Thursday

Right about now, at the tail end of January, I begin to be hyper sensitive to the modest palate of color that winter presents for us. On gray days, you really begin to count days toward spring.

Indoors, of course, all remains lovely and ever cheerful.






Outside -- well, you have to wait for that cloud break to rev up your spirits. And this morning, driving to the store to pick up the ridiculously bothersome (see yesterday's post) photos, we had that cloud break and it was splendid!






I'm good now for another week or so.

I arrive at Snowdrop's home a tad later. The little one greets me with the usual hopeful look -- will you pick me up, grandma?






My day with her starts off not unlike yesterday. The temperatures hover just above the freezing mark and so I take the little girl out for a walk, but this time with her mom who is hurrying to work. We keep her company (at least for part of the way). Ah, that needed splash of color!






Of course, Snowdrop must show her mom the beloved pinwheel. Icy flurries have come out of nowhere, but the little one doesn't mind. It's all rather pretty actually.






On the return, I reward her with a quick stop at the neighborhood cafe. We don't really encourage snacking, but this is a special moment (my first cafe visit with her) and so I let her pick off a tiny piece of blackberry scone. Does she like it? You tell me!






More!






Well, alright. Just a wee piece.






Honestly, I think she's ready for the cafes of the world!


In the afternoon, we stick to the home base. So much there to discover! Here, she probes the pantry -- a favorite spot for her.






I'll end with this pensive shot -- let me take that under advisement, she seems to say.





I like that. Listen to the other voice. Consider it. Make wise choices.

And don't fret too much if a winter day dawns cloudy and gray.

Wednesday

Life is nothing more than a pinwheel.

Well, okay, it's a little more complicated, but it surely has the spin, the colors, the repetition.

You see the repetition, of course, in my morning run to the barn to let the cheepers out. (But isn't the sky suggestive of perhaps an unusually pretty day ahead?)






There's, too, the breakfast routine. Early today, so we're in the kitchen. But in many ways, special as it may be to me, it's a repeat performance (and perhaps that's what is so special about it). And always with a few blooms to get us off to a colorful start.






An early morning with Snowdrop. Is that a rerun? No. At least not in the way it appears to me. Take this morning. She wakes up all smiles and giggles. Sunshine streams into the house and I think -- maybe we should go for a walk? It's just below freezing but there is so much brightness outside! I haven't taken her out in a stroller since... oh, maybe October!

Put on your snowsuit, little girl. And let's borrow mommy's scarf to use as a lap blanket. Off we go!

We walk our summer route -- right through the old neighborhood where.... there is indeed that trusty pinwheel perched on a white picket fence! Same one! Same delighted recognition on the part of Snowdrop!






We reach the lesser lake -- frozen now. What does this mean to her? Once blue, now white.  All I can do is repeat that explanation which really is no explanation at all -- it's snow-covered!






We're back by her home. I want her to relax in the snow, but putting her down to make a snow angel isn't going to do it. What are you doing, grandma?? -- she seems to ask. A diaper change??







And still, Snowdrop shows me each day her beautiful faces of play. They're familiar. And so enchanting. Or, is it that the pinwheel of time is spinning a basket of grandma delights felt by grandmas the world over?












We do have one task to accomplish: I'm bent on taking a photo that she needs for one document or another. I think I got it. But believe me, it takes a lot of stupid facial expressions on my part and good natured patience on her part to get us through it. Here's a photo that isn't quite what I used, but it does shows my strategies for getting the little one to sit still.







And now it's evening. Ed needs my help jump-starting his truck, left in a distant parking lot (a colleague had been using it and the headlights had been left on). On the upside, helping push the truck out of a tight space surely firmed up my upper arm muscles. Too, driving home, I saw that wonderful cloud-dappled sunset over the farmette.






At home, it's my turn to ask for Ed's help -- I want to send for printing the photo that I had taken of the little one for her parents' document needs. It is one of those frustrating tasks that's made all the more exasperating because the editing programs don't match the instructional materials which, in turn don't match the printing directions. Moreover, Ed is incensed that there is a $7 surcharge for printing out a particular size. He will go to great lengths to avoid avoidable surcharges, but my patience for the project runs out. Still, I am surprised that I can be brought to (near) tears by a printing job, but there you have it -- we all have our weaker moments.


A pinwheel, I tell you. Life is just a pinwheel of colors and spins and repetitions, with the occasional snafu that tests your resolve to stay calm.

Tuesday

It's the unexpected that often unravels your sense of quiet and well-being. But sometimes, it does just the opposite.

No one talked of snow -- at least not in any amount that would transform our frozen splotchy landscape. And so waking up to the unexpected -- several inches of gentle loveliness is wonderful indeed.






I let the cheepers out and pause to admire the farmette trees...






How could something so plain as white snow be so pretty?






Of course, it comes with its own headaches -- an iced over car, slushy streets in the city -- but I'll take those, just for that walk outside, or the glance out the kitchen window at breakfast.






But not too long of a glance. I'm with Snowdrop early today.

She wakes up to a great mood and we fly through the morning rituals. Here she is, bathed and dressed, running around with music sticks, just because.






Impishly showing off that she knows darn well what a tongue is.






Having a wild hair day?






Nothing a hair clip can't fix. This is one of her favorite books. I think she thinks one of the girls pictured therein is her.






Still, I can't resist the snow. I bundle her up and out we go. She's tentative. And that mitten! Where did you lose it, Snowdrop?






Well, never mind. We're not out for long. Just enough to take those steps in the snow.






Back to the puzzles of home.






And the satisfaction of getting something to work.






And so the hours, like the flakes outside, fly in unexpected directions, most often with beautiful results.


My evening is a bit unusual, in that I join Ed for a semi techi-work dinner for out of town Tormach visitors. Importantly, the restaurant served a special of Bouillabaisse. I don't say no to a good bowl of Bouillabaisse.

Monday

A gentle beginning to the week: like a cornflower blue sky, so, too, a morning can be cornflower blue. Not intense, not splashy. A bit slow, a bit meandering. With, of course, a slow breakfast. In the sun room this time.






We are back on schedule now and if it's Monday, it's time for Snowdrop to spend the day at the farmhouse.

What's her preoccupation today? Well, jumping, for one. She tries. With penguin at first.






Most efforts end like this:






Alright. A pause. Great concentration on taking apart giant legos (except they're not called legos; they sure look like legos to me).






Since it's just above freezing, I suggest feeding the cheepers. She likes the idea, until I put her on the sled. She has that distrustful attitude. As in -- are you sure you know what you're doing, grandma?






I persevere. She relaxes. A little.






Back at the farmhouse, she cannot stop looking at that photo of her mom and aunt. Is that really them? No kidding?






And then it's back to jumping. I do it alongside her and this makes her laugh and laugh!






And then we return to her home where she convincingly demonstrates that she really does understand the request to display her tongue.







Such a fine day! Gentle and kind. Playful and unassuming. So very fine!

Sunday

We are programmed to love sunshine. Wake up to a blue sky and hope swells within your beast. Nothing is impossible.

Gray skies -- well, now you have to work harder to keep that energy level high.

Today, the skies are telling me to work harder at feeling effervescent about the day. And I do. I wake up and let the cheepers out and then I drive our garbage loving mouse over to the lake to the east of us. Honestly, we're thinking it has to be the same mouse that's traveling great distances to come visit our trash bin and so each time we catch it, we take it that much further. Three miles enough for you to stay away??

In driving at sunrise (as if you could tell there is a sunrise on a cloudy day), you often have fleeting images of wildlife here. It's incredibly beautiful really -- a canvase of country living.





Of course, those lovely shapes of deer are grand at a distance -- less grand when the animals come to your yard and start in on your spring flowers and fruit trees. But for now, I really do love to admire their swift movements and graceful forms.


Back at the farmhouse, I tackle the usual Sunday cleaning and organizing. And of course, the reward is a breakfast in a perfectly respectable and presentable farmhouse.






The afternoon is, like yesterday, slow paced. Reading, writing, cooking -- isn't this the way all cloudy winter Sundays should proceed?

And just before dusk, Snowdrop comes, only with her mom today, but still, I'm delighted to host these two members of the young family!

Well what a surprise... Snowdrop runs for her beloved penguin.






Though toward evening's end, she finds other excitements. Corn on the cob, for instance. (I know you're not supposed to eat while on the run, but this was an exceptional set of circumstances.)






(She does sit down after a while.)






(And she holds steady on grandpa Ed's lap when there's music on television.)






The weekend's done. I've had my restful moments, my yoga, my time with Elena Ferrante (do you not like her novels? Well then, you and I have an entirely different perspective on fiction... I think she is magnificent). I'm so ready for the challenges of the weeks ahead.

dolce far niente

I do not have a talent for idleness. Oh, that's not to say that I don't fritter time away on useless pursuits, but most hours of the day (and sometimes, unfortunately, at night) you'll find me doing something.

But today I'm trying to discover the beauty of that act of sluggish languor, so perfectly captured in the phrase dolce far niente (the sweetness of doing nothing).

Of course, there are the cheepers and there is the laundry and, too, trying to figure out how a mouse repeatedly enters our trash bin. (Could it be that the same mouse travels many miles for this one destination -- our garbage? Because we have never had a mouse enter the kitchen bin before and this one seems interested in nothing else but that).

But after a luxuriously late breakfast...






...I ran out of immediate "must dos." I looked out the window and thought of a book that Snowdrop loves, in which a goose and a duck, on the final page, are sitting on a field of grass and looking up at the white clouds drifting by. If they can do it, so can I!

(The photo is out the kitchen window, through the screened porch.)






It's not meditation really. It's lolly-gazing. It's feeling the slowness of time.

Still, I can't do it for long. I make myself a cup of tea and settle in to read.

And then, I indulge in something even better -- a leisurely Skype session with the friends I was to visit in Florida. Honestly, if you cannot travel, what better way to talk than through video chat? Oh, we are a spoiled people!


Late afternoon. It's so rewarding to see the sun now! It wont set until around 5, which is so wonderfully late! Ed and I go out for a walk along the rural roads. We've been discovering the quieter ones just to the south and east of us. It's really true that you miss the detail if you simply drive through them.

I'll leave you with photos from our walk. This is the true winter that I am so used to here, in the northern parts of the country. It's a beautiful winter. At least today, we surely felt it to be so.







(We strayed to a path through the bordering marshlands.)












(Then, back along the road, past farms and fields, past tractors hauling stuff, even in the cold season.)