Thursday

Sunny and cold is a common winter forecast. You get the good with a challenge. Face the sun and your golden. Walk with your back to it and your bones crack from the cold.

Today, however, by noon, we have that winter rarity: sunshine and warmth. It's hard to keep up with these changes, really it is! Good bye maraschino cherry parka, hello regular old jacket. Good bye clunky mittens, hello woolen gloves. It's what makes life interesting, no?

Breakfast with spring flowers.

It seems like a waste of a lovely day to stay indoors, so right around noon, we zip out and zip around for a while on the ski trails.

Again I feel as if I am at a south facing mountain resort. Ed would say -- why travel anywhere at all when you have all this within a five minute drive!

I just smile. I agree with him and yet there are those of us who will pack that bag and go anyway, even if what we have at home is so very good!

In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop at school. And wouldn't you know it  - on this warmish day, when I could definitely lace up four boots without freezing my fingers in the process (we are right at the freezing point now, though the sun is behind clouds), she chooses not to skate but to go straight to the farmhouse, with a vague hint that maybe maybe she'll play outside later. (That's her, knowing what runs through my head...)

It never happens. And I'm not surprised. She hasn't spent much time here this month. There are birthday toys that haven't been played with. Books half read, favorite foods laying in wait. 

When night falls, I return her home. This is my chance to visit with Sandpiper. Yeah, the little guy who learned to sit by himself in the weeks I was away (because of Covid).

This last photo is a classic: Sandpiper always keeps his mouth open when he is trying to show you something or express an emotion. This next photo is the exception (but so very sweet)!

Home again. Ed and I discuss a new big project: to take out the gas stove and replace it with an electric one. It was going to be that or chop out a hole in the building to vent the existing model. This is one of those decisions that you make not because you'll like the outcome (I, like nearly every other serious cook, love my gas stove. It's just not possible to have such control over the cooking process with an electric cooking surface). But, you need to make choices in life and this one (switching to electric) seems right. And so we begin. Ed pulls up Consumer Reports and immediately points me to the cheapest well rated model listed on their pages. I can tell that we will be discussing cooking stoves for many weeks to come.

Tomorrow? Back to the colder weather. Of course! It's January, isn't it?