and once more...

We woke up to snow. It's not as if we did not expect it, but you can know something is about to be delivered and still not like the package when it arrives.

Snow. White, a cold white snow. Like the color of the bouquet on the butcher block, only not really.





Over breakfast, we consider it: snow in the second half of March does appear in Madison every now and then, but this snow, sticking snow, covering frozen earth is over and beyond the usual...











After work, when the light feels very tentative, almost not there anymore, we decide to load the donkey car with skis (I'd put them away for the season... how stupid was that!) and try to make our best loop by Lake Waubesa. A hare's breath from the farmette.





Ah. you notice Ed's shorter hair? I trimmed it this morning. Wild inventor no more.

At Lake Waubesa, where the creek comes in, there is a curious conglomeration of birds. Wild swan? So unusual to see them here!





A little less unusual is the call of the sandhill crane. In the summer, we see them often -- on the streams, the wetlands. Today, their warbling call keeps us company on the ski trails as well. How did they get here? Are they deeply disappointed with the snow cover?


The skiing is difficult. We're trailblazers once more and the snow is sticky, clinging to anything and everything. Slow going.

And I am somewhat in a hurry because my girl and her husband will be stopping by for dinner. They couldn't come yesterday and it seemed too long to wait until the Sunday when I'm back from my spring break.





 Pasta with a tomato sauce and sea foods.





Tomorrow, the cold, really cold air will come down yet again and it will stay in place for the better part of this week. An unusual spring. A spring that isn't really a spring. Extended winter. For no good reason.

On the upside, 24 hours passed and we did not cancel our airfares for June. So we're set there. Can't back out now. And that's a good thing.

...like a record

You remember when we played records for music, instead of Smart phones? When a scratch would cause the disc to not move the song forward and it would replay again and again until you pushed it clumsily past the scratch mark?

Well now, we're stuck alright. Like a scratch on a record. We repeat each day and the weather repeats itself and I swear I'm going to wake up tomorrow and we'll do exactly what we did today: look desperately outside for signs of spring and, too, cancel all June bookings made the previous day.

I can't explain the impasse in the weather, but I can say a word about our tortuous June trip planning. We found the cheap flight. Okay. But nothing else felt right. Here we were, flying to Iceland and from there, flying on cheap airlines you've not have heard of to the continent. That part was okay. I didn't mind the round about travel. And I didn't mind having to take a long train ride south, and then east and after, west and north -- in other words up and down the continent. And we were willing to change airports between flights in New York. And to arrive at midnight in one city and depart at 1 a.m. from another. But the price of staying any amount of time in Iceland wiped out any savings from the complicated plans. So what's the point? We cancelled the whole thing.

Yes, yes, there was Iceland in the deal. I visited Iceland once, by myself. Many, many decades ago.  I went in November because it was inexpensive then. The sun was out for three hours each day and even though I was a mere schoolgirl, not even drinking age in the States, I rented a car and ventured out into the bleak countryside. What a dumb trip that was. The roads were treacherous and I had to turn back. All my money blown on a rental that got me nowhere. In Reykjavik, waiters were on strike and stores were closed and I could get nothing to eat. Like I said, maybe I'm biased.

So the whole "cheap flight" (but expensive stay) through Iceland is out and it's back to Barcelona that'll be plenty exciting, thank you, even as we'll not even step foot in Barcelona until the very last day and then only for about twelve hours.


In other non-news, we had a pretty little breakfast in the sun room...





...and I had my 75 minute yoga class and I did some modest amount of house cleaning, but mainly I sat at my computer and that's not too satisfying for a Sunday afternoon, especially a sunny Sunday afternoon and so I was quite happy when Ed agreed to go for a walk.


 













We don't often do that. Usually we switch from cross country skiing (winter) to biking (all other seasons), but it's just too cold for me to enjoy a bike ride in this most difficult pre-spring season. And now that I ever so inadvertently brought up the weather here on Ocean, may I tell you how stunned I am to hear that we are getting ANOTHER snowstorm tomorrow?

Never mind, I'm outta here by the end of the week. I'll chase spring elsewhere.

As for St Patrick's -- well, I have no Irish in me, but not belonging to some thing, place or group has never stopped me from doing as the Romans do, or in this case the Irish do. So I made cabbage soup for supper (isn't that truly Irish?)  and in an uncharacteristic for these times move, I baked a cake. Not Irish, but Italian: lemon and olive oil.














And if you aren't yet convinced that this was actually quite the lovely day, do note that, against a backdrop of snow, I saw this solitary cardinal. Hello, cardinal. Are you chirping away because we are just three days away from (calendar) spring?

it ain't over 'til...

Last night, I was dead tired significantly before Ed. With the utmost effort I dragged myself upstairs just before midnight. Sleep, I needed sleep. But as I was pulling the quilt ever so comfortably up to my chin, I heard Ed dial out downstairs. A rapid phone conversation. Then another.
Ed? Is something wrong?
I'll come up in a minute.
Thoughts of sleep? Gone.
What happened??
Oh... I cancelled my Pakistani Airline flight. (If you've read the previous post, you'll know that he had just purchased a ticket for our vacation in June and I had purchased mine and all was well, even as we were traveling separately, on different airlines.)
Why?? Ed would never stay away from something just because it was mildly unsafe.
Well, looking at the Pakistani Airline record, I realized there is a strong probability that they may cancel flights, ground their fleet, do any number of things that would cause problems. If we're to meet up in Barcelona, I can't be one week late.
Was it easy to cancel?
No, but I explained to them that this is the law (in fact, maybe you don't know this, but we now have a legal right to cancel, free of charge, any reservation we make, within 24 hours) and that I would not pay their penalty fee. So then I had to call my credit card company to put a stop to the fee that they nonetheless tried to impose.

Bottom line: we are on square one, except not really, because I have my own purchased ticket to Barcelona on my beloved airlines. By myself. Ed continues to grumble that this year's fares are $100 more than last year's fares. Never mind. I can cancel my flight as well. And so we really are back on square one.

It is, I think, rather fascinating and disconcerting to realize that I have now spent most of my March posting lines on the topic of travel scheduling for the month of June.


We are up early today. Ed is anxious to get back to his inventions and mechanical manipulations and my mind is spinning about our travel plans and decisions.

But breakfast always puts me in the gentlest mindset...





...and today is also a yoga morning and so by the time I come back to travel scheming at around noon, I am as chill as the day is cold.

I wont run you through the many, many, MANY stages of imagining a cheap way to get to Europe in June (and BTW, just to be totally bummed at the unfairness of it all, did you know that if you fly from Milan to Chicago round trip, you  are charged half the price of the flight from Chicago to Milan, round trip?). Suffice it to say that Ed's addiction to the Matrix website saved the day for us. There is one and only one way that you can cut the cost by 50% and it requires the exact combination of flights and some pretty unconventional stop overs, but we found it and we booked it. So we are set to go on what promises to be an exotically weird and I think perhaps beautiful set of travel adventures for that month. And we'll be traveling together. So that if one gets overwhelmed by the sheer complexity of what we've put in place, the other will steer the ship and carry us forth.


Our day ended in a good way. Ed suggested we go watch the UW women's team play volley ball at the Field House. We'd done that once, many many years back -- in those days when we didn't know each other well and I was taken aback then when I realized that he didn't really care if our home team won or lost, he just liked watching a good play.

Tonight, the Badger team was fabulously in control of the court. I don't know if you've ever attended a women's sport competition at your local college or university -- it doesn't draw crowds. Parents are the dominant demographic. At our game, people snacked on nachos with melted cheese and drank bottles of coke or water. It's all rather tame and endearing. Occasionally a dad will shout "Go Emily!" and you have to really wonder if Emily, playing for Loyola in Chicago, really wants her dad to be here, shouting "Go Emily" again and again for the world to hear.





After, we went back to the Indian Restaurant just down the street and I smiled at the fact that for nearly eight years we never went to an Indian restaurant and now, in the last month alone we've chosen Indian food three times.






So it was quite the day. And I want to pat myself on the back for steering clear of writing about the weather. Even though it was cold and it will remain cold here tomorrow and the next day and the next day and the day after that.

what feels right

Sometimes, a dinner looks like this: left over tomato soup, quickly grilled shrimp, grated Irish cheddar,  horseradish and tomato, salad with stuff you rarely imagine in a salad (like leftover broccoli). I put it on the little table and we do our own combinations. For me, the cheese belongs in the soup, for Ed it goes on the salad. The shrimp can be mixed into most anything, or they can be eaten solo.



 


Since our earliest days together, I understood this about Ed -- he can only do what his gut tells him feels right for him. In return, I knew that he would never tell me what to do with any portion of my meal, my day, let alone my life.

So I am not at all surprised that we do finally reach an agreement on our June travels. It is a simple one: we each travel on the flights we feel strong attachment to (Ed, with the Pakistani carriers, me with the Americans and French, then later in the month, both of us with the Spaniards; I still can't wrap my mind around the fact that in 2007 the Pakistani Airline was banned, for safety reasons, from flying most of their aircraft in any part of Europe) -- to meet up at our final destination.

Many would see this as a rather bizarre way to vacation together. Not us. We spend mountains of time in each others company at the farmette. Really, whole mountain ranges of time. Flights apart? I think we can handle it.

As to the destination -- well, half of it is predictable: Sorede, the village in France that keeps pulling us (me especially) back each year. The other half is less predictable, but I am running terribly ahead of myself. My thoughts right now are back with the miserable days we're having -- cold and wet. Even Isis is hunched at the shoulders as he navigates the paths between the sheep shed and the farmhouse.





I'm cheered with the prospect of spring break which, for me, starts this coming Thursday.

If you stop thinking (and talking) about the weather (a task so difficult for us right now that no one here can quite do it), there are some nice touches to the day. For example: I glanced, in passing, at my hair today. My God. I used to have a color expert paint, trim and fluff it up monthly and now it hasn't seen a haircut person since my daughter's wedding in September. So I walked in to a tiny shop where the proprietor cares that her products are made of potatoes, oats and honey and I set her loose with the scissors (no painting: I'm done with that) and I feel much better.

And of course, earlier, much earlier, there was breakfast. It's like a tickle to the day. Here's my (daily?) photo of that tickle. Today, the mad inventor's hair is freshly wet. It will be wet again as he takes out his motorbike and gets caught in a freezing rain.

Thursday

Well it's Thursday. You can never expect much from this day here. So let me spin you through a couple of photos and let's call it a day, okay?

Early breakfast in the sun room:




This, after Isis yet again rearranged his stomach on the bed moments before sunrise. Isis! Get off the bed if you're going to clean your internal digestive system! (Add to list for today: laundry)


After breakfast we have a half hour's worth of intense negotiations over summer travels. Pakistani Airlines (the airline offering the cheapest fares to Europe) has, according to a number of websites, a terrible safety record. Ed rightfully points out that even if their record is ten times worse than the next bad one, the chance of a fatal accident are incredibly small.

But I remind Ed that anxiety doesn't always track reality and I do not want to begin nor end our big vacation with anxiety packed tightly into my backpack.

We end this back and forth abruptly as I have an early morning class to teach. And then another. And there are office hours and meetings with important people at the Law School and before you know it, the daylight hours are fading.

My routine is that on Thursday after work I pick up groceries for the week. Today I am so buried in office tasks that I almost put shopping off and suggest that we make do with pizza. And then I reconsider. To get this done - work, the shopping, the cooking -- all of it, will give me a sense of relief. So I persevere.


Two grocery stores later, I'm driving home. I take the pretty route. It's still cold, but the sun is out momentarily. And yes, I know the whole next week is slated to be cold, but I'm no longer upset by this. I am now on a roll toward spring and in any event, spring break begins soon and by the time that's over, we'll be in April.






At home, I start the laundry, unload groceries, stir-fry a dinner and clean up. Dinner isn't special, but it's fresh and honest, with left over chicken pieces for the cat.






And then, too, I picked up a $5 bunch of flowers for the week. Uplifting to the core.





So we watch our crazy stack of library movies and we come back to our talk of summer travels and eventually, hours later, I exhale enough to sit down and write a post. There you have it. Thursday. I say this with a smile. Because the day is almost over and predictably, I survived.

then and now

A year ago today... I remember it so well!  Go ahead, click on it: right here.

Important things to take note of:

A year ago, the lakes were no longer ice covered.
The snow was long gone.
Crocuses were abundantly in bloom.

You cannot expect 78 degrees on a March day every year. But can we split the difference? Because I would have loved 53 degrees, as opposed to the 28 I had to confront today at noon.

Of course, there was the sunshine. I do love the sunshine. I wake up and it is the first thing I notice.



(through the snow on the skylight)


The second thing I notice is that Isis is turning over his stomach (I have no better explanation for it) on the bed. Well now, dear old cat. That took care of the rest of sleep time.

So long as we were up early (and we were: thank you, Isis), while stumbling through breakfast routines...


 


...we resumed our discussion of summer plans. Ed found cheap flights and we would be booking them right now but for the fact that they are on Pakistani Airlines and it's not part of my frequent flyer program! Ridiculous -- he tells me. Not for me it isn't. So we're stuck. It could be that we'll fly separately. We've done that before!

The rest of the day was so predictable that I'm shying away from any more details. Just a photo of our frozen lake, so that next year I wont feel so terribly morose when March 13, 2014 will (again) fail to produce the crocuses.



Lake Monona



Monona Bay, with a snowman in the middle

cat cow

If you have done yoga, you know this:  there is a cat pose, where you're on all fours, curving your spine, tucking your chin in and typically this is followed by cow pose, where you drop your belly, lift your head and, with chest soaring, gaze directed upwards and outwards. In the next breath you return to the cat pose. A classic sequence.

You could say that we had a cat cow day today.

The morning is delightful! An unexpected cloud dispersal, a touch of sunshine -- cold still, but who cares!





Breakfast (with the crazy haired inventor) is in the sun room...





...and I have to push my chair to the side. Too bright!





I know it wont last. By late afternoon, when I come back to the farmhouse, the flakes are coming down hard and fast. I'm almost charmed by the delicate nature of this snow shower, were it not for the fact that I know damn well it's March 12 -- a time when inconsequential snow showers are no longer welcome.





Still, you could say that it is a classic sequence. Because later, closer to sunset, I witness this beautiful clearing of the skies:





Dinner? You could say that Isis set the menu. Here's why:

Every morning I am the first one showered and dressed. I go downstairs, I straighten up, I put away dried dishes from the previous day. No matter how deeply asleep Isis is, when I'm in the kitchen, he instantly wakes and trotts down to look for me there. As I start to bring out breakfast foods, he positions himself on the floor and waits. I cut up fruits, pour oatmeal, get out the yogurt. He sits, quite still, except for his roving eyes that follow my movements. And inevitably I'll ask if he wants a morning snack and it'll appear to me that by his presence he is giving me a firm "yes" response. So I take out whatever meaty leftover there may be (perhaps from many days back) and give a piece of it. Satisfied, he returns upstairs and joins Ed in bed while I continue with breakfast preparation. (If he wants a second breakfast of milk, he'll come down when Ed comes down.)

I realized this morning that he has devoured the last of the Sunday's chicken breast. And so I have to prepare dinner with him in mind. Well now, that's easy: nothing, nothing pleases him more than Trader Joe's smoked salmon (he'll take it from Whole Foods as well, but I'm not offering that), so I defrost the salmon and plan dinner around it (with a broccoli scrambled eggs concoction at the side and of course, the salad).






Meanwhile, outside, the clouds have returned and it's snowing. Cow. Or cat. Or both.

Monday

It's tough not to get too preoccupied with the weather. Last year at this time we had a burst of heat that killed the apple crop, but gave the rest of us a wonderful March -- of sunshine and of warm, jacket-less days, enchanting days of hope.

This year it's quite the opposite. We can't seem to dig out from that freezing level. It rained, sure, it did that for a while. But the ground is frozen solid and the rain stays in puddles and ponds, flooding creeks, refusing to sink into an inhospitable dirt.






It was a hurried day. My work plate was full.

Still, every day has color. Let me take you straight to our supper of left over tomato soup. Very red. With Hook's cheddar shredded on top. And the inevitable, wonderful, eclectic salad.






But for real color, there's the guy who would not let me test a camera photo card without making faces, dodging my aim, blocking with a hand, a finger -- but I got him! My crazy inventor, adding spice and color to the day.

fog

Eerie, dreary, drippy, ghostly, soupy... wait, stop now. The list is too long. The weather map states: zero visibility. That says it all.

One way to turn a day around is to accomplish things despite the odds. So I clean the farmhouse before it is even decent to be up and about. And then I go to a 75 minute yoga class. Well now.

It is foggy nonetheless.






Breakfast: let's have it in the sunroom!
There's no sun...
So what, who cares, let's pretend...





He looks like a mad scientist in that photo and that's not entirely wrong because he is immersed in design projects right now. And so he retreats to the sheep shed for a good part of each day. I take stock. Okay, granola baking time.





The farmhouse soaks in the aroma of cinnamon. I settle in to do work. Classes will be well prepared this week. There are no distractions. Lots of time to work.

In the evening, Ed comes in from the sheep shed. Project put to rest for the night. Because it's wet outdoors, Isis refuses to step down until they both are on the safe, dry floors of the farmhouse.





My daughter and her husband come for dinner. The proverbial burst of sunlight.





And then things quiet down again. The sun disappears and I never even notice that it was one hour later than yesterday. No matter. You have to pay a price for spring. The upswing will come. It's just a little late to our liking, but it'll come. Maybe this week, maybe not. But it'll come.

Saturday

They said it would rain and it did rain, though not enough to wash away the snow, which is a shame. If I can't ski on it, or find beauty in its freshness, then I would like it please to go away.

Not surprisingly, I focused my attention on future fun projects. I've already planned out major garden expansions (I did that in February, when every northern gardener goes hog wild with ideas and spends too much on seeds and to-be-delivered-in-May bare root plants). So I focused on forthcoming breaks and slightly more distant vacations.

But first, there was breakfast. Isis has been joining us for the morning meal. He seems to be respectful of my desire to keep him off tables (whereas in the sheep shed, there isn't a surface that he hasn't inhabited in one way or another) and I am grateful for that.





Lately, we've had multiple cat visitors to the farmette. I bang pots and make loud noises when they come. I feel Isis is vulnerable in the territorial squabbles that inevitably take place between him and vagabond cats. Isis is getting old. I know a thing or two about not wanting to fight anything or anyone when you get older.

Ed, however, is always intrigued by cat visitors. He talks about cat projects that we should take on once Isis is no longer with us. I listen, respectfully but without enthusiasm.

Over the years, of course, I have come to quite love Isis (except at night, in bed). But my affection for animals pales when compared to Ed's passion for all things that move on fours (or, in the alternative, waddle on twos) and can't speak any language, let alone the English language. He even likes these guys:





I photographed them for you today on my way to my yoga class, but they are no special subject for me at all. Any Madisonian, or person living south of the city will see more geese -- in the fields, geese on the bike paths, geese flying in pairs or in clusters, geese just hanging around -- more than  one could possibly want to in the course of a day. Two years ago, our city decided that there were too many geese here and, with permission from the federal government, they set out to shoot some 350 of them. (There were protests. Some geese were indeed 'removed,' but we continues to have a lot of geese.) I would like to believe that someday, these Canadian geese will reacquaint themselves with their true national origin and fly north, like they're supposed to. Ed, on the other hand, has a soft spot even for geese.
They poop everywhere! -- I'll protest.
You mean they fertilize our soil -- he'll retort.

So after yoga, I try hard to work on my classes, but I find myself instead finishing up details of spring break planning and then, with a shift of focus, I begin my annual ritual of trying out summer adventure ideas on Ed. What will tickle his fancy is a true life's mystery.

Finally, in the evening, we put aside the leftover tomato soup for future nights. Ed has suggested that we try take out form a nearby Indian restaurant.

And here I just want to say that trying out restaurants was a lot more exciting before the advent of Yelp or Tripadvisor. You would venture forth because someone told you that the place is a good bet and more often than not you'd come out entirely satisfied. These days, I'll read a published review and then, just to be thorough, I'll go on to read what the general populace had to say about it. Even the very best places will have their detractors. The lesser eateries will be overrun with condemnation:  "bland!" "we were poisoned! Avoid this place at all costs!" "they treated us like scum!" "reheated, dry, tasteless" -- on and on. It can take the anticipatory spark out of dining out.

In the end, Ed does pick up foods from Taj (which may well be the closest restaurant to the farmette at only 4.4 miles door to door). And it was fine and so far, neither of us is sick. I know that's setting the bar low, but honestly, on a gray drizzly March day, I think staying healthy and focused is a good enough goal to set for oneself.

the bright side

I pay my respects to winter today. I know no one likes this challenging season. I admit that I prefer spring. And summer. Maybe even autumn. But a winter like the one we're putting aside now, did bring us its share of joy.

There's fog early in the morning. Not serious stuff (as it appears to me). Pretty wetness that clings to thin branches and makes them look very lacy, very fragile.





I have no appointments, no meetings and so I can work at home. After breakfast.






This is the day that I get back to doing yoga and that's really good, because it's been a while since I've stretched myself into a downdog or a pigeon pose. On the way to class, I pause to watch deer to the side of the road.





They look at me, I look at them. It takes no more than a second for them to decide to flee.






I wonder if they're made bolder by the weather? By the sunshine? By the feeling of spring?  I rarely see deer at this time of day. Maybe they need that indulgence? That lovely warm feeling of sun on your back?

I get that very feeling today: Ed and I do our final ski run for the year (I know, I know, there have been a lot of finals, but this is the real one... there will be no more). It's almost evening and the sun is low. But it feels good and warm. I unzip my jacket. We're both hatless.











The snow isn't great. Icy in places, thin in other spots. We go off trail for a while and that really is painful: wet, deep, uncomfortable. But it doesn't matter. It's like being on the final minutes of a vacation -- you feel protective, attached to the time, the place. Our ski runs this year have been wonderful. You can't help but feel somewhat nostalgic about letting them go now.





Supper. Tomato soup, to use up those bags of garden tomatoes in our freezer. Next week, we'll be starting seeds for this years crop. Incredible to think that we are this close to the growing season.