cold

Can I show you cold? The farmette at temperatures that stay significantly below zero degrees? It looks like this (taken on the way to empty the compost bucket):






This morning, Ed and I have a soft wake-up. Why hurry to face that? Frigid stuff. Tolerable for a two minute dash outside. Unpleasant otherwise.

Breakfast. I consider eating in the front room. There is a momentary beam of sunlight, my chicks seem luminous, the orchid behind them is showing off its bulging flower buds...






But in the end, I set the table in the kitchen. For however long, we have the light coming through the porch roof. Let's enjoy it. I saw yesterday how fleeting it all can be.





During the morning meal, we talk about exercise. Movement on days this cold. Many people, wishing to stay healthy, incorporate all forms of machinery and routine fitness programs into their week. I'm with Ed on this right now -- I don't want boring repetitions. I want to find enjoyable ways to move. Yoga was so much part of my life last year. Should I go back to regular classes now that I'm retired?

They're expensive. A retired person watches her pennies. And the thought of going out in a cold car is off putting, especially on a sub-zero day! But most of all, yoga classes come with a schedule. I do not want to be tied to a schedule. I do not want to be in a hurry. Everyone on my floor at the Law School will tell you that in my teaching years I was always running. To class. To office hours. To meetings. To the next class. Every day, breathless. I want to be free of this. So to sign up for classes where I have to be somewhere at 9 in the morning is, right now, very unappealing.

Ed suggests Youtube Yoga. I groan. How many bad instructional videos do I have to watch before I find a good one?

It turns out not that many. I find one on the second try.

I spend a blissful half hour at home, doing yoga.

And now it's barely noon. I had wanted to go to the Law School to start the tedious process of closing down my professional life there, but I need help from tech support and they're not answering emails today. Probably they're on break. At the university, between Christmas and New Year's, nearly everyone is on break.

So I sit down at the kitchen table and open my book project file (noting that the last time I touched it was in early September of 2012).

Oh! I'd written nearly 150 pages! I thought it was half that! Of course, I have new ideas for it and so in many ways, I have to start from the beginning, but that's okay. I don't mind infusing it with new life.

I spend the rest of the afternoon perusing the pages of my dusty old book file, alternating with glancing outside, wondering how it could be that today's high will have been all of 2 degrees and we haven't even started in on January yet.