sunrise, sunset

The sun rises. Every day. Or at least it appears on the horizon. Though not always to the naked eye.

Last night, as I was getting ready to call it a day, Ed said to me -- so, shall we go tomorrow morning to watch the sunrise? And to visit the new Creamery in Paoli?

Perhaps you'll recall that he had this idea that we should head out in the middle of the week -- both for the sunrise, as watched from the top of Observatory Hill (some fifteen miles south of us), and for the butter at the new Seven Acre Dairy Company that just opened in the village of Paoli under a grand investment idea by some locals with deep pockets. I poo-pooed that plan, saying that the only sunny day in the next week was slated to be this Saturday (today). Initially he balked at a Saturday outing ("on a Tuesday, at 7 a.m., it would be empty and all ours!") but I guess last night he changed his mind because here he is, before dawn, nudging me to get up and get moving. 

Except that it's cloudy outside. 

Still, does it matter? It's not as if it will be sunny on Tuesday! Besides, I look at my phone's weather forecast and it tells me "partly cloudy" by sunrise.

And it's so good to be up and out with him at these weird hours of the day! Ed is a great companion (when he is in the mood to be going). Not too quiet, not too chatty. Attentive (when he is not dozing off). Uncritical of anyone and anything. As your favorite yogi would tell you -- in the moment.

But the clouds are stubborn. We arrive at the bottom of Observatory Hill even as we know there will be no sunrise for us. Or, more accurately, we wont actually see the sun rise over the horizon. But rise it will!

He tells me -- park the car at the bottom of the hill. We'll walk up. I feel like forces beyond my control are propelling me up that hill, not quite a big hill, but we huff and puff anyway because it's cold and the air is sharp against our lungs.

At 7:27 a.m. the sun comes up. 

Or so they tell me! Nonetheless, we are there to greet it.

We walk down again and wait a while to see if the clouds will lift. They do not. It matters not at all. We drive the mile or two to Paoli to check out this new Creamery complex: an old dairy factory (that is on the National Register of Historic Places) has been transformed into a place where you can get some Landmark Creamery small batch butter, along with food and beverages. Too, you can cosy up at the beautiful inn there and perhaps sip something more potent along with munching on dinner foods in the evening. Right by the banks of the Sugar River. 

There had been an article about the opening of this place in the local paper and so indeed, at the weekend opening hour of 8, there was a small flurry of activity. Meaning we were not the only ones thinking -- what a great idea to get up and out before sunrise on a cold Saturday morning in south-central Wisconsin! 

That's how starved we all are for excursions into our dairyland, for a good cup of coffee, for a reason to get out of our chairs and see all that we can see, within a short distance of where we live.

We each order an egg on a freshly baked butter biscuit, served with sheep's cheese on wilted spinach from our winter spinach farmers (at $6, with or without bacon or sausage). Doesn't look like much, but the taste is right there!

I'm feeling mighty grateful for this small escape.

Of course, eventually, the time comes for us to go home. The chickens are not smart enough to have felt an absence of a morning feed, but the cats are pretty grumpy about having their early day routine disturbed.  So I feed them. And Ed cleans up one of the Bresse girls who has an unformed egg stuck inside her. The usual farmette chores.

During the day, after reading an article titled "Investing When Your Time Horizon is Short," it struck me that the author was addressing people like me!  Dang! My retirement strategy when Ed and I met was a strategy for a person who was just 52! And so I put this on the table for discussion. Me, I understand only a small fraction of how these financial systems work (despite my initial major in econometrics, back at the University of Warsaw, but hey, that was under so called communism so I have an excuse) -- that fraction which directly impacts me. It's time to get reeducated on what's next and there's no one who loves the challenge of explaining something complicated to me than Ed. So we explore strategies moving forward. This requires a lot of reading, studying and deliberating. Not sure I understand it all significantly better now, but, hey -- I can at least appreciate why stashing hard earned and saved dollars in wildly fluctuating markets may be, um, not a good idea for seniors.   

And toward evening, we go out for a walk in our local park. To watch the sunset, ostensibly. This should happen at 4:47 but honestly, the clouds, which had lifted for a few short minutes, are back now and the chickens need to be put away at dusk, so we cut it short a bit. Pretend that the sun went down just now!

It doesn't really go down after all, so who cares that we dont really see it not really going down! Besides, in our neck of the woods, the way to tell it's dusk is not by the "movement" of the sun but by the very real movement of the deer.

In the evening I cook up some fish for summer and I think -- what a beautiful day this has been!