now or never

We hatched our plan last night. Ed insisted that he is up for it and that I should wake him. Still, when the time came, I hesitated. He was in deep sleep.

I let him be. For now. Dressed and bundled against the chilly air, I go out to feed the animals. 

At the farmhouse, he's still sleeping, so I boom out to him -- Ed! It's now or never!

Fact is, when we went out for our snowy walk yesterday, we thought that there actually might be enough of the white stuff for skiing. But the temperatures hovered around freezing, climbing to one degree above by morning, and they would go up even higher today, so if we were to ski at all on this rather puny snow cover, it would have to be at sunrise. 

I'm up! -- he shouts down, not really being up at all, but I hear the certainty, the willingness to forge ahead.

He dresses quickly. My knee is still stiff and creaky from a night of inactivity, so he's charged with lugging the skids up from the basement. They'll stay on the porch all winter long, until the first crocus pops up in April. 

We load up the car and drive to our local park. We need to concentrate our efforts on the open meadows. Woodland paths are going to have a thiner cover. 

It's a foggy morning. The kind that called forth Rudolph to help guide that sleigh. I haven't had my milky coffee yet, so my thoughts skip around to absurd things, like the joke from my childhood that I thought was the funniest thing ever, about the taxi driver in Moscow who insisted it was raining even though the passenger thought that it was snowing. The wife nudged her fellow and said -- Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear. I would laugh and laugh because it hit all the right spots for a kid's idea of humor: communist Russia (well, USSR) and Christmas legends.

We ski.

It's not the fastest, slickest run on the planet, but my knee is not protesting and that's so very excellent. Too, the empty foggy park casts its own special magic. Half hidden, half revealed, telling us that you need to be brave and willing to push past the first layers of what you see.

We feel noble and triumphant after an hour on the quickly melting snow.

(drive back: look! can you see them? sandhills. they haven't left yet! hurry up -- we are just 11 days away from winter solstice!)

Breakfast, finally. With a stale muffin, dried up flowers and a prancing Dance, but none of it matters: it's the best! 

And then I do what needs to be done: paper onto boxes, ribbon, tag, and repeat, again and again and again. Dance watches, trying to make sense of what's going on.

In the late afternoon, I add a few good (under the desk) bicycle runs to the day. Book in hand, happily ticking off two birds: keeping the momentum of an active day going and plunging into the newest Louise Penny novel. Total awesomeness.

All this and chocolate covered gingerbread too...

with love...