickles, leaking their brine. Then we pointed a finger at the washing machine. (I'd be happy to blame the dryer which is perhaps thirty years old, but I don't think dryers leak water.)

A few days back, we explore it some more and it becomes clear that the water, at least in its most recent incarnations, is coming from a back up in the septic tank.

Mind you, we've had this problem before -- two years ago. We were told then to cut down the huge willow, or continue to suffer the consequences of the roots infiltrating crucial places in the system. Ed said something like "yeah yeah" and promptly ignored the advice. Perhaps with good reason -- it wasn't 100% clear that the willow was at the "root" of the problem.

So now what? Call the same people to run various cleaning and investigatory tubes down the sewer pipes? No, not Ed. He's going to rent the proper tools and do the job himself.

If there is one task that I would hire away if I could, it would be this -- clearing the sewage pipes.
This is how you and I are different -- Ed tells me.


I wonder how much he is influenced by a show we've been watching daily now: it's our go-to viewing option in the late evenings and both of us stay awake for it -- this is how much we love it. It's called Grand Designs and we pick it up on You Tube. We're toward the end of the second season already and we are mesmerized by it: it's a British series and it's about people building crazily beautiful houses for themselves in England. I think that Ed sees himself as being the one who designs and implements most everything about his immediate space. He doesn't shy away from the dirty tasks. From any tasks. Perhaps the shows remind him how much he is in control of all that goes right or wrong here.


In other news? Well, on a tediously work-filled Monday, me, I get excited by breakfast.






After, I work at the kitchen table -- in full view of the changing weather conditions outside.

I run out to record those initial snowflakes.

But I I toss those photos aside. The snow showers intensify. The white stuff starts clinging to trees...






Beautiful!











And so different from just yesterday! It's as if someone really put a motor under Fall so that we would get to winter alredy.





Of course, the prettiness of winter is an on again off again thing, even as the coldness of the season settles in without ambiguity.

But I can't look forward to changes for the worse. All I know is that today, different as it is from our past weekend weather, surely is beautiful.






Very very beautiful.





So yes, a work day for me. But a thrilling one, in the way that the first snow day always makes you look up. With a smile.