Wednesday

In the middle of the night I heard a splintering crash. A storm was raging -- all wind and lots of rain -- and I looked up to see if the roof had caved in. Amazing how calm you can be when you wake up to a storm. Of course, no branches were protruding from the ceiling and importantly, all was warm and dry. Still, I shouted down to Ed (who hadn't come up yet) -- did you hear that? Silence. Can't be bad then, I thought. And went back to sleep.

In the morning, one glance outside disclosed the culprit -- a fallen maple limb that came crashing down  out front. No damage, just a stark reminder that trees lose branches and we do have a lot of trees here, at the farmette.

(The cats are taking it all in...)

It is (from my perspective) unfortunate that all that wetness was in the form of rain rather than snow. Drive 100 miles north of us and you'll encounter a deep snow cover. We are stuck with a very muddy driveway and totally unhappy cheepers. And, of course, a brown and pungent landscape.

Since Ed was sleeping in this morning I had no one to tell me we should pass on breakfast pastries and stick with our oats, so I drove out to Madison Sourdough and this made me so devilishly happy...

(all that beautiful bread!)

... that I swear it was worth every cinnamon laden, buttery bite (we still tend to favor the Viennoiseries that have a touch of spiced sugar in the swirl).

When Ed did come down (just as I was steaming up the milk for my cappuccino), he reminded me that we still had plenty of Rugelach cookies to munch on. This is the problem with living in a household of two. Your appetite for baked goods is always going to outrun your stomach capacity. If I thought some twenty years ago that baking at L'Etoile was going to cure me of my love for croissants and other breakfast breads, well, I was wrong.

In the afternoon, I pick up Snowdrop once again. We have a leisurely few hours just soaking in the delights of a December afternoon.

I feel a little like she is the last soldier standing, as slowly her family has fallen down with a virus that's ravaging the community (not Covid) and she remains okay. I suppose this is like any other pre pandemic holiday season where the youngest kids are sure to be fighting one bug or another and you only hope that by Christmas the worst will be behind you.

Late evening. I hear the pounding rain once again. Maybe miraculously it will change into snow by morning. You never know!

Tuesday

I did not listen to this podcast about time today because, well, I ran out of time. But merely reading the synopsis lead me to think this morning about our inability to grasp the concept of time (even as we are bound to time as measured by a clock so precisely that we can feel defeated if we show up one minute late to an appointment or a ballet class).

I thought about the sublime moments in your life when you imagine that you would like time to stand still.  It's a fiction, of course. You don't really ever want time to stand still, you merely want the pleasure to last, or to forestall the onset of pain, emotional or otherwise. Time, in my imagination is nothing more than a compilation of experiences and events. The older you are, the more of them you have accumulated. (So you could measure your age not in number of orbits around the sun, but in the strength and number of events lived through.) You may think that you have fewer experiential opportunities left as you get older (once you've lived it, it's not in your future anymore), but this isn't necessarily a bad thing. When you are very young, the enormity of what lies before you can be frightening. In your midlife, you pack in a lot, running through each day so quickly that you hardly notice what you've checked off for the day. But when you're older, assuming you have food and shelter and a modicum of strength left and a brain that hasn't (yet) totally atrophied, time is finally yours to work with, to think about, and yes, to experience in a way that feels quite often sublime, even though there's no reason for it to feel sublime, because nothing's happening, no intense new romance is brewing, no child is born to you, no promotion has been offered. Perhaps this is what living in the moment is meant to accomplish for you? Creating something important, even out of nothing? Every aspect of every hour increasingly becomes yours to examine, to respect and love.

I'm remembering the book my classmate Marie gave me when I was 12. "You'll love it!" -- she said. (Marie figures, surprisingly, prominently in a chapter of Like a Swallow!) She was right -- I did love it. Cheaper by the Dozen. (It's been made into a movie which I'm sure cutsified the whole story. Me, I only know the book.) The dad in the (biographical) novel was an efficiency expert and one line toward the very end always stuck with me. When asked -- what do you want to save all those bits of time for? He said (if I'm remembering correctly) -- to twiddle your thumbs, to play mumblety-peg if that's what you like... I took it to heart. Being at an age when I liked the markers of boyishness (baseball mitt, pocket knife, skateboard), I purchased a pocketknife and when the occasion presented itself, I would throw it down into the ground, trying to get a handle on these unknown and dangerous boy games that none of my girl friends cared about. Save time... Saving anything did not come easy for me then. I always felt time might run out on me. 

Snowdrop asked me today if a millennium was a thousand years. I affirmed that it was. She then marveled how short a second was when placed against a millennium. Maybe. Today is Santa Lucia Day, celebrated in Sweden and some other Scandinavian communities (as well as in Sicily and parts of Italy). I understand that St. Lucia was a Sicilian Christian martyr, having lived and died sometime in the 200's CE, so very many seconds ago. I have never seen this in person, but I understand in Sweden, little girls and boys parade in white outfits with crowns of light on their heads on this day. They usher in the Christmas season. Okay, I like traditions like the next person and children with lights on their heads do look awfully sweet, but is it a coincidence that this ritual caught fire (!) in the darkest countries on the planet?  It is indeed interesting to think about how much these holiday rituals are an amalgam of religious, pagan and sentimental (for lack of a better word) beliefs. Bonfires at solstice were lit to chase away evil and alter the course of the sun (they worked! after December 21st, the days grow longer!). But who wouldn't want to keep to that habit of celebrating light when there's so little of it in the week that is before us? Eight days until Solstice, twelve days until Christmas...

This brings me right back to my starting point: time, as it is fashioned and understood by a person who is past her youth, past her midlife. Past the moment where playing with a penknife would be attractive. So, I have a light-therapy lamp. I purchased it some while ago because I read that light therapy is the only effective way to chase away winter blues. I was going to be ready for the shortest of short days! But I haven't used it and by now, at age 69, I know I never will. I should just put it on Craigslist. Fact is, I like these uniquely special days when light is scarce, though still there, fleetingly, and then replaced by candles and Christmas tree lights. It's as beautiful to me as bonfires and wreaths with (hopefully fake) candles on children's heads may be to Santa Lucia celebrants. I'm sure if I lived near the Equator and the sun set every day at 6 pm and rose every morning at 6 am I would get used to it, but I would not be me if that were my life. 

So, in a nutshell -- Happy St Lucia to you, to all people whose homes are in dark corners of the world. May there be light within your day, no matter how few are those hours of sunshine today. And may there be sublime moments too, even if you're younger than me and haven't reached that point where the sublime may be born out of nothing.

No sunshine here at the farmette. Just the quiet of a short December day.

I nearly went out to get croissants this morning but Ed talked me down. Yay Ed. We settled for oatmeal, but with the cherry rugelach at the side. [Snowdrop had asked me if the Rugelach were a Polish pastry and I mistakenly said no. I had always located these in Central Europe -- Austria maybe. But in fact, these little crescents originated in the Jewish communities of Poland. The French croissant owes its existence to these pastries!]

And Dance played peacefully on the kitchen table and the morning was off to a good start.

The afternoon belongs to Snowdrop. I pick her up from school. But we have little time to play. 

(Just enough time to ask Ed about his latest machine design and open her Advent card...)

She has ballet today and (a limited number of) family members are invited. Her mom and I attend.

(ready to go!)

And here I am, thinking about time again, but now in the context of not so long ago. Because after the class does a demonstration of exercises...

... they move on to do a little performance of a Nutcracker number, to the music of a dance that I know too well, because it launched my younger daughter's long run in the Madison Nutcracker some thirty years ago. And now here's Snowdrop, dancing away to the way too familiar to me music. 

Time has taken a leap forward. Memories, connecting events from the past to this day, so that yet again life isn't measured in years, in dates, in minutes, but in the continuity that links everything essential into one string of experiences and emotions.

Complicated? Yes, time is complicated. No, we do not fully understand it. For now, we are free to make of it what we can. At my age -- to embrace it as you would embrace your dearest friend. With enthusiasm, understanding, compassion and love.

Monday

My friend sent me pictures of a chalka braid -- a traditional loaf of bread that she'd picked up at a Warsaw bakery (this one). While she was at it, she threw in a picture of the snow as seen from her apartment window. As it happened, my sister, too, sent a picture of the snow scene outside her window in Warsaw. And my Chicago daughter sent photos of their outing to see the Nutcracker with Primrose yesterday. And not to be forgotten -- I received a pic, attached to a message, of the Madison bunch putting together a Clasen's gingerbread house at home. Oh yeah, and there were, earlier in the week, photos of my Michigan friend's sons, growing up.  

I list them because I love them all. 

There was an article in the paper recently noting how you should send impulsive messages to your friends. Sweet updates, kind words, encouragements, funny reports, pleasures shared in this way even if you cannot be together in person. I'll add to this -- include a picture! It's so easy with your phone camera. Snap, tap tap, send. These images are evocative and personal. Moments from a regular old day. So, put that fantastic technology to use! Send the photos. Blurred, crooked or fine and elegant -- they're always loved.

In other news -- we're still hovering just above freezing. The chickens are happy. They can scratch the unfrozen ground.

(Hey, how about a photo of me and my sing?? -- this from Dance. Who can read. Just kidding!)

Breakfast, working through the granola now...

And then I take out the baking pans. I glance through newly posted recipes daily and sometimes I mark one as "I need to make this soon." I did that to Melissa Clark's cookie recipe last week. Cherry rugelach cookies. Time to bake! (If you make these, up the temp a bit and bake them in the upper third of oven for a little longer than she suggests. No way are you going to get them to toast up otherwise.)

And this takes me all the way up to Snowdrop pick-up time.

As we were walking to the farmhouse and she, as usual, tested her ability to reach some higher branch of a bush, I thought -- kids stretch and twist and balance all the time. And then we all get lazy. Or busy. Or tired. Or some combination of the above.

(Isn't it time to zoom in on the Christmas tree again? Here so briefly, adding so much to all our December days...)

At 4:15 Ed goes off to close up the coop. It's been a while since Snowdrop asked to go with him. Today, she was eager to join in on this evening ritual.

(And she spotted my under-the-table bicycle. Just had to try it!)

The day ends. The cats sleep, the cheepers huddle. Winter peace. Serene and beautiful.

Sunday

I've turned good. I mean, really good. I totally resisted the very very strong temptation to head out and get croissants for breakfast. I'm doing (at least some of) my neck and knee exercises. I'm using my under-the-table bike. I tested my balance (NYT here) and my flexibility (NYT here). And Ed and I are walking again. Daily.

And it's not even New Year's Day!

I'm not sure where the motivation for all this virtue came from. Perhaps the realization that strength isn't born of couch sitting. More likely though, it's just one of those things. One day you get up and say to yourself -- time to do more, and you start doing more. Life's choices are very difficult to explain.

It's not the best weather right now: hovering just above freezing. So, the snow is melting, but the cold is with us nonetheless. Honestly though, this is a gift compared to what's coming. They're telling us Christmas is going to be very very cold this year. An Arctic cold, sweeping down to completely unnerve those who wish winter was ending this month rather than just beginning.

So, enjoy the near-freezing temps! They wont last.

(Here that, cheepers?)

In the barn, I see that we have caught yet another opossum. That's a third one since Thanksgiving! A family perhaps? Or, we have a population explosion nearby. These animals like woodlands, streams, marshes. And they also like habitation. I would bet many of them live underneath the porches of the new development that sprouted here in the last five years. 

Breakfast: instead of baking a cake or muffins, I decide to bake granola. I've done this in the past and never found a recipe that I liked enough to repeat, but the one on Food52 caught my eye this month because it's both easy and healthy and not too sweet. Oats, pistachios, cashews, tahini, maple syrup, flax seeds out of habit, and a dash of vanilla and salt. That's it.

And yes, we like it!

In the early afternoon, we go out for a walk in the Wild Life Area we discovered this fall, just to the east of us. It's a beautiful path, with plenty of woodlands and views to the neighboring farmland.

And when I slip on the mushy snow, I manage to NOT fall on my knee, so that the only damage is to my very wet pants and gloves. All bones working well!

Normally, Sunday evening is family dinner at the farmhouse time, but my daughter's household has been passing around the flu. They are all vaccinated so the virus comes and goes quickly enough and without lingering side effects, nonetheless, they are keeping to themselves this weekend. Here's hoping that it will all be history very soon.

Now excuse while I do some stationary pedaling again. 

now or never

We hatched our plan last night. Ed insisted that he is up for it and that I should wake him. Still, when the time came, I hesitated. He was in deep sleep.

I let him be. For now. Dressed and bundled against the chilly air, I go out to feed the animals. 

At the farmhouse, he's still sleeping, so I boom out to him -- Ed! It's now or never!

Fact is, when we went out for our snowy walk yesterday, we thought that there actually might be enough of the white stuff for skiing. But the temperatures hovered around freezing, climbing to one degree above by morning, and they would go up even higher today, so if we were to ski at all on this rather puny snow cover, it would have to be at sunrise. 

I'm up! -- he shouts down, not really being up at all, but I hear the certainty, the willingness to forge ahead.

He dresses quickly. My knee is still stiff and creaky from a night of inactivity, so he's charged with lugging the skids up from the basement. They'll stay on the porch all winter long, until the first crocus pops up in April. 

We load up the car and drive to our local park. We need to concentrate our efforts on the open meadows. Woodland paths are going to have a thiner cover. 

It's a foggy morning. The kind that called forth Rudolph to help guide that sleigh. I haven't had my milky coffee yet, so my thoughts skip around to absurd things, like the joke from my childhood that I thought was the funniest thing ever, about the taxi driver in Moscow who insisted it was raining even though the passenger thought that it was snowing. The wife nudged her fellow and said -- Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear. I would laugh and laugh because it hit all the right spots for a kid's idea of humor: communist Russia (well, USSR) and Christmas legends.

We ski.

It's not the fastest, slickest run on the planet, but my knee is not protesting and that's so very excellent. Too, the empty foggy park casts its own special magic. Half hidden, half revealed, telling us that you need to be brave and willing to push past the first layers of what you see.

We feel noble and triumphant after an hour on the quickly melting snow.

(drive back: look! can you see them? sandhills. they haven't left yet! hurry up -- we are just 11 days away from winter solstice!)

Breakfast, finally. With a stale muffin, dried up flowers and a prancing Dance, but none of it matters: it's the best! 

And then I do what needs to be done: paper onto boxes, ribbon, tag, and repeat, again and again and again. Dance watches, trying to make sense of what's going on.

In the late afternoon, I add a few good (under the desk) bicycle runs to the day. Book in hand, happily ticking off two birds: keeping the momentum of an active day going and plunging into the newest Louise Penny novel. Total awesomeness.

All this and chocolate covered gingerbread too...

with love...

Friday

A stunning day! No sunshine. No warmth to it either. Nothing out there for the cats or cheepers to celebrate. But to us -- simply stunning!

We knew it was coming -- a wet snowfall. Not deep, just a few inches of it, but this is enough to transform the farmette landscape.

I am up early, but Ed had already left to pick up the next month's supply of cat food and toilet paper at our big box store. He wants to beat the snow and avoid the store crowds. This is actually a tiny bit amusing, because three years ago we had sort of anticipated that the pandemic, which had shut down China back in February 2020, was going to hit us soon, and so Ed went out to buy... cat food and toilet paper. We have to use a special paper that is good for our septic system and we're always afraid that they wont stock it, so he bought two packs of some 36 rolls. And then the pandemic struck and the toilet paper crisis hit the stores and we felt so guilty! Who knew! 

My morning walk is lovely. 

And it just gets better and better out there.

Breakfast: oatmeal, against a backdrop of snow!

By noon, the snow slows down and the flakes we get are very very soggy. Sadly, it will all probably melt this week, but we don't look ahead to that dreary and drippy moment. We seize our chance and, despite the fact that it's too wet, and not deep enough for skis, and despite the fact that right now I can hardly walk with my stupid busted-up knee, we go out to our local park.

You may be tempted to rate snow falls on a scale of wonderfulness and delight. Don't do it. Stay with the idea that this is one out of the many episodes of beauty nature delivers to us on a regular basis.

We are enchanted.

In the afternoon, I was supposed to pedal my new device and wrap presents. [I finally purchased what all my therapists praised as a good knee exercise for the winter -- an under-the-table bike. Then it stayed in its box for three weeks -- I was too busy to get it out, and Ed was too sick to put it together, and I was too distracted to even read the instructions. But today we did all the above and now I have no excuse not to put in a bunch of bike miles. All under the table or straight from the couch! With book on lap -- what could be easier and funner? Ed says I wont use it and it will be yet another thing we then have to put on Craigslist. I think he is wrong. We will see.] I pedaled for about five minutes and I wrapped nothing. I got the message that Sparrow is home with a fever and so I offered to bring Snowdrop here after school. (She was supposed to spend a pre-holiday afternoon with her mom.

I asked her how I could make it up to her given the sick bro and the change in plans. She suggests a visit to Clasen's before coming to the farmhouse. I'm on it!

In the car today, I listen to a whole string of snow songs on the radio. You can't imagine how many winter themed ditties there are! Winter Wonderland, Let it Snow, Sleigh Ride, Jingle Bells, I've Got my Love to Keep me Warm, Frosty, In the Bleak Midwinter, Baby It's Cold Outside -- all on the radio today and all on my playlist! Oh oh, can you tell what decade I'm from? 

Let me end it with a snowy poem:

Out of the bosom of the air,

Out of the cloud-folds of her garments shaken,

Over the woodlands brown and bare,

Over the harvest-fields forsaken,

Silent, and soft, and slow,

Descends the snow.

(H.W. Longfellow)

Thursday

I'm up just before sunrise. Quick check on cats, speedy refill of the feeding station for the cheepers. All good.

Then a shout up to Ed: wake up, we need to hit the road!

No time for breakfast. Ed has an appointment. In Janesville. A revisit to his eye surgeon. I quickly dump some coffee in a mug, scoop up a bag of granola for lap munching, and we're off.

It's a pleasant and easy drive, just under an hour, though of course, once there, we have a lot of waiting before us. He needs a corrective procedure so there is, too, the wait afterwards. 

Thank goodness for comfortable and spacious waiting rooms.

Done.

But so long as we're in Janesville, shouldn't we at least taste the city's good stuff? Where's the nearest well regarded coffee shop? Last time I was here for Ed's eye surgery (3 years ago) we were on the eve of the pandemic and I walked around the river's edge, stopping at a place that was modestly okay. And no, I'm not fussy, though places lose me if they still serve coffee in styrofoam cups and if pastries are singularly wrapped in plastic. 

We drive over to a cafe called Havana Coffee. By now I'm starved for decadent anything. A place that reaches to Cuba for its name has to be adventurous and bold, don't you think?

Good sandwich for Ed, okay danish for me.

We are past the noon hour by the time we leave Janesville.

A quick turn around at the farmhouse and I'm off to pick up Snowdrop.

As usual, our best conversations take place during the car ride. I ask her if she had any squabbles with her friend during recess (there had been some disagreement earlier on about the value of being a mermaid every day in their various pretend games: one girl thought no, the other yes). She considers this and then says -- no, not today. Actually I dont really know what the word squabbles means but I'm very good at knowing words that I don't know. 

Yes you are.

I pick up Taigu Noodles for supper. There is not a single noodle in our take out boxes (by choice) but it remains our favorite Chinese food in town. 

The full moon this month came last night. The Cold Moon. But today's lunar display could not be lovelier: orange initially, then brightening on the ascent. May it shine brightly on you as well tonight.

 

Wednesday

I'm up. Ed is already on a Zoom call. I shout down -- have you seen our old hen? He finishes his call and offers to go on a Peach hunt.

And he finds her. In the garage, huddled. We're sure she wasn't there last night. We had canvassed the place up and down, torch lights blazing. Who knows where she weathered the cold dark night, but she kept herself safe, even as we noticed more nocturnal animal activity around the coop.

Ed carries her back to the barn -- she'll stay there now that the opossum is gone, but it's hardly safe for her. She just doesn't move fast enough to escape any predators. Still, what are you going to do -- keep her in the garage? It would not take long for a raccoon to find her there.A sleeping chicken sees no danger. So, back she goes, into a barn corner where she at least stays out of the wintry weather.

The other chickens -- four Bresse girls, Unie the tiny one from a couple of years ago, and Henny -- almost but not quite as old as Peach -- they're active and undeterred by the cold outside. 

We will be vigilant about putting them away early today. 

Breakfast -- back to oatmeal!

Candle burning, tea steeping. My neck PT person reminded me to drink lots of water. I nodded in agreement and boasted that I make myself several cups of herbal tea each day and she said -- no no, I mean water. Not tea, not herbal tea. Water is water, so ... water!

I tell you, how fussy is that?! What makes water better than herbal tea? You can never satisfy these people! I make myself my tea and shrug off her insistent comments. Tea for the morning, water with dinner. Okay??

And blueberry muffins, baked later in the morning for the little girl who always eats three when she sees them resting, still warm, on the cake platter.

If you look at the calendar, you'll see us moving quickly toward Christmas and yet, I have paused in thinking about it. Somehow routine stuff has filled my mornings and those imagined leisure hours have completely fizzled into not much free time at all. I will recharge my holiday batteries today. Or tomorrow. As soon as I have enough time to make my way to the charging station! This weekend? The next week?

In the afternoon, Snowdrop is here. 

Happy and insistent that we click into our routines. As usual I am of two minds how much to indulge her great love for repetition. Same snack, same fruits, same spot on the orange couch. Rereading same books. She is always happiest if we stick with the tried and true.

In the evening, I drop her off, pick up spinach from my CSA, and return to the farmhouse. Chili tonight. And a salad. Talk about repetition! Might I be just a little like my granddaughter? Favorite suppers, favorite chocolate afterwards,  a glass of wine. A movie. And finally, a book upstairs. The set up rarely changes. And isn't that just grand!