December 5th

And so we return to our pattern of snow in the morning, mud in the afternoon. Here's what I wake up to on this day:

Pretty, isn't it? 

It doesn't last. Within a few hours the trees shed their delicate clumps of snow, the stuff on the ground melts, we're back to bare branches and a brown, muddy terrain.

That's December for you. Fickle and furious. Lovely and loathsome. All within a span of hours.

Ed and I sit down to a quick pre-breakfast...

And then I dash off to Madison Sourdough, where I have my now rather regularly scheduled breakfast with a friend and former colleague. It's a day for cinnamon!

It's also a catch up day at home, which means I can once again postpone The Walk. Feeling the guilt now, I go up and down the stairs twenty-five times. Will that suffice? My watch says no... 

My lunch is interesting:

I purchased a piece of quince cake at Madison Sourdough and I shared it with Ed. Shockingly, he proclaimed it to be very good! (He's even more fussy about cakes than I am.) This is important, because our quince trees -- ones I planted a tiny bit in my father's honor -- produced a heavy crop of quince this year and I had no idea what to do with them. Originally I had wanted to make a boozy quince drink that my father had liked and I found solidly warming in the day, but drinking solidly warming stuff has trickled away down the pike along with such things as jump rope hopping and mountain climbing, so we gave away the quince to a bakery. Not this bakery, but one that comes to our local farmers market. What a surprise to see quince here, at Madison Sourdough! It inspires me to rethink what I do with next year's crop. The cake really is good!

Time to pick up the kids.

(This is one of those times when I think that Sparrow looks like the kid straight out of Home Alone...)

Time to return the kids.

Time to settle in for the evening with Ed. Farro, cauliflower, with tomatoes and lots of cheese. And the last episodes of Lessons in Chemistry. Bliss....