interlude

Some days feel exactly this way: like a pause between two events. A commercial interruption. A coffee break. Okay, done. Now, where were we in our narrative?

Of course, I know too well where I was in my narrative: it's all about the weather this month, isn't it? Arctic blast, snow, wind -- the year is only four days old and already I've overused each of those terms in my postings here.

But today we really do pause. The wind died down, the thermometer climbed to near freezing. I sweep a gentle layer of feather-light snow off the roof. Our neighbor (we only have one, to the west of us) had a bigger challenge  -- a steeper slope on his roof and more snow to contend with.






Breakfast for us is leisurely. We stay in the kitchen because I'd just gotten fresh flowers for the kitchen table. Damn it, I want to stare at those flowers all month long! Colors are hard to come by in January.







And once more my daughter (who had skis only for a couple of days) joins Ed and me for a run on the Lake Farm trails.





No, there would be no sun today and the clouds are heavy, with a constant threat of... something. And yet, my girl notes that the day feels almost balmy. Ed takes his cap off and had we stayed out longer, I'm sure he would have unzipped his jacket and put away his big mitts.

Skiing in the mid-twenties feels oddly buoyant and easy. My girl is doubtful that we put a solid hour into it. Oh, but yes we did!

And after, I spot check some travel details for a trip that Ed and I are taking in the last weeks of this month. Maybe you'll remember that I made a host of travel plans while I was still in the thick of school work. A nagging thought made me revisit one detail of these forthcoming travels and I see now that I made a mistake. And so I spend the better part of the afternoon trying to fix it without putting us out too much. Ed asks later if I had made progress on my writing project. I had to grumble a hefty NO!

In the evening, I want to make chicken tagine. I haven't a tagine pot for it and I don't have half the needed ingredients, but the idea is to have a stew and if it isn't exactly perfectly Moroccan, still, it's quite good enough. To have for this interlude. Before the plummeting temperatures of tomorrow and the day after hit the farmette, paralyzing us from the outside and maybe a little on the inside too.