smoke and snow

Keeping an eye on things: that's what I'm doing. Making sure I'm understanding what's really happening. Not being blinded and arrested in my tracks by the smoke that is deliberately there to confuse and to instill worry. All that, and watching the snow swirl around us this morning! I'd say I have my work cut out for me.

So about that snow... It starts off meekly.

 

Well that's good. I want to drive downtown to the bakery: time to restock our croissant supply and maybe get a fresh loaf of bread for Ed. 

The traffic does start to crawl when the snows come down. Yes, you would guess as much: people need to be careful, right? Maybe, but I do think the roads become flooded with cars then: it just gets crowded, as if people are in a hurry to get things done before accumulations become significant.

By the time I come home (nearly an hour later!), Ed has to go off to do a work call, so I eat my delicious croissant alone.

Once Ed is done with his stuff and comes back for his own breakfast,  we resume our ongoing conversation about "what's next." At our age, you'd think "what's next" deserves little air space. Most ancient people stay home until they can't, at which point they are moved to institutional care. I suppose you can also move in with your kids, but I don't know a single person on the planet who'd want to do that. Or maybe you could go to jail for some nefariously committed sinful act. Those are your choices. (I do know one person who sold his house and went on to live on a boat but I'd say that's not a viable option for most of us.) So what are we even considering?

I suppose broadly speaking, we just want to stay in our bubble of a quiet life and take care of ourselves as best we can. Imagining scenarios under which we would have to make changes to our farmette life is not unusual for us. I remember tracking Covid early in 2020. We knew pretty quickly that we would be heading toward isolation. Our own, if not everyone else's. You just had to look at the numbers in China and then France (first cases: back in January of that year) to understand that this country was going down next. Or, last year we talked about what would happen to the cats if one of us died. Well, specifically, if Ed wasn't around anymore. Or, more recently we considered what we would do with the farmette cats if bird flu spread rapidly to the outdoor feline population. We tend to speculate: what if this, what should we do if that. We are both good at calm proactive planning. And so we are spending some time on that kind of musing and ruminating now. Not only and indeed, not at all about cats this time!

...While the snow falls and the smoke fills our news feeds and battered souls.

In the afternoon I head out very slowly to pick up the kids.

They, of course, are thrilled with the snowfall, as well they should be. We haven't had any this year at all!

We have a short time at the farmhouse and we spend most of it on getting to a riveting climax in a book. (Sparrow again stays with his Legos, but yesterday he talked about the characters in the book, referring to them by name. Clearly he is listening, though he pretends otherwise.)

And now I have an evening of quiet. It's still snowing and when I step outside, the silence is gentle -- as if someone were turning down the volume very slowly, leaving you with the last fading notes of a good song. With a goodnight, and a sigh, allowing myself to be content for now...

with love...