mustn't get soft...

I wake up before dawn. There is a certain amount of curiosity that one has about rare weather events. Polar vortex! What's it like outside? How brutal is it to stand facing the wind today? I check the temperature. Just shy of -20F. There was a light mist at night (I can tell by the beads of crystal on the glass roof), but now the skies are almost clear. What would a sunrise be like during a Polar vortex?

I haven't chased a sunrise for a long time. And perhaps you'll think it's foolish (crazy?) to go out now, in -20, to start the ancient Ford Escort, to hear her creak in ways I've never heard before, to keep driving even though the door can never quite catch the hinge, driving in that frozen Arctic air toward the (frozen) lake.

Trucks have hauled fishing huts out on the lake for the season. This morning though, it is quiet. Really quiet.






I came too early. The sun has a few steps to go before it reaches the horizon. Some days when I've come here in the past, I would admire the predawn colors and turn around before the sun first showed a flash of brilliant light above the water. But today I wait. Even as the car refuses to recognize heat. 






And when I step out to take photos, my gloveless hand freezes instantly. They say three seconds and it's frostbite. Well now, you can't snap a photo in a wooly mit!






It's a beautiful sunrise. No, there wouldn't be a reflection in the water. But it is such a thrilling thing to see the radiant sun come out on a day that is the antithesis of warmth and I truly want to stand there and do sun salutations. But I think better of it. Someone may think I've become unhinged in the cold. (Though who? Who drives now in the wee hours of a day when schools remain closed and many people stay home from work?)

As always, heading away from a sunrise still gives you thrilling peeks at its effect.










All the way to the farmhouse door.






Even though I had my warmest coat and my warmest hat on, my body is icy cold. At home, Ed cringes as I reach for his hand to take on some of his warmth. It's a good hour before I feel un-cold again.


Breakfast? In the sun room of course! Hooray for the sun! Inside, it turns the day from a desperately cold one to a brilliantly cold one!











My sun salutations are at home. Who would go out on a day like this?

As it turns out, I do -- a second and a third time! A dentist check at noon -- I can't miss that. I have insurance that runs out when I officially retire this month. Fix everything! -- I tell him. Sorry, he responds. For once there's nothing to fix.

The second visit is to my daughter's to look in on Goldie the cat. The weather caused a tiny delay for them and they are struggling to get home. In the meantime, Goldie relishes the attention. For a while. And then, satisfied that she is not alone, she retreats to her favorite spot in the sun.






I have my laptop and I use the time there to run through my workout/yoga/dance program. Goldie does her stretches too.






Back at the farmhouse, we've done nothing with the septic system so far. It's on a temporary partial fix. When the days get slightly warmer, say by fifty degrees or so (by the weekend!), we'll have someone out to do a consultation. In the meantime, we have water, we have heat, and we have a pot of chili on the stove.

The winds are picking up tomorrow. Looking at the weather maps, it seems that we are nearly at the epicenter of the Polar Vortex. One more day and it will push its way north again. The irony is that just as it leaves Wisconsin, I'm scheduled to fly south, for a very quick trip to Florida. On the upside -- the planes should be flying by then again.

There is always an upside.

oh dear...

...those two words are mine today. Understandably so.

Now, the whole country knows that a polar vortex is sweeping masses of frigid air onto us in the next day or two. They say it will be colder in Wisconsin than on Mars and 35 degrees colder than on the North Pole itself.

We're ready for it. I have a full agenda for myself today. An indoor agenda.

First, the disc with the new Photoshop Lightroom 5 (photo editing) program arrived in the mail. I had no illusions that it would be easy to work with. Enough reviewers complained about uploading and file management issues that I was prepared. And I had been reading a 550 page manual for it. From before dawn. Carefully, especially the early chapters on uploading and developing.

Ed was there to help me. For instance, without him, it would have taken me a long time to figure out how to upload a program from a disc onto my littlest computer that does not have a disc drive.

So yes, I know I have to take the time to work with it all. But I had not fully grasped that everything will change now. How my files look, how they're labeled, retrieved. How the photos upload to flickr - my photo storage place of choice.

And so I consider it a huge victory to be able to give you a photo today, one showing you that yes, on this incredibly cold day, we did eat breakfast. I'm typically quite subtle in photo editing -- nothing too far from how I see it in my mind's eye please! -- but for this photo, I pushed the edges a bit. Because truly, just knowing how cold it is outside now made the breakfast meal feel very different. As if we were mere pawns in nature's game, hanging on, but just barely.







It is Sunday and though I did not do a massive farmhouse cleaning, I did a mini one and that included doing a load of laundry. We had had a leak in the basement the last time I used the washer a few days back and Ed was curious if it would repeat itself.

It did.

And then some.

In fact, it wasn't the washer at all that was flooding, it was our good old septic sytstem, clogged again, backing up buckets of waste water! The second time in less than six months!

Clearly we have a rather difficult situation. Yes, our rooter friend (he's becoming a very good friend indeed!) came out and spent more than three hours pushing out willow roots from the pipe, but it merely allowed some water to work its way through. Slowly.

We will need a major inspection of the septic system.

Ed is thinking out loud: I wonder if they can even repair a system in the deep freeze of winter...

That's when the "oh dear" slipped out.

Since the noise of machines and men shouting over them was too big of a distraction for writing, I thought it would be productive to at least do my new workout routines. Maybe with a thirty minute at home yoga class thrown in! How about that!

I have to say that deep breathing was diminished in quality by the somewhat predictable smells wafting from the basement. It did not help that we absolutely cannot open windows when the temperatures are dropping to such terrible lows...

The farmhouse lets us know often enough that she is not an easy mistress, but today she really tested our patience with her old and sometimes bothersome habits. In looking for the bright side, I did note that I had showered before the flooding and I had done a load of laundry. Darks. You'll be seeing a lot of darks on me in the days to come.


In the evening, I reheated the chicken tagine and reflected how good it is that I do not have many dishes to wash. (Our water use is diminished, though not yet completely blocked.)

As the temperature keeps falling tonight, I go back to my Lightroom 5 editing program. I had worked through the publishing issues on my small laptop and now I am attacking them on the tiny laptop that I use for travel. So you do get another photo after all. Of Isis. Who heroically did not complain about the weather (from his perch on the quilty bed, does he even remember there is an outside world?), but did pester us an awful lot about food until I opened another can of pink salmon for him. A spoonful of Trader Joe's canned salmon will put a smile on his face always. I'm thinking -- a cat's take on life is really quite uncomplicated. Refreshingly so.

interlude

Some days feel exactly this way: like a pause between two events. A commercial interruption. A coffee break. Okay, done. Now, where were we in our narrative?

Of course, I know too well where I was in my narrative: it's all about the weather this month, isn't it? Arctic blast, snow, wind -- the year is only four days old and already I've overused each of those terms in my postings here.

But today we really do pause. The wind died down, the thermometer climbed to near freezing. I sweep a gentle layer of feather-light snow off the roof. Our neighbor (we only have one, to the west of us) had a bigger challenge  -- a steeper slope on his roof and more snow to contend with.






Breakfast for us is leisurely. We stay in the kitchen because I'd just gotten fresh flowers for the kitchen table. Damn it, I want to stare at those flowers all month long! Colors are hard to come by in January.







And once more my daughter (who had skis only for a couple of days) joins Ed and me for a run on the Lake Farm trails.





No, there would be no sun today and the clouds are heavy, with a constant threat of... something. And yet, my girl notes that the day feels almost balmy. Ed takes his cap off and had we stayed out longer, I'm sure he would have unzipped his jacket and put away his big mitts.

Skiing in the mid-twenties feels oddly buoyant and easy. My girl is doubtful that we put a solid hour into it. Oh, but yes we did!

And after, I spot check some travel details for a trip that Ed and I are taking in the last weeks of this month. Maybe you'll remember that I made a host of travel plans while I was still in the thick of school work. A nagging thought made me revisit one detail of these forthcoming travels and I see now that I made a mistake. And so I spend the better part of the afternoon trying to fix it without putting us out too much. Ed asks later if I had made progress on my writing project. I had to grumble a hefty NO!

In the evening, I want to make chicken tagine. I haven't a tagine pot for it and I don't have half the needed ingredients, but the idea is to have a stew and if it isn't exactly perfectly Moroccan, still, it's quite good enough. To have for this interlude. Before the plummeting temperatures of tomorrow and the day after hit the farmette, paralyzing us from the outside and maybe a little on the inside too.

cold, bitter cold, bitterest cold...

She asks me -- can we go skiing together Friday?
I hesitate. It's going to be bitter cold. (There is a wind chill warning out. Winter is not foolin' around this year.)
But you ski in this weather!
Dear one, I'm made of hearty Polish peasant stock!
I come from your stock, remember?

Earlier, there is breakfast, then Ed is off to his techie guy meeting...





...and I do the usual Friday catch up stuff, except this time, for at least part of it, I have my older girl for company.

And when Ed returns, we pack three pairs of skis into the old Ford Escort and head out for Lake Farm Park. The one just down the road. A black and white road, patched like a holstein cow, with swirls of blowing snow.  Did I mention that there is a wind warning today?






In the forest, the air is calmer, gentler, even as the noise of the wind against the frozen tree limbs is never less than a dull roar. My daughter's cheeks are lightly pink, but she pushes her scarf down and I do too. When you move along a trail, the world feels at least ten degrees warmer.






As we finish the hour-plus loop, we look up to see a break in the clouds. Oh, I get it: it's going to be that kind of a freezing night! No clouds, Arctic air and wind!

And still later, when the sun begins its final slide, I am so taken in by the winter sky that I chase that sunset down our rural road -- to catch its fire-like madness over the fields where Farmer Lee once planted her flowers. I can see a thin sliver of a moon, rising high above the pink clouds.





Closer, let me get just a little closer. I pull up on the shoulder of the road and roll down the window (not so easy in the ancient, stiffened Escort). How can a winter evening be this beautiful!





There is so much weather drama this week and we haven't seen the worst of it yet. Monday promises to be even more bitter, windier, more chilling. Still I know it's not the coldest of January days. That happened 29 years ago, on the day when my younger girl was born.

I return to the farmhouse. It feels so deliciously warm inside! Sort of like being handed a mug of hot chocolate after an hour of ice fishing on a frozen lake. The porch lights cycle through their colorful little show, the last of the streaks of red crease the sky. A beautiful day. A tad on the cold side, to be sure. In fact, bitter cold. But so very beautiful.

ten

On this day (a)


Ocean is ten years old today! Yeah, that old! My first post went up when I was fifty, when my kids were just barely voting age, when I still lived in a house in the suburbs, when blogging was young and the Internet had that novel, mystical feel to it that made launching a blog somewhat of an adventure. But I knew this then: I wanted to write. With care. Every day. And so Ocean was born.

Oh, the lessons learned! The skepticism, the doubts, the warnings, but too, on the other side -- the friendships that were born of it! And the sweet sweet patience that came from family and friends! How can I not mention, for example, Ed's incredible patience as I bother him with the camera every morning and delay our travels and adventures as I pause to post?  How can I ever thank you all for indulging this terribly bothersome commitment that I have made?

Ten years of daily posting. It was so much harder when I started! Searching for an Internet connection in all corners of the world - Japan, Poland, Sicily, Ghana -- it was nearly impossible, yet it was never really impossible. I missed maybe a day or two each year. Not more than that.

I deserve no praise for persistence. We all excel at something. Me, I excel at forging ahead stubbornly when perhaps it may have been wise to give it up long ago. After all, why does it matter? To post late at night through half closed eyes, to write, to record something...  why must it happen every day?

Why? So many people ask (or want to ask) -- why?

I've said it before: writing about small things is, to me, the best way to describe life. You, who read Ocean, you are like me in this: you're drawn to the idea that the story line isn't necessarily in newspaper worthy events. It's in the way we wake up and sit down to breakfast and proceed to move through the day. And these small things are what make for a good day for us, whether we live in Marseille or Madison.

So, thank you. For reading, for commenting, for coming back, for giving at least a nod to this idea that ordinary conversations and encounters are important.

Ocean is ten. I've moved, my daughters have moved, they've launched careers, I've retired.  My progression is everyone's progression. It's just that I am driven to write. And so you have these daily posts.

Daily posts. Some people walk their dog, I post. Yes, it is as ordinary as that.


On this day (b)

Wake up! I've got so much that I want to do today!

Breakfast is, of course, the starting point. We linger over it, though in my mind, never long enough.






Then I sit down to a steady stream of Book Project writing, interrupted only once with a brief bout of stretching and moving through a program of awkward (but who would notice?!) ballet/yoga poses.

But by afternoon I know that I have to attack the dreaded project of the year: the emptying of my Law School office.

Why dreaded? Because I really would like to cart only one box of memorabilia home and put a match to nearly everything else, but I'm afraid that's an overzealous and potentially regrettable move.

And so I give myself eight hours to sort and stack and pack and carry out, and today I use two of those hours, bringing home a bankers box of the most precious stuff: photos, my cup for tea, and a sketch of the house where Chopin once lived.

And I throw away about a third of my files. AIDS Legal Resources Project? Trash! Department of Education grant? Trash! Folder upon folder of a work history and I have to wonder -- why had I kept it all this long? Did I think someone would ask me one day -- prove to us that line on your resume!? Someday, folders will seem quaintly old fashioned. Storage will be what we save on computers rather than in metal file cabinets. Someday. My work wasn't of that day. My work is on notepads and the work of others is typed and printed and it's all unfortunately stashed in tightly packed cabinets.

On the upside, I get one of the final grand moments before my office window, looking out on Bascom Mall.







 Okay. Enough for today. I can come back to this project next week.


By the time I come back to the farmette, the chill on the air is terrific. The skies are clearing, the wind is sharp.






I walk the land to the back of the barn, but not for long. I'm not prepared for the plummeting temperatures. Still, even in this most challenging season, I find the landscape here to be so beautiful! There is a silence all around us. Looking at the solitary tracks of deer, I am reminded how little movement there is at the farmette during winter.






In the evening, I cook up a pot of chili. I note that we've used half of our summer tomatoes already. Ed tells me the chili flavors are ever changing, as I reach for different varieties that we store in the big freezer in the basement.

Isis comes down, licks a can of sardines dry and marches right back up to the quilt-covered bed. For him, it's just another day of food and sleep. Ed works on his design project, I settle in to write this post.

a new year

Since the time of preschool (age three), my year organized itself around the academic calendar. It remained that way through my university years, then throughout my girls' school years and it continued to provide structure for me as my work took me right back to the classroom.

Not anymore.

Because I like organizational frameworks -- the kind that you visualize for yourself -- I need a replacement structure. The obvious choice is the change in the calendar year. And since my retirement coincides with the beginning of 2014,  if ever there was a significant New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, I would say this one trumps all.

Last night, therefore, I partied with some excitement at my daughter's place. She had an incredible menu of snack foods -- mind-boggling in its deliciousness -- and I was super proud to be her sous chef for the evening. Beginning with baking the gougeres (cheese puffed pastry) which were my responsibility in the days when I baked for L'Etoile...






...I went on to lend a hand where needed, to help fill their table with this incredible assortment:






Ed came just before midnight and we did the countdown and the bubbly flowed and it was all quite beautiful, even as winter raged outside. The proverbial glow within made all that irrelevant.



modern countdown




the hosts




no idea whose phone this is; Ed doesn't have a cell


Happy, happy 2014!


This morning, we wake up to more snow and more cold temps in the forecast.





Can you believe it -- on Monday, they tell us the high will be -15 F! May I remind the weather gods that this is Madison, Wisconsin! I am sure they have their systems out of whack, thinking us to be perhaps Madison, Canada -- you know, that small community within the Arctic circle!

Still, I'm full of excitement. Like the first day of school, this day is lining up my cards for me. I have so many lessons, plans, programs, challenges, opportunities, visions, ideas that I am quite sure it is very much like starting first grade. Or going away to college. Take your pick.

After breakfast, which, thankfully, offers no changes (somethings are best left alone!)...






...I make some decisions as to what will fill my immediate days. Lots of indoor movement to keep me energized (thanks, Ocean commenter for the barre3.com tip! Ever since I was a kid and thought ballet to be the most beautiful form of movement, I've wanted to mix in some small bits of easy positions into a yoga routine -- this online fitness program is cheap and exquisite! And flexible! Got ten minutes? Do it!). And of course, plenty of writing. And plenty of learning.

First day of school. Like  a kid, I'm prancing about, loving this year already for what it is sure to deliver -- new experiences.

In the afternoon, we go out to ski. It's cold -- single digits and quite brutal when the wind kicks up -- but we're not complaining.






As usual, it's enchanting in this county park. Even if the sun never quite breaks through a cloud cover.











Can't say it's not trying...





And so the day just flies.

In such a good, good way.
 

Overheard

Isis! Be quiet! Go back to sleep!

 
There's just a light cover of snow. Do you want me to sweep the roof? 
No, you're not nimble enough. I'll do it.


What do you want for breakfast?
Pancakes! Where are we eating?
Sun-room. We can pretend it's warm outside.





So there's this photography class online... I'm not sure what it's about, but maybe it would be fun to do it anyway... though what I really want is to get out of the iPhoto editing rut...
Go back to learning Photoshop.
There's a new version... oh! They've gone to an online Photoshop with monthly fees! 
You never even learned one tenth of the old version!
I don't want go back to the old version! That's five years old now. This one is new and improved!
That's so like you...

Okay, forget the one with the online monthly fee! I can purchase Photoshop Lightroom 5 -- that's just one fee and I can still get educator rates! And I saved all that money on yoga this month!
You don't save it if you spend it on something else. 


I'm reading about Lightroom 5 -- it sounds like simply mastering that program's file management is a challenge.
I can do it! I'm motivated!
Do you even know how to work the TV? This is way more complicated than running the TV...
Ha ha... That's because we have all these different TV viewing systems and Chrome this and Youtube that... Anyway, I'll buy an instructional manual...
Actually you can get one on kindle -- oh, but wait, you've never fully learned all your kindle features either! You are surrounded by technology that you can't fully use!

That's sums it up pretty well.

But, there's always the new year to learn something new!


For now, I'm turning my back to this cold cold weather (and believe me, that early sun has long since receded and the snow is falling and the temperatures are dropping even more)...





...and I'm setting out to my daughter's place to help her prepare for a New Year's Eve party that she and her husband are hosting. Of course I'll stay and party with the young set! I'm hoping that Ed, who is dropping me off, then returning to the farmhouse, doesn't fall asleep and forget to come and get me at midnight!

I'm also truly hoping that your New Year brings you new things to learn and enjoy, but that, too, you find plenty of the old to keep you warm and comforted.
Happy, happy New Year to all you Ocean readers!
love,
Nina

cold

Can I show you cold? The farmette at temperatures that stay significantly below zero degrees? It looks like this (taken on the way to empty the compost bucket):






This morning, Ed and I have a soft wake-up. Why hurry to face that? Frigid stuff. Tolerable for a two minute dash outside. Unpleasant otherwise.

Breakfast. I consider eating in the front room. There is a momentary beam of sunlight, my chicks seem luminous, the orchid behind them is showing off its bulging flower buds...






But in the end, I set the table in the kitchen. For however long, we have the light coming through the porch roof. Let's enjoy it. I saw yesterday how fleeting it all can be.





During the morning meal, we talk about exercise. Movement on days this cold. Many people, wishing to stay healthy, incorporate all forms of machinery and routine fitness programs into their week. I'm with Ed on this right now -- I don't want boring repetitions. I want to find enjoyable ways to move. Yoga was so much part of my life last year. Should I go back to regular classes now that I'm retired?

They're expensive. A retired person watches her pennies. And the thought of going out in a cold car is off putting, especially on a sub-zero day! But most of all, yoga classes come with a schedule. I do not want to be tied to a schedule. I do not want to be in a hurry. Everyone on my floor at the Law School will tell you that in my teaching years I was always running. To class. To office hours. To meetings. To the next class. Every day, breathless. I want to be free of this. So to sign up for classes where I have to be somewhere at 9 in the morning is, right now, very unappealing.

Ed suggests Youtube Yoga. I groan. How many bad instructional videos do I have to watch before I find a good one?

It turns out not that many. I find one on the second try.

I spend a blissful half hour at home, doing yoga.

And now it's barely noon. I had wanted to go to the Law School to start the tedious process of closing down my professional life there, but I need help from tech support and they're not answering emails today. Probably they're on break. At the university, between Christmas and New Year's, nearly everyone is on break.

So I sit down at the kitchen table and open my book project file (noting that the last time I touched it was in early September of 2012).

Oh! I'd written nearly 150 pages! I thought it was half that! Of course, I have new ideas for it and so in many ways, I have to start from the beginning, but that's okay. I don't mind infusing it with new life.

I spend the rest of the afternoon perusing the pages of my dusty old book file, alternating with glancing outside, wondering how it could be that today's high will have been all of 2 degrees and we haven't even started in on January yet.

small favors

Anyone who studies weather maps could have told you this was coming. We've been inundated with warnings of winds and freezing precipitation and arctic blasts. But did it all have to come so early in the day and with such deeply gray skies?

Worse: when I get up and walk toward the northern (bathroom) window, I see that a new coating of ice is forming on the porch roof. I mean, not even 24 hours of pristine clarity! Yes, I knew we would have snow. But ice again? What a total disappointment!

And much as I love to torture my Ocean friends with accounts of repeat trips onto the roof, I can tell you this much: ice without a thaw is impossible to remove. And it will make it that much more difficult to push off snow when it does come.

Shrug your shoulders and move on!

It's Sunday! Farmhouse-cleaning day!

And, therefore, a very late breakfast. Some would possibly call it lunch, even as the components for me never change.





Since it is mighty cold outside and terribly uninviting, I consider whether this is the point where I reenter my book project.

No, not yet. There are still big interruptions ahead. And besides, there is the seed catalog waiting for our inspection and, too, an Ed on the couch next to me, ready and happy to distract me with it.

So we settle in and begin formulating a plan for our vegetable garden for next spring. And you would think that this is an easy task. Tomatoes. Sure. Cucumbers. Peas. And, as of last summer, a new favorite -- corn. But, there is the annual squabble that we go through -- whether to use old packets of unused seeds, or entirely new ones, packaged for the 2014 season. Guess who wants to use up the old ones?

Yes, and he always wins (for the most part: we do throw in some new varieties). And when a plant is deficient in some fashion, he'll blame the weather (we planted it too early!) and I'll blame it on using dated stuff (see -- here it says that the root stock is weaker!) and of course, there is no ready answer and we'll go on like this for years, I'm sure, because we like to hang on to our own convictions.

Still, it is an exciting thing to be thinking ahead toward May.  We are hungry for that season, especially when the outside weather is this unpleasant. We add to the shopping cart that ever wonderful strawberry we discovered last year (Mara des Bois), and asparagus, and some broccoli spears, even though Ed swears that broccoli does not like the soil at the farmette. I intend to prove him wrong.

An afternoon can pass in a snap when you're thinking spring thoughts. Feeling somewhat guilty at being so couch-bound, I take a very brisk walk up our beautiful rural road (and yes, I have to admire that winter sky, gray as it is)...






...and spend the rest of the afternoon unthawing my frozen limbs.

And here's a shock: as I glance outside now, at dusk, I see that the thin ice on the porch roof is no more! Somewhere in the course of the day, presumably before the arctic blast blasted upon us, there was enough warm air that it up and melted! Don't believe me? Look at this!






Evening. The lights shine through the now almost clear again roof.

But it is now very very cold. The kind of cold that keeps you firmly indoors. Except that we promised ourselves bowling. It is the night of the cheap game at the bowling alley and since my daughter is not here for dinner this week, we take a deep breath and head out for the lanes.

...where we play five games, four of which are quite terrible for me, but all quite good for Ed.

After, we were to pick up take-out food, but honestly -- it seemed a waste. I'm tired, but surely I'm capable of roasting a head of cauliflower and boiling some eggs to add to a salad. Throw in a handful of sauteed shrimp and we have an easy meal.





I'm sure there is a moon out there tonight. But it's far too cold for me to go out and confirm it for you. -8 is the expected low. Ridiculous? Well, it could have been even colder. I appreciate every small favor and every extra degree that gets thrown our way.

one day

If you were told -- there will be one day this winter when the sun will shine brightly and the temperatures will soar, maybe ten whole degrees above freezing -- and if there is nothing holding you back, nothing that must be done, what would you do?

Well yes, eat breakfast. Sure. Me too.





And after?

I say to Ed -- let's not wait until the afternoon to ski. Let's go now, while the snow is still crisp!

Unusual for us. You'll have seen this park before. Many times. But I don't think ever before noon.











It's warm, even now, in the mornng. Just above freezing, so that when you're pushing on those skis, it can get quite toasty! Off come the hat, the scarf, down goes the zipper... free! I am free of winter for a while! Hills, give me those hills so I can fly!











And then we are home and we both look up at the porch roof and I say to Ed -- that thick layer of ice after the ice storm? (That same ice storm that has created ice dams for the first time ever at the farmhouse!) I don't think it's melting much. The sun only gets to the edges of this north facing roof.

And then it strikes me: maybe I could chip off at least a little bit of that ice around the edges? (Because if not today, during the one day thaw, then when?)

Maybe you are not the type to give in to projects that have no real purpose except that they have a beginning and a possible end. Maybe you can walk away from something that proves to be ridiculously hard. Slippery, thick ice, clinging to those roof beams, refusing to recognize that there is a thaw, damn it! You're supposed to melt!

I could not walk away from it. Once I understood that inch by inch, I could hack away at the roof ice and then sweep it off, I took on the project and stayed up there for several hours until my wet socks froze around my toes and my arms were too sore to do anymore of the chip and sweep motions.

But by that time I was done.

And it could be that neither of us will ever go up on that roof again, but it surely has been a fascinating study of the work of the seasons up there. It could be that by tomorrow, or the next day, all will be covered again, but at least today, it's clean and clear out there. Take a look out from the bathroom window (all farmette buildings accounted for!):






Even better, over p.b. and j. lunch sandwiches at the kitchen table, we see this:






Down on the ground again, I am not the only one loving this winter sunshine. Our resident opossum (who lives under the writer's shed) comes out to pick at the fallen crab apples.






He's used to our comings and goings and Isis is used to seeing him here. As Ed brings Isis to the farmhouse for an afternoon snack, I think how delightfully odd it is that we should be the four permanent residents here: Ed, myself, Isis and the opossum.





Dinner: I make buckwheat crepes, stuffed with salmon, cheese and egg. With asparagus on the side. And a huge spinach arugula salad. Was it grand? No, I prefer the buckwheat crepes I had at the Breizh Cafe earlier in December. But good enough. The day was grand -- I'm fine with the buckwheat crepes being just good enough.