::: still winter :::

I've been hearing a lot of people murmuring wistfully that they wish this snow would melt. They're ready for SPRING, they declare, wrapping their arms around their sweatered torsos while affecting a theatrical shiver. And while I will concede that this winter has given us a pounding of precipitation, I have to give it credit; it's a winter, I tell ya, a genuine, bona fide winter. None of those half-hearted "dustings" or anemic "flurries" for us here in the midwest. We've had one serious snowstorm and blustery blizzard after another, transforming major metropolitan areas into thick blanketed ghost towns, making our rural roads impassable and turning my country lane into a snowbank lined luge track. It stops people in their tracks, slows us all down, shows us we're simply not in control.

And I like it.

My fourteen-year-old son isn't the one who checks the school closings hour-by-hour, beginning the night before. I am. My children aren't the ones standing at the patio door with their noses pressed against the cold, frosty glass, watching the giant flakes float from a bright blue sky. That would be me. And while you would say, "Well, it's pretty, but I don't like to drive in it," neither do I, which is why I don't. It's those snow days that get me off the hook, give me permission to stay at home, rent an iTunes movie or three, plant myself on the couch with a few good books, spend a day in the kitchen making bread or pizza or soup or some new recipe that happens to call for things that I already have in my pantry. On snow days, I get a reprieve. On snow days, all bets are off.

I'm not really sure why this is, because, as a stay-at-home mom, I generally get to determine what does and doesn't get done on any given day. Still, the days usually find me not staying home but trotting from store to store and place to place collecting chipped coconut or tamarind or sheep grain or three ring binders or Dad's blood pressure medicine or someone's forgotten coat/hat/shoes/iPod. I go to meetings and concerts and plays and programs. Even when I'm home, I open the door to repairmen, salesmen, Jehovah's Witnesses, and Amish guys selling assembly-line, fundraiser pizzas.

When the snowstorms comes, though, I know that no one's going to brave my luge track to hand me a Watchtower or peddle a pie. I'm safe to leave my hair uncombed, wear my comfortable elastic-waist pants with the hole in the butt and leave my face bare. I don't have to make the bed, if I don't wanna, and I don't have to shovel the walkway. But I CAN if I WANT to, see. I've got all the time in the world.

Winter allows layers of clothing. I can wear my sweater leggings and laced black boots under a corduroy skirt, a cotton shirt, an earthy sweater and a jacket, my toasty leather mittens with the fingered liners inside, and a thick, fluffy scarf. The perfect ensemble to hide all of my wobbly bits.

And, besides, what happens when this gorgeous blanket of white succumbs to a warm March rain or an unexpected February sun? Do midwesterners really believe that melting snow in January is a harbinger of Spring? Do they not remember their many, many years of living here, in a place where snow continues to fall and snowstorms stack up, sometimes into early May?

When the snow melts in the first quarter of the year, my friends, what we are left with is mud. Puddles and pockets and pits of mud. When the white stuff relents, we are left with a mess, the detritus of winter's litterers unveiled. Now, instead of a harmless puddle of melted snow beside my kitchen door, I'm faced with a heap of mud-encrusted shoes, clothes and children. The dogs no longer leave little wet footprints when they bound in from an outdoor romp, but sploshy smears of sludge. The passel of piles of poo that sunk, steaming, beneath the snow upon first deposit and lay preserved through the months of December, January, February, are now exposed and thawed, sodden and bloated, waiting for an unsuspecting child's, repairman's or Jehovah's Witness's shoe to carry them through the door, onto the white carpet or the wood floor where I find the remains later after feeling a slight wetness on the bottom of my last pair of clean socks.

Yes, Spring will come. When mid-April arrives, her spikes of green crocus leaves breaking up the monochrome, immutable landscape, Spring will come. It will not arrive sooner, no matter how we wish and whine and swear and shiver. It will not arrive in late February or mid-March or early April. For some of us, it will not arrive in early May. So, let's have Winter, shall we? A real, bona fide winter! With the countrysides cloaked in quilts of blue and white, stitched in sticks of black, bejeweled with icicles and spangled with glistening powder, canopied by skies of blue and hazy snowblink, occasionally leaving a gift of fleeting, photogenic air and surface hoar, begging to be admired, gone by the first glance of the sun.

As I look out the window, I'm thrilled to find a fresh batch of flurries gliding to the ground. I'll shove my toes into my comfy slippers and make a cup of hot tea.

It is still winter, after all.

::: snowflakes :::

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.

Even as our cloudy fancies take
Suddenly shape in some divine expression,
Even as the troubled heart doth make
In the white countenance confession,
The troubled sky reveals
The grief it feels.

This is the poem of the air,
Slowly in silent syllables recorded;
this is the secret of despair,
Long in its cloudy bosom hoarded,
now whispered and revealed
to wood and field.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

::: winter cats :::

::: alas! how changed from the fair scene :::

When winter winds are piercing chill,

And through the hawthorn blows the gale,

With solemn feet I tread the hill,

That overbrows the lonely vale.

O'er the bare upland, and away

Through the long reach of desert woods,

The embracing sunbeams chastely play,

And gladden these deep solitudes.

Where, twisted round the barren oak,

The summer vine in beauty clung,

And summer winds the stillness broke,

The crystal icicle is hung.

Where, from their frozen urns, mute springs

Pour out the river's gradual tide,

Shrilly the skater's iron rings,

And voices fill the woodland side.

Alas! how changed from the fair scene,

When birds sang out their mellow lay,

And winds were soft, and woods were green,

And the song ceased not with the day!

But still wild music is abroad,

Pale, desert woods! within your crowd;

And gathering winds, in hoarse accord,

Amid the vocal reeds pipe loud.

Chill airs and wintry winds! my ear

Has grown familiar with your song;

I hear it in the opening year,

I listen, and it cheers me long.

~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

::: in the bleak midwinter :::

Usually, this time of the year, trying to get any schoolwork done at all is such a drag. I'm so affected by the weather, the brown dreariness of it, that I feel nothing like learning, accomplishing, teaching, and I feel only like burrowing, hibernating, lounging and lazing.

I'm not saying that I don't feel that way now, during this bleak midwinter, but I am saying that I'm learning to force myself into a discipline of sorts. Where I would normally awake and say, "Well, I slept in too long today. The whole day's shot. So much for that," I'm instead saying, "Okay. So I awoke late. We'll forgo the normal schedule and get some breakfast, and I'll read to the girls while they're eating."

Usually, forcing myself to start something creates a type of perpetual motion, and I find myself gaining some steam from each thing I make myself do. If I'm completely unmotivated, folding and putting away a load of laundry gets me somewhat motivated, and it continues on from there.

I'm not sure why things seem so overwhelming right now. Life is going very well, I'd say, for the most part. Sure, there are things that could be better, relationships that could use repairing, and money is always a strain, but, for the most part, life is good. But even one small thing, one extra stop for an errand, one more meeting or phone call or page of a schoolbook, and the thought makes me want to crumble. And yet, if I eliminate all of those things, if I find myself without commitments and activities, I sink into a boredom that serves pretty well as depression, and then I simply don't know what to do with myself.

A friend has recently offered to loan me a therapy light, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that works. I plan to use it during lesson times when I'm reading to the girls aloud. That should make for plenty of exposure to the light, given that the bulk of our day involves reading aloud.

I also really feel that I should get out and take walks, but just the thought of it almost sends me to tears. Isn't that pitiful?

So, for now, I'll keep forcing myself to do what needs doing and looking for light whereever I can find it. I'm so thankful for those around me who are patient and loving and kind and pitch in whereever they're able. Without you, I'd be completely lost.

::: the addiction returns :::

I thought I had recovered. I didn't think I'd ever go back. I'd hidden my needles away and figured that I'd overcome my addiction. No more spending money on my habit. No more withdrawal when I couldn't get to my needles. I was cured. Done. Finished.

That's what I thought.

But, somehow, the addiction snuck back into my life. I pulled my box of needles from the top shelf where I'd stashed them away years ago and laid them all out before me, only to find that I needed more. The needles I had were not the ones I needed.

So off I went, into the heart of the big city. I unabashedly walked in and spent $43 on my addiction, right there, in broad daylight. I immediately felt guilty. But before I knew it, I was alone in my room, knitting away.

Socks. The socks made me do it.

I've been wanting to try socks for a long time. I've made a few simple projects, and I even posted them on a blog a few years ago here, but I'd stopped knitting for strange reasons that I'd rather not divulge here. The reasons were strange enough, however, for me to dispose of my large box of yarn and my gallon-sized bag of knitting needles. And after watching friend after friend knit adorable socks, I finally decided that I had to give it a shot.

It took me a little while to find my way around a ball of yarn and a set of DPNs again, but  finally got the hang of it, and I invited my friend Jill for a knit-in. We holed ourselves up in my little bedroom retreat, lit some candles, turned on the lights on the Christmas tree (Yes. It is. I know.), and knit and gabbed. Jill even solved the mystery of the long-abandoned knitting project I couldn't finish because I'd begun them at a fiber arts club to which I'd never returned and couldn't remember what the process was called.

"Look up twined knitting," she suggested, and I took a gander at the Google results on my trusty iMac. And, ohmygoodness, there it was. I'd been taught it as Tvåändsstickning and it had been the most fun I'd had with two needles in my hand.

Of course, that led me to lust after other patterns, which I will now lead you to lust over. You can turn back now, if you like. Don't say I didn't warn you.

All of these patterns can be found at the Sandra Singh website, plus many, many more. The website advertises free knitting patterns, but I didn't find any. Still, the patterns they have are quite adorable.

So now I'm chomping at the bit to finish my very first pair of socks so that I can give myself permission to move on to another fun pattern.

The addiction has indeed returned. Bring on the needles.

::: come on, baby, light my tree :::

It's not really something I want to do, but I've begun anyway. If it were up to me, I'd probably have twinkling lights dotting my home all-year-round. But I'm not sure I like the connotations that come to mind when I think about Christmas lights on my house in July, so I've begun the process of de-holidazing my home.

After a trip to the local Stuff*Mart for a heap of plastic boxes (how much money do they make selling these things, doyathink?), it was time to start disassembling the decorations I'd assembled just a couple of weeks ago. Well, okay, maybe it was a couple of months ago. But it sure doesn't seem like it's been long since Monet was bugging me about going out to cut down our tree, which was finally put up and decorated on Christmas eve. I actually think we got the last tree they sold, as we were on the lot as the place was shutting down the day before Christmas eve.

And today, while Monet was disposing of said tree, now brittle and prickly with lack of life, he stuffed it into the burn barrel, lit it aflame, and then watched in panic as it tumbled out of the barrel and rolled, constantly combusting, toward the big red barn just west, and downhill, from the burn barrel. Flames, he says, were as high as the first floor of the treehouse, which is twenty feet off the ground, and he panicked as he envisioned the barn erupting into flames. He made haste toward the house, not quite knowing what to say, and stammered, "Can someone help me with this?" gesturing toward the flaming tree in the barnyard. Bo, not knowing what Monet could possibly need help with, looked at him with mild confusion/frustration/condescension, and then noticed the twenty-foot flaming mass of snapping, popping holiday spirit through the kitchen window. General panic ensued.

It's a very good thing that Christmas trees are quickly consumed by fire. It was all over in a matter of minutes and the barn was largely unharmed, thanks partly to Houdin, who grabbed flaming, smoldering pine branches with his bare hands. He says he has blisters to prove it. I wasn't here when the whole thing took place; I was out buying large plastic boxes to stash away our Christmas joy, so I have to take his word for it.

After all of the fun and fire had died down, Monet came up with this little piece of wisdom. "You know, when these things happen, no one thinks to stop and take a picture of it, because if they're taking a picture, they're not putting out the fire."

Yeah.

Kinda makes a girl appreciate her vintage-seventies fake, white tree with its retro-rotating base. Less chance of it catching the barn on fire.

Hope your post-holiday happenings are flame-free.

Of snow and scarves and hats and men

Man, check out that snow. It's like a shake-em-up after all of the big flakes have fallen and the after-effects of the giant hand have stopped. The air is almost perfectly still, and just the little bits and wisps of tiny, delicate flurries remain. The birds are totally into the feeders right now, especially the suet, and while I sit here, a little downy woodpecker is hanging off the suet grate, sending out gentle chips and chirps, not eating, really, but just hanging there, basking in the comfort that energy and sustenance is right beneath his feet.

It's a still and peaceful morning. Bo has trudged off to his new job (as of about five months ago) as the production manager of a local chocolate company, the children are nestled all snug in their beds (even the eldest, I'm sure, who is making the most of that bohemian bent she gets from her father now that she's a freshman in college), and even the dogs are silent, all six of them, dotted here and there throughout the house, some under covers with children, some snuggled together in a pile of cast-off clothing that's not good enough for the thrift store, and one curled up on the soft blanket behind me. Even my live-in father, who rises early to indulge himself in one of his favorite obsessive activities, vacuuming, is still off in dreamland.

It won't last long, this silence. In less than an hour, Sweetheart and I will be scrambling to get to piano lessons, stuffing ourselves into our winter layers and wrapping scarves around our necks. I might even wear my hat, which is something I love to do but am still not convinced that I can actually pull it off. Some people's heads are made for hats. Some people have just the right distance between their eyebrows and their hairlines. I, however, have eyebrows that get lost under ever hat I wear, and it makes me look like a very serious swimmer who has shaved off all of his body hair to gain speed. This hat, however, looks halfway decent on me. At least I think it does when I first put it on. After a while, I think it just looks silly, which irks me because I really want to be the kind of person who can pull off wearing a hat.

Scarves, however, I can do, because anyone with a neck can do a scarf, and so I proudly don the masterpiece I created in honor of Bo's 36th birthday. It's made of this beautiful natural, earthy brown wool from Australia, which has no meaning whatsoever, other than it's natural and it's earthy and it's brown. But everything else about the scarf has meaning, symbolism. It's 36 stitches wide, to represent the number of years Bo had been on the planet at that time. It's 6'2" long, which is how tall he was when he'd been on the planet for 36 years. It has 13 ribs, which represents how many years we'd been married at that time. And it took me for. eh. ver. to make the thing. Ribbing and I are not good friends. I've tried several ribbed projects and always seem to mess them up somehow. But I was determined with this one, so I kept at it. And now it's done, and it's still beautiful six years later. Problem: Bo doesn't really wear it. Solution: I do. And I love how I can toss one end ever-so-carelessly over my shoulder and the other end still hangs past my belly button. It matches my style, my general color choices (earth tones and blacks) and I am unabashedly proud that I made it. I used to resist wearing it because it belonged to Bo, but now I think it belongs to me. He's just not a scarf-wearer, even though he has a neck and everything. Even though I always knew I'd have a Great Gatsby dresser in my stash of immediate male relatives, I just don't. They don't like khaki pants, or crisp white shirts, or those very cool haircuts that men had in the 20's. For me, a pocket watch chain draped from a pair of tan pleated pants is such a turn-on, just about as much as a simple pair of jeans and a white t-shirt. Classic. Quite sexy. And while I've recently talked Bo into wearing white t-shirts (love it, love it, love it), I don't think the crisp dress shirt, pocket watch and khakis are coming along anytime soon, and it seems I'm out of men, with my sons prefering much more casual attire.

And now I hear the click of the microwave door as my father starts his daily rituals of coffee, the telling of terrible news stories, and reminders of what I must do today. And then the vacumming will begin.

The silence is broken. It's time for me to get going with my day.