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A View From the Field |
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February, 2013 February 28 Oops. I have to do a journal. I was reading.
I think it was around 10:30 when I got to bed last night, and the lake sang me to sleep. I was up several times, of course, and the guys thought I was going to get up at 7:30. Hah. I did finally get up around 9:30. I knitted four rows on the German shawl, and then I untangled some more of the center of the yarn ball. Someplace in there is a break, but I haven't found it yet.
I was late getting to the studio, and it took so long to do my surfing - Thursday is a day with lots to read - that I didn't do anything else. Sigh.
The weather was cloudy and chilly. The temperature stayed around 25º, plus or minus a couple of degrees. The wind peaked at 6:00 this morning, with sustained winds of 31 mph and gusts to 39 mph. It has died down a little, but we are still having gusts up to 32 mph. It's been from the east or east-northeast all day. The first few years I was here, we never had east winds, but now we seem to have them more than west winds. Weird.
The guys were their usual sleepy selves. I finally replenished the dry food bowls, and Grayson was pleased, although he ate what I spilled on the floor first. Tidy little cat.
So that's about all I have to report. I will probably read some more before I go up to the north end, even though it's late. The lake will sing me to sleep. It's a dark, windy night in the field.
February 27 Well, last night I went back to my old habits. When I got up to the north end, I began to try to untangle the mess in the center of the ball of yarn for the German shawl, and then I had to take a bath, so it was 11:00 before I got to bed. I slept well, although I was up several times. The clouds were so thick that the moon didn't make much of an impression on them.
I was awake around 8:30, but that seemed too early, so I didn't get up until around 10:00. I knitted on the German shawl - two rows - and I untangled some more of the center of the ball, so I was late getting to the studio. The only task of the day was to go to the post office, which I did, and I came back with a ton of catalogs, magazines, and bills, including one that was due today. Oops. I really must go to the post office more often. I wanted to stop at the store, but there were three cars parked in such a way that I would have had to park on a slant a long way from the steps, so I didn't. I will have to go back, probably Friday, because I'm running out of eggs and JD, but neither is dire yet.
The weather was sort of blah. The temperature went up to 33º and it still is. It was mostly cloudy, but not too dark. I could hear the lake starting to sing when I got up, and it got louder as the day went on, until now it's really roaring. The reason is that the wind shifted around to the east, and it has risen all day, until now it's blowing a steady 28 mph with gusts up to 39 mph. Oh, goodie! Gale force gusts! Yee-hah! There is an area of snow to our east, but unfortunately so far it is moving toward the southwest, and it's missing us. I hope as the night goes on, we get some of it. Anyway, it seems like our warm spell is over, thank goodness, and now we will get some colder temps and maybe, just maybe, a little snow. Or I hope so.
The guys were sleepy today, as usual. Louie spent a whole lot of time on my lap and got brushed. When I finished processing my mail, Grayson got on my lap and got a good back rub, which he just loves. Both of them are shedding. I think it's a little too early for that, but since they're in the house and it's been warm in here, I suppose their bodies are telling them spring is here. Not so fast, guys - we could have a lot more cold weather and snow yet to come!
I finally got over to the windows and fiddled with the camera, and I think perhaps I have it aimed properly now. We'll see, but it's a lot better than it was. While I was over there, I moved some stuff around behind the chair and pulled it back more where it belongs. I hope I have enough room to move the table back a bit, too, so I can get into the cupboard, but I didn't try that.
So now I'm going up to the north end and go to bed earlier than I did last night. They are playing Van Cliburn doing Tchaikovsky, but while I like that, I don't like it enough to stay up for. It's a dark, windy night in the field, but so far it's not very cold.
February 26 I made it into bed by 9:30 last night, but I had some wakeful times during the night and I was up several times, so I didn't get up until nearly 9:00. I knitted, for once, and I'm making slow progress.
i didn't do anything I wanted to do today, because I didn't feel all that good. I don't know if I have a cold, but I feel like I'm fighting something. So I did my surfing and sort of diddled around. While the talking was going on, I got the German shawl cast on and I knitted the first two rows. I screwed up the second half a bit, but I don't think it will ever be seen. I'm still fighting the yarn. The center of the ball is so tightly wound that it has bonded together in spots and getting it straightened out without breaking the yarn as been hard. It's almost a luxury to knit this one - it starts out with only 245 stitches, but it will get a whole lot more before I'm done, especially since I'm going to make it wider and there are two increases on every right side row. It's L-shaped - or V shaped, maybe - and I will be interested in seeing how that works. I'm also going to be rather interested to see how in the world I ever manage to block it.
The weather was almost a repeat of yesterday. When I was up around 7:00, the moon was just going down behind a cloud bank over Hunter's Point, and all I could see was a little yellow slice. The day started out nice and clear again, but by 10:30 the clouds were moving in and by 2:00 it was cloudy. The temperature hit 35º around 11:00, and it has fallen slowly since. There wasn't any wind again. I guess we may have one more day of temps over freezing before it gets colder again. I don't think we've lost very much snow, but I have some ferocious icicles, and every so often one or more would let go and scare the cats.
By the way, I know something happened to the camera overnight. I suspect that a critter tried to get into the house via the path through the patio doorframe. Anyway, I apologize for not fixing it, but I forgot about it. In fact, between 11:45 and 12:00 today, it got moved again, so evidently the critters are still coming. If you looked at the pictures this afternoon, though, you could see some of the drift up against the great room wall. I will try to remember to fix things tomorrow. I think just moving the tripod will get it back in the right direction, but I want to fix the slant while I'm at it. Since I can't make the camera software go full screen, it's hard to check it from across the room. I'll try. I still get vertigo when I look at that slanted horizon.
The guys were not quite as active as they were yesterday, unless you count their activity under the tripod. I think they slept for most of the day. However, I thought I heard a thud during the talking and when I got up to make my dinner, the navy blue chair in the great room was lying on its side. I can't imagine how that happened, but at least there was nobody under it when I picked it up! They tried to make like it didn't concern them, but I could tell they were a bit embarrassed by it. Usually, cats are smart enough not to repeat something that they know they shouldn't do.
Louie spent some time under the east windows, and he was lying with his head upside down and his paw over his eyes. He looked so cute I wanted to see if I could take a picture of him - and then I discovered that all my rechargeable batteries, including the ones in the camera that claim they discharge slowly, were dead. So I got some regular batteries into the camera, but by that time Louie had gone away. Darn.
Tonight I should take a bath, so I will go up to the north end shortly and try to get to bed early again. It's another cloudy night in the field, but the moon will make it bright again.
February 25 So I was in bed by 9:00 last night, and I slept well, with only three wakeups. I got up around 8;00. You have to remember that the three wakeups totaled about an hour, so i only got 10 hours of sleep, which seems to be the right amount for me these days. I didn't knit, because I wanted to do my surfing.
Well. Not long after breakfast, I had one of the nastier accidents I've had lately. So I cleaned myself up, changed my bottoms, and put the dirty ones in the washer. Then, on the way back to the studio, I discovered a huge splat on the floor in the hallway. That was hard to clean up, because I don't bend over that well and it had to be wiped up with paper towels. Oh, woe.
Anyway, I went off to see Johanna, and when I got there, the door was closed and there didn't seem to be anybody downstairs. So I came home, since it was too early to go to the post office. I called, and oh, it was next Monday. I distinctly heard her say she was going to put me down for today, but she obviously didn't. Oh, well.
So I had a long day in which I did nothing much except knit on the ruffly scarf. I was interested when I saw that yarn (if you can call it that) but I'm not very impressed by it now. It works up fairly easily, although it's easy to lose a stitch, but they are right when they call it a "novelty" yarn and I don't doubt the novelty will wear off pretty fast. i haven't found any that are nice colors and the one I have is very slippery. I had to rip it out and start over because it came out too wide and too short. I'm doing it over now, and the width is fine, but I won't know about the length until I get to the end. Actually, I got another ball that will be a more useful bunch of colors, but - meh.
One reason I did nothing is that I think I may have come down with - or I'm fighting - a slight cold. When I was up around 3:00 I started sneezing and my nose has been runnier than usual today. I don't feel all that good, so I think I will try to get to bed early again tonight and fight.
The weather started out beautiful this morning. It was still cloudy when the moon set over the mountain, but I could see it. By the time I got up it was almost completely clear, and it stayed that way until around 11:00, when the clouds started to move in. It got cloudy later in the afternoon, and I think it was cloudy at sunset, but they claim it's going to be clear tonight and maybe tomorrow, too. The temperature did get up to 34º for a while, enough to cause some dripping and some nice icicles. By the way, the sun shining through the icicles this morning was beautiful. There wasn't any wind to speak of. John doesn't think we will get any of that storm that's down in the great plains, darn it, but there will be some snow later this week or next.
The guys were full of ginger this morning. They like it when I get up early and don't knit. They were happy when I came right back home, and they slept for the afternoon. Louie spent part of the afternoon under the east windows, the first time anybody has been there in a long time. While he was there Grayson jumped on my lap and got petted, and Louie had to come and sit on the edge of the counter, looking very sour. There is definitely some jealousy between them over me, but I guess that's to be expected.
I hope the sky is clear tonight, because the moon is full and I love to see it shining on the snow.
Now I will totter up to the north end and go to sleep. It's a dark, warmish and hopefully clear night in the field.
February 24 I did what I said I would, and I turned out the light just after 9:00. I slept fairly well, with the usual wakeups, but I was up around 5:30 and thanks to my furry friends, I didn't really get back to sleep. I don't know what got into them, but they were bounding around the bed and wrestling and chasing each other around. Grr.
I got up when the alarm went off and did my morning thing. I wasn't as early as I wanted to be, which was a problem, because I got behind some slow drivers, including Mary Ann and Bill (who were behind an extremely timid driver). The road wasn't very good down to Phoenix, but from there south, they had salted, and while it was messy, it wasn't snowy.
Church was lovely. Pastor's sermon was a very good one and there was communion. Besides, Eleanor was there (my 90-plus friend). Between her being sick and the weather and my back, it's been a couple of months since I've seen her. She is wonderful.
It was a long service, but the roads were good until I got to Delaware and there was no traffic in my direction, so after I passed a couple of people going out of Mohawk, I could go at whatever speed I wanted. I got home around 1:00. It's not that those people were going so slowly, but when it's salty and sloppy like it was, I prefer to be at the head of the pack so I can keep my windshield clean.
I was very surprised to see a lot of cars coming and going both when I went south and when I came home. I don't know what they were doing, since I don't think there's anything going on this weekend. We don't usually have that much traffic until summer.
I didn't do a whole lot during the afternoon, but I did get the taxes packed up and ready to send tomorrow. I will stop at the post office on my way home from seeing Johanna and send it off. It's a load off my mind when I get that chore done, although this year I am a bit nervous. Hopefully, I won't have to pay anything. My income is so small I shouldn't.
The weather was really blah today. It was dark and cloudy but nothing came down that I know of. The temperature was steady at about 28º and there was no wind to speak of. Blah. You might have noticed, though, that the ice has come back into our end of the harbor. It's not thick and it's not stable, but it's there, and it was cold enough and calm enough that there was even a film over what yesterday was open water.
I forgot to mention that as of the 20th we had as much snow as we did all last season - 195". So clearly we'll have more this year. I thought there was another storm coming our way, but not according to the Weather Underground. We'll see what John Dee has to say about that.
The guys were full of energy after about 5;00 this morning, but by the time I got home, they had calmed down and they slept for most of the afternoon. A good plan, in my opinion.
So now I will read until the virus scan completes on the laptop, and then I will toddle up to the north end and go to bed early again. It's a dark, warmish, calm night in the field.
February 23 I was reading and listening to the radio last night, and they played Beethoven's Fifth, so of course I had to stay here for that. I fooled around for a while before I went to bed, and I've decided to just go with a cast on I know, on bigger needles, and hope it will stretch enough. I got to bed around 11:30, and I slept, except that I was up about every hour and a half. I think it was the fish. I slept hard in between, though, and when I woke up at 8:30, I decided I might as well get up, so I might be ready to go to bed early tonight. It snowed all night, by the way, hard enough that I couldn't see the lights of town.
I knitted on the Faroese shawl, and two rows are now taking a bit less than an hour, so I was early getting to the studio. There was some reading, but I finished my surfing quite early. I had several things in mind to do, but I decided under the circumstances I'd better finish up the tax stuff, so that is what I did. I now have a modest little pile of in, out and FYI. I want to check a few things against my last year's planner, but I will try to get everything packed up tomorrow so I can give it to Ron on Monday and get it off to Nancy.
Then I worked on the 2013 ledger for a while. I can't finish up February yet, because I haven't paid all the bills. In fact, I don't have all the bills, although I think most of them are at the post office. And Social Security day isn't until Wednesday, but I'm up to date as of today.
The weather was very snowy overnight, and I guess it continued to snow until around 1:00 this afternoon. Then we had a couple of rays of sunshine. I'm happy to report that the sun is now peaking almost over the top window frame from my chair. That's a good sign. We have 10¾ hours of daylight now and we're gaining at 3⅓minutes a day. It's nice not to have it quite so dark anymore. Anyway, the temperature was around 29º, plus or minus a degree, all day, and there wasn't much wind at all. Except for a few minutes at the end of the snow, it was dull and gray.
Around 6:00, the tractor came by, and when I looked, Trevor was driving it! He did a good job, too, for one with so little practice. I don't think I would have had a lot of trouble getting out, but there was about 4" of heavy, wet new snow, and it's good to get that piled up before it freezes with the ruts in it.
The guys were their sleepy selves today, so not much to report there.
Now I think I will go up to the north end soon and try to get to bed early. There doesn't seem to be anything to keep me from church tomorrow, and since there's communion, I want to go. It's a dark, not very cold night in the field.
February 22 I went up to the north end early last night, with the idea of casting on the German shawl. Well. I have now learned not to use that cast on with a circular needle - and maybe not with that yarn. I even had trouble ripping it out when I decided I wasn't getting the right effect. Ugh! The yarn is pretty, sort of gray and blue with very long color changes, but it is a very fuzzy strand plied with a thin, thread-like strand. The combination of the fuzzy yarn and the needle made it impossible to do what I wanted to do. So tonight I'm taking a pair of straight needles, plus the other cast-on book with me, and we'll see where we go from here. I may actually end up knitting a couple of plain rows, just to get things evened out before I start the pattern. I got this yarn from Craftsy, and frequently they sell leftovers or discontinued yarns or colors. If my experience is any indication, I know why the yarn may be discontinued. I think it will work up nicely, if I ever get it started right.
Anyway, as a result of all that, plus a bath, it was 11:00 or later when I got to bed. I had a hard time getting to sleep, and I was wakeful for the first part of the night. After about 4:00. I went so deeply asleep that I had to have a potty dream to wake up enough to take a walk, and I was groggy when I did. That was around 7:30, I think. I went back to sleep and got up around 10:00, maybe. I knitted on the Faroese shawl, another two rows. Slowly I'm getting to the point where I'll be able to do three or four rows, but I'm not there yet.
I didn't do much else. I discovered, when I got to the kitchen, that I was supposed to wash dishes last night, so I have to do that tonight. I even forgot that I was supposed to go to the post office today, so I think I'll wait until Monday and go after I see Johanna. I did call my accountant, so now I must, must, must get the tax stuff together and bundled up for her. i am going to get screwed this year on that front. Michigan changed the laws last year and the way they did it, I won't get a refund for my property taxes anymore. I guess all that sort of slipped by last year when they did it, and according to Nancy, a lot of people are very, very angry. Good. The governor and legislature do not have our good at heart and maybe next year, when the election is, we can get rid of them and get some better people in control. I know I'm angry, as well as wondering how I'm going to cope. I relied on that refund to pay this year's taxes. Oh, sigh...
The weather was nondescript until about 5:00. The temperature was around 26º, plus or minus a degree or two, all day, with an occasional gust of wind from the south but otherwise not much. Along about 4:30 the snow finally got here, and it's been snowing lightly ever since. I guess it's supposed to be mostly over by tomorrow morning, and there aren't any big winds or anything associated with it. Just another front passing through.
The guys were sleepy all day, and I don't have much to report there.
So that was my day, and I think tonight I will read for a while and not try the knitting thing. It's a dark, snowy night in the field, but it isn't very cold or windy.
February 21 I was in bed before 10:00 last night, but I should have stayed up. I had a hard time getting to sleep and I didn't sleep very well. I was up a number of times. the moon is waxing, though, and it was nice to have it light out when I got up. It didn't help that Grayson jumped on me at 6:00 and around 8:00, Louie started mewing and jumped on me, too. I couldn't get them out of the room, but I finally chased them away and went back to sleep until around 9:00. They seemed happier when I got up. I knitted my two rows before I got dressed.
All was well until I had a pretty bad accident which was nasty to clean up after. I think it had something to do with what I ate last night, but it's hard to say. In the middle of that, I got two calls from Ron. In the first he said he was trying to warm up the tractor. In the second, he reported that an AT&T truck had gotten stuck in the culverts and it would take the tractor to pull it out, and the diesel was still warming up. That diesel is easy on fuel, but in the cold weather it sometimes has to warm up for an hour or two before it will work.
Anyway, sometime in the middle of the afternoon, Jack came around and cleared out the driveway and the drifts in front of the garage. I feel for him; he's been plowing at the school and at Mariner and he's been doing it almost continuously for the past four days. Anyway, my driveway is now drivable again, so that's a good thing.
Speaking of the snow, according to the Road Commission, we had almost 26" from Monday through yesterday. Jack said he thinks we got hit harder this time than Calumet did, which is unusual, except that we get the lake enhancement that they don't.
Today was an altogether quieter day. There wasn't much wind, from the east or northeast, and there was only a little snow this morning. The temperature rose slowly from 15º at midnight to 24º now. It was dark and cloudy all day, of course.
I don't know what has gotten into the kitties, but I have some suspicions that I didn't get a chance to check out today. They're still unsettled, although they did sleep for most of the afternoon, except when Jack was here. Louie will run at the hint of anybody coming, and Grayson just does not like that tractor.
I did finally get the 2012 ledger done, I think, although I will have to check over my figures. I guess it's time to call my accountant. I have all the documents in a pile and I have only to go through them to find the ones she needs, so things are coming along. I'm about where I was last year, I guess. i don't keep receipts, exactly. I use my check register, my credit card bills and my planner to get things together. Lots of things are different with the taxes this year, so I only hope I'm in good shape.
I was thinking about that last night. I had been a bit relieved because my finances seemed to be in better shape than they were at this time last year - if you discount the credit card bill! - and along comes a dental crown. So there goes my $1000. I should know better than to relax.
Speaking of that, while I always hate to beg for money, this is a new year. You all helped me enormously last year in keeping the computers and the camera up and running, but that wasn't a one-time thing. I appreciate any help you can give, and you are all very generous people. Thanks.
So now I think I will go up to the north end and maybe cast on a new shawl before I take a bath. I really need a bath, after this morning. It's a dark, cold night in the field, but no snow until tomorrow...
February 20 I was reading and chewing on my crushed ice last night kj1when I felt something rough against my tongue, and when I investigated, I discovered that the inside face had cracked off a tooth - the one in front of the last one that went. Oh, dear. Well, there was nothing I could do about it then - or now, for that matter. I went up to the north end rather early, but I knitted on the new sock, so it was close to 11:00 when I got to bed. I had to take a bath, and I had to cut my fingernails, which were getting too long to type with. I slept very well, I'm glad to say.
I got up around 9:30, and when I sat up, Louie was lying on the rug - right where I wanted to put my feet, of course - fully on his back but with his front legs off to his left. Wow, to be so relaxed! I managed to work my way around him without bothering him too much, but he picks the most difficult places to lie. He's so huge he takes up a lot of space.
I knitted and arbitrated a few disagreements. Slowly I'm whittling away at the stitch count on the Faroese shawl. I keep thinking I want to cast on the next shawl, but I know if I do, I'll work on it, because it's much more interesting and besides I seem to be changing the pattern a lot. We'll see. I couldn't do that this morning because I left the book with the cast on I want to use - a new one for me - in the studio.
I called the dentist's office as soon as I could, and I more or less talked them out of making me go down just to look at my tooth, but the first appointment I could get is on April 10. That will be a busy week, since I have a doctor's appointment on the 8th. The tooth doesn't hurt or anything, so waiting won't hurt.
I didn't do anything but put some stuff in the dishwasher.
It was still snowing when I got up this morning, but I could tell by the sound of the lake that the wind was dying down. It was still snowing, and it continued to snow until around 3:30 PM. The lake is still pretty riled up and the wind is still gusting up to nearly 30 mph, but the blizzard and the winter advisory are both over. The temperature has now gone up to 15º, but it was around 12º for most of the day, which put the wind chill well below 0º.
The Road Commission reports 12" of snow yesterday (I think that's from 10:00 AM to 10:00 AM today). I will be interested to see how much more we got today. My problem is that I'm snowed in. The east-west part of the driveway is drifted over, and there is a two-foot or higher drift in front of the garage and breezeway doors. Evidently there wasn't much drifting on the road, and nobody wanted to be out long enough to check my driveway. Well, I hadn't planned to go anywhere except maybe the post office on Friday, so as long as they're aware that I have a problem, it will be all right. There are some ferocious drifts in front of the patio doors to the studio, too, but unfortunately, I'd have to get out onto the deck somehow to take any reasonable pictures of them. The wind swirls around that corner and there is one peak that must be about 4' high, although it's not too big, and it's drifted over the windowsill of the great room window there. A very respectable amount of snow fell.
The kitties were rather contentious this morning but after I got up and gave them something to eat, they went back into hibernation. Louie kept asking to sit at inconvenient times for me, so he didn't get his pet today. I guess the barometer was rising, which is why they were so wakeful this morning.
So now I will read a bit before i go up to the north end and go to bed early. It's a dark, cold, windy night in the field, but I don't think it's snowing right now.
February 19 Oh, my. After I wrote this, I got into my new Kipling and read all the Just So Stories. I still enjoy them just as much - maybe more - as I did when I was five. That meant it was extremely late when I went to bed. I slept well, of course. I was awakened by the phone at 10:00 - Carolyn canceling tomorrow because she's sick. I'm sorry both that she is sick and that the meeting is canceled. I don't know when we will meet again.
Anyway, I got up and knitted my two rows. I noticed while I was knitting that the lake was roaring baritone, and I could see the trees thrashing around and every so often a gust of wind would crash against the house. It was snowing hard. I was glad I had no plans to go out today!
I didn't do much of anything. I didn't get enough sleep last night and I was tired. I did work on my ruffly scarf. I don't remember if I mentioned that I finished it last week and immediately unraveled it. It was too wide and thick and too short. So I've cast on with two fewer stitches, and I would have made more progress this afternoon if I hadn't dropped a stitch and had to unknit to find it. I also cast on a pair of socks, in a sort of stripy wool that has jojoba and aloe in it. If nothing else, it will be good for my hands while I'm knitting. I only started it and knit a couple of rows. The cable on the needle seems rather stiff. I'm sure it will open up as I knit, but for the time being, I was fighting it.
The weather - oh the weather! I think it was snowing when I went to get my dinner last night, and I know it was snowing hard when I went to bed. When I got to the studio and checked the weather, we were under a blizzard warning. Still are, in fact. There was a report of a non-thunderstorm wind gust of 49 mph, so I looked at the history page, and our highest wind gust was in fact 51.8 mph sometime between 11:00 and noon. That's still the highest, but sometime between 6:00 and 8:00 this evening, we had 49.5 mph and sustained winds of 39 mph - that's gale force, friends. The wind has been from the north-northeast all day and the sustained winds have been above 35 mph since 7:00 this morning. Oh, goodie! We haven't had a blizzard in a couple of years. I love them! Such fun! The temperature went down from 28º at midnight to 11º at 4:00 PM, and it has now recovered a degree or two, but man, it is COLD out there! The wind chill now is -11º. Oh, how I love a good blizzard! Especially when the wind is from the north and it's fairly warm in here and I can hunker under the down comforter and listen to the lake roar and the wind howl.
We've had quite a bit of snow, too. I don't know how much, but there is a nice drift up against my garage door, and I have some lovely carved drifts in front of the patio doors to the studio. The Road Commission reported 7½" by (I think) 10:00 this morning, and there was more during the day. It has been hard to tell how much of the snow I was seeing was coming down and how much was blowing, because it was blowing and drifting a lot. I'm afraid there will be some serious drifting down in the culverts tomorrow, and I'm glad I don't have to go out in it. By the time I need to go to the post office and the store, Ron and Jack will have cleaned it up.
We vegged today. I did because I was tired, and the kitties did because that's what kitties do in weather like this. There were a couple of altercations. Sometime this morning, there was crying out over in the ugly chair, and when I got up to look, Louie was trying to oust Grayson, so I chased Louie away. First come, first rights. Louie got his pet and Grayson got a pet, too. I think they both curled up in the mohair throw and the fleece for most of the day. Wise kitties.
Tonight I need to take a bath, whether or not I'm going out tomorrow (I'm not), so I will be going up to the north end shortly. I've dipped into Kipling and I've dipped into Doyle, and I think I will read my own stuff for a while. Now it's a lovely blizzard and gale in the field and it's a great night to sleep.
February 18 I made it into bed by about 10:30, and I slept very well. I was up several times, of course. At about 5:00 AM I chased the cats out of the bedroom and closed the door. I was up around 8:00, and as it turned out, i probably should have gotten up then. However, I went back to sleep and it was close to 11:00 before I got up.
It was a morning of errors. I knitted, and I got to the place where I needed to add in a new ball of yarn. When I went fishing for the end in the middle of the ball, I couldn't find it, and not only did I have to wind up nearly half the ball, I had a real rat's nest to untangle before I could wind up the ball, attach the ends together and finish the row. Then, when I got up to brush my teeth, I went to pour out what remained of my overnight mug of water and instead of pouring it in the sink, I poured most of it on the counter. My mind...When I started to get dressed, I realized that I had put on my underpants backward. They don't fit very well that way. I was so late that I decided to have lunch rather than breakfast, but when I opened the can of soup, I had the can at an angle and poured out some of it, not in the sink, but on the counter edge in front of the sink. My mind...
After that, I sat very quietly and did my surfing, except that Louie wanted to sit on my lap just as I had to get up to avoid an accident, and then later, he jumped up with no warning, and I think I now have scratches all over my arm through my sweatshirt. I was so late and there is so much to read on Monday that I didn't finish my surfing until right before the talking started. However, I had been thinking about Kindles overnight, so I went out to Amazon, and i now have all the works of Rudyard Kipling, A. Conan Doyle and Lewis Carroll on both computers. If I'm ever lucky enough to get my Kindle Fire, I'll have them there, too. At $2.99 per file. Some of them are hard to access - no general index - but it's all there and I now have all the stuff I've always wanted without having a shelf full of musty old used books. When I get the Kindle, it will be easier to hold and read, too.
Many years ago, after Hudson's closed in downtown Detroit and before I left for the suburbs, I discovered a used bookstore just over the Lodge Freeway from where I worked, and I was able to get copies of three Kipling books i had read as a teenager and always wanted to own. They were bound in beautiful red leather which was beginning to crumble away, and they were only about 4" x 6", which made the type rather small, but they were my books - Stalky & Co., Puck of Pook's Hill and Farewell Rewards and Fairies. Stalky is a fun romp through turn-of-the- 20th-century English private schools, but the other two are a really interesting bunch of stories about very early British history - like around the time of the Norman Conquest. As far as I can tell, the history is accurate, but the stories are told from the Anglo-Saxon point of view and whatever else you may think about Kipling, he was a phenomenally good writer. My daddy got me onto Kipling as a little kid, probably right after he got home from the war, I guess when I was 5 or so, with Just So Stories, and I took it from there. He had an anthology of Kipling that I glommed onto, and it took me a long time to hunt down the books, because even the GP library didn't have R&F. There is some of Kipling's stuff I don't like, but the British history and the India stories are among my favorite things ever. So now I have them all.
Conan Doyle came into my life in a similar way. My dad had the complete Sherlock Holmes (up to that time) in an anthology (from BOMC, I think) and I devoured all that, too. That led me to at least one of the historical novels, The Gray Company, that I found in the library and had a fundamental impact on my own writing.
When I was five or so, daddy was going to read Alice in Wonderland to me, but when Alice fell down the rabbit hole, I was so traumatized I refused to let him go further, and I was an adult before i finally read it and Through the Looking Glass. Then I got a Modern Library Giant (remember those?) that had most of Lewis Carroll's fiction and poetry, and I discovered not only the Alice books, but the two Sylvie and Bruno books. My copies of Carroll and Doyle were in my bedroom until I moved, and I'm not sure what happened to them then, but I haven't seen them since. I assume they're either in the back hallway or in the basement, but it seems to me that having them on a Kindle will be much easier.
By the way, apropos Alice and the rabbit hole, for at least 25 years afterward, I had a recurring dream about falling down a hole very much like Alice's, except that sometimes there were swords and knives sticking out from the walls that I had to elude, and only once or twice did I ever reach the bottom. I don't think my dad ever knew how much those few minutes he spent reading to me colored my life. I was very glad when I stopped having those dreams, except that they were replaced by the cliff dreams...At least one of my feet has always been firmly planted in the fantasy world.
Whew! This is going to be a long one.
I was also looking for the Nero Wolfe mysteries, and while it looks like they're all available, since they're still under copyright, they're $8 a copy, and somewhere in the basement, I have all the paperbacks, which were cheaper. However, the range of books you can get for Kindle for little or nothing is phenomenal, and I suppose I'll be adding more to my elibrary. Not everything is there, but enough to keep me happy for a while.
The weather was blah. It was supposed to snow, but it hasn't started yet, or maybe it just has. The temperature got up to 33º briefly, and there wasn't much wind. It was cloudy and gray. Blah.
The guys began agitating for breakfast at around 5:00, so I threw them out of the bedroom and closed the door. After I did that, there was some scuffling outside - I like to think it was Grayson taking it out on Louie, who was the principal agitator. They were glad to get back in when I opened the door. They even ate their canned food, which they usually don't like very well. After that, they slept for the rest of the day, except when Louie tried to jump on me. If he'd asked and waited for me to invite him up, I would have let him come, but not that way. I did fill the dry food bowls, so they're happier about that, although Grayson is acting like he's not sure what I might do next.
So now I have lots of stuff to read, and I might just take the laptop up to the north end. I'm still reading my own stuff here, and it's Voyages 3, which is one of my favorites. I'm sleepy, but I doubt I could get to sleep yet, so I might as well read.
Now it's another dark, cold night in the field, and there is snow coming, if it isn't here already. By tomorrow it should be rather hairy out there.
February 17 I'm sorry about the camera. It hung at around 9:30 this morning, and I forgot to check it when I got home from church. It's a pity, too, because we had clear skies and tons of sunshine and it was really pretty, Oh, well. Those things happen. I'll try to be more careful, but it's been several weeks since it hung up, and I was getting lax. I think it had something to do with the restarts I had to do last week.
I made it into bed by 9:30 last night in spite of spending some time with my book on cast ons and bind offs, but I didn't sleep at all well. I was up any number of times and I didn't sleep very deeply in between. I really didn't want to get up this morning, but oh, well. I did.
I was a bit later than I wanted to get away, but it didn't matter much. There was no traffic in my direction, so I could go as fast as I wanted to. The road was mostly snow-covered all the way to Mohawk, but it wasn't slippery, because it was so cold. From Mohawk south, they had salted (ick - you should see my car!) so it was better, but the speed limits are lower I got to church around 10:00, which is when I usually do.
Church was nice, but short, since there was no communion today. Pastor's sermon was a good one, despite that he was having a problem with his pronouns. It was about Jesus' temptation in the wilderness and how that relates to us.
I got home before 1:00. For some reason not known to me, the garage door went down by itself when I left, and it did so again when I got home. Now I'm confused. It might have something to do with the humidity when it's cold, though. It was nice to know that the garage was closed while I was away.
The fishing klatch is apparently over, even though this is a long weekend. Aaron, however, was out there in his classy shack.
The weather was cold. It was only 10º when I left for church and 16º when I got home. It eventually got up to 22º (now) and there was some wind from the southwest at up to 25 mph this afternoon. It was clearing when I left for church and gloriously clear when I got home. Sometime late in the afternoon, it clouded up again. I don't know when because of the camera. About 15 minutes before sunset, there were some streaky clouds overhead that were alternately pink and blue - so pretty!
The guys were full of ginger this morning, racing up and down the hallway. Before I got up, Louie was wandering around peeping. I think it's because the dry food bowls are almost all empty. In fact, Grayson staged a major pout this evening when I went out to get my dinner because I didn't immediately sit down and fill the bowls. There is one still full, so tomorrow is early enough. I have to get some food from the breezeway anyway and I didn't feel like doing that today. They slept for the afternoon, but the barometer is dropping again.
For some reason, my knees were really bad today. I was tired, I know, but that doesn't seem to be all the answer. We'll see how things are tomorrow.
So that was my day. I think I will read for a while tonight before I go up to the north end and crash. It's a dark, windy night in the field and the snow is coming again. Goodie!
February 16 I don't remember quite what I did last night, but it was around 11:30 when I got to bed, I think. I slept better than the night before, but not really good. I was up several times, there were some unsettling dreams and this morning the guys got rambunctious before I was ready to get up. I got up around 9:30, I think.
I knitted, of course. I took the next shawl pattern up to the north end last night, because I think I'm going to have to make some changes to the pattern in order to be happy with it. i guess that was partly what kept me up, and I did some more work on it before I got dressed. It's going to be pretty, but the pattern says to use size 6 needles with yarn that is between lace-weight and sock-weight, and the result is only 18" wide. No. Size 4 needles, and enough repeats to make it at least 24" - and maybe 28". It's V-shaped, and I have no clue how I'm going to block it. I also wanted to decide how to cast on, and I think I know that.
It turned out to be a rather active day for me. It was wash day, and since there were only two loads, I think it's done with, or it will be before I go to bed. I actually started washing yesterday, because I had a full load of fleece to wash. I put that stuff away today, even though I haven't put the last two months' clothes away yet. I hope to do towels tomorrow, but we'll see. I absolutely had to get some stuff in from the breezeway, including TP and cat food, and I did that. That meant unpacking the last load of canned food, and I tried to tidy up a bit out there, although I didn't do very well. The dry food dishes are getting empty again, and Grayson got all excited when I sat down in front of the cupboard, but I didn't fill the dishes. There is still stuff there to eat. This time, they weren't crazy about the low-cal stuff. I sometimes think, though, that it's where the dishes are or what they were eating last. While I was over in that corner, I sorted out the stuff that was there, and I discovered that I overbought ramen noodles. I don't really like those things very much, but they are a light lunch on Sundays, when I eat breakfast really early. I refilled the pill dispensers in the studio and I'll do the others when I go up to the north end. Whew! That's more than I've done in one day in quite a while, but I'd been putting a lot of those things off for too long. To repay the guys for some canned food they don't like very well, tomorrow I'll give them their favorite.
It was another frigid, snowy day. The temperature stayed right around 13º all day, and there was a wind from the north, sometimes gusting up to 20 mph. It was cloudy and dull all day - although there was one ray of sunshine - and at intervals, it snowed lightly. My tire tracks from yesterday are all covered over, but if we got more than an inch or inch and a half, it would surprise me.
The fishermen were out on the ice again, although Aaron pulled his shack back to shore. I hope they're catching some fish. It has to have been cold out there!
The guys were more wakeful than usual today, but that's because I was doing something and they had to come and see what. Louie isn't as curious as Grayson is, but he is curious, especially when I'm doing something he hasn't seen before. Finally we all settled down and they could go to sleep on the fleece and the mohair in the great room. At one point, I went by them, and they were relaxing one behind the other and in almost exactly the same pose, except that Louie wraps the end of his tail over his leg (Buster did that) and Grayson sits on his tail. When they sit like that, you can see how much bigger Louie is than Grayson - like about twice as big. I know he's fat, but he would be a big cat if he was a normal weight. Grayson is essentially a little cat. Sorry, it only occurred to me now that I should have taken a picture. Next time...
So now it's time to trundle up to the north end and fill the pill dispensers there before I take my bath and go to bed early. I don't think there will be anything to keep me from going to church tomorrow.
Now it's a frigid, snowy night in the field and the idea of bed feels good.
February 15 Oh, I did it again, but not too badly. Just about the time I was going to go up to the north end, they played a LIszt transcription of a Schubert song that I love - "Auf dem Wasser zu singen" - and I got to wondering if there were any copies of the song floating around the Internet. Well, yes there are, several, by Lucia Popp, Elly Ameling, and Elisabeth Schwartzkopf, so I had to listen to those, and then I started thinking about some other Schubert that I love...I finally put a stop to it. With few exceptions, the fidelity of YouTube isn't all that great.
Tonight, I started looking for CDs, and I discovered that there aren't a whole lot of Schubert lieder recordings available anymore. In fact, it looks like I have more in my collection (somewhere) than I could get now. That's disappointing, but things like that go in and out of style. While a few sopranos and some baritones have recorded some lieder, I don't know how many of those recordings are still available. People don't know what they're missing. Google "Auf dem Wasser zu Singen" and "Der Hirt auf dem Felsen" and listen to the Ameling recordings. I think you'll see what I mean. Gorgeous, gorgeous stuff.
Anyway, I didn't take a bath, and I got to bed around 10:30, but I did not sleep well. I don't know what the problem was, but I was up several times and I was wakeful in between. I got up around 9:30 because I had to and I knitted my two rows. I got the shawl on a 32" needle. which is much easier to handle than the 40" I was using. I'm down to 457 stitches, so I'm making progress, slow as it seems. Of course, the fewer stitches, the faster it goes, but I won't feel I'm making progress until I can do four or more rows in an hour.
I didn't do very much, including a couple of things I needed to do. I did get the dishwasher unloaded, for once. I went to the post office and the store. All my pills came, and a nice little box of Godiva truffles, which was for yesterday. They're good, but not as good as Lake Champlain. Anyway, it was nice of the people who sent them to me.
The weather was cold and snowy. The temperature during the day hung in there at right around 12º. There was a brisk north wind, and the snow was coming in waves - typical lake effect. One minute it would be snowing hard and five minutes later the sun was almost out. It wasn't exactly wonderful outside.
The fishing klatch was still going on, though, and Aaron hauled his shack out on the ice. Considering where the guys were standing and fishing, unless they are totally insane, the breakup we had last weekend is all over and it's solid ice out there now. There is still some open water in the harbor, and I was talking to some people who live down at the other end and they don't have any ice at all at their place. Strange. Well, as long as the lake isn't iced over, we'll keep getting our lake effect snows, which is good.
The guys were mostly sleepy, as usual.
So now I will totter up to the north end and go to bed again. It's a dark, frigid, cloudy night in the field and there will be more snow.
February 14 Happy Valentine's Day to those of you who celebrate this day. I don't. It's another one I believe was concocted by the greeting card and flower industries. If you love someone that much, why do you have to have a special day to say so?
Anyway, I got to bed around 10:00 last night, but I had some wakeful periods during the night and some strange dreams. I was awake sometime, I think probably around 2;00, and when I looked outside, all the winter stars were shining brightly in the west. This is the first time this winter I've seen Orion. He was rather overshadowed by Jupiter in Taurus and Capella in the north, but it was quite clear. By the time I got up, around 10:00, it had clouded over. Oh, that was 12 hours, wasn't it? Well, I didn't get that much sleep.
I knitted and petted - Grayson spent the time lying on the rug near my feet - before I got dressed. I got most of the stuff into the dishwasher to run tonight and I did my surfing, and by that time the talking started. It's much nicer when I get up earlier. When I got to the kitchen, there were at least a dozen guys out on the ice, which, fortunately, had frozen together again. Oh, the fish klatch. I wondered when it was actually going to happen.
After I finished my surfing, I updated the software on both computers. And I discovered that I forgot to look for the messages on Sunday night, and my weekly backup was waiting for a disk, so I completed that. If they want me to do something, they should put out BIG messages and maybe ring a bell or something. I think I was here Sunday at 7:00, but I was either writing this or reading and somehow the message got lost.
The weather was nondescript, except that the wind had picked up around 8:00 this morning, and has now risen to the 25-35 mph range from the north. The temperature got up to 29º for a couple of hours early this morning then it started down and is now around 20º. It was uniformly cloudy all day, but not exceptionally dark. We were supposed to get snow, but if we had any, I didn't see it. Tomorrow will be better.
The guys were mostly sleeping today, although both of them have been bothering me lately. I don't know why. I assume it has something to do with food, but since there are still three full dry food dishes out there, I'm not going to sweat lt.
Now I guess I will have to go and prime the dishwasher before I totter up to the north end and take a bath. I had a small accident this morning, so I need to bathe. It's a dark, cold, windy night in the field.
February 13 I did it again. I wanted to check something in past years while I was writing last night's entry, and I realized that I hadn't converted the journals to Word since last August. So after I published this, I started doing that. The first one went horribly slow, since I couldn't remember where to find the commands, then something went haywire with October and the 10th through the 17th came out before the 1st when I sorted the entries, so that took some time to fix correctly. After that it went faster, except that I ended up reading all of January. I haven't edited anything since last January at least, but I didn't feel like getting into that. I found some typos and other errors in what I did read, and I apologize for that. I have to confess I've pretty much stopped rereading each day's entry before I post it. I am still having a lot of trouble with lower case "i" and with commas rather than periods, but I credit that to my eyes. I've always had that problem. Neither FrontPage nor Word check for sentences ending in periods (which is weird), and when FrontPage flags an "i", the red line under it is so small that frequently I don't see it.
Anyway, that took a while, and then, instead of going up to the north end, I started reading again. As a result, it was 12:30 before I got to bed. I slept well, after I got to sleep, and I got up around 9:00 because I had to walk.
I was glad to get up so early, and I had it all planned out...and then, when I got up to get ready to go to church, I had an accident. Oh, sigh. By the time I got cleaned up from that, it was too late to go, so I didn't get to church today. I was disappointed. I really wanted to go, but I would have been late and I don't like to come in late.
So I finished my surfing and after I read for a while, I took myself in hand and started working on my 2012 ledger. I have all the tax stuff, but not what I need for my part of it, and I need to complete the ledger before I will have it all. I haven't finished processing the credit card statements yet, but I do have them all annotated, and I did the first two statements of 2013 as well. I have a blank ledger for 2013, but I need to find that thing from Social Security saying what I am getting this year and what the Medicare deduction is. That isn't necessary for the tax stuff, so I won't sweat it. By early next week, if I keep at it, I should be able to call my accountant and warn her to expect a package.
Also, I got fed up and finally got all the trash off the counters this morning. It's much nicer in there now, even though the counters are a mess. Then I forgot to turn the heat off under my pan after I made my poached eggs this morning, so the pan is sort of a mess. Not as bad as the first time I did that with this pan, but not nice. I'm hoping I can scrub out what didn't wash out with the first soaking. My mind... Anyway, it's a bit nicer out in the kitchen, but not a whole lot. I have at least two more orange bags to fill and some sweeping to do before I even get at the counters and the stove.
So I guess I accomplished something today. Not a whole lot, and I still have a long list of stuff that needs doing, but something.
The weather was nondescript. It was sunny this morning, and it was nice to see the sun for a while. A bit after noon, the sun went away and it was cloudy for the rest of the afternoon. The temperature got up to 33º before the sun went away and it dropped off a bit. There wasn't much wind. Meh.
The guys were doing their thing today, mostly sleeping. Not much to report there. Louie would have spent the entire day on my lap if I'd let him. Grayson didn't get on my lap, but he got a nice petting and a brushing this morning.
I turned on the radio a bit late because I was doing something with the ledger, and shortly after I did, I got a call from Arthur. It was so nice to hear from him and to know he and Mary Ann are both doing all right. He's remarkable, and so is she. It was so nice to talk to him, but we talk so infrequently that it was a long conversation and would have been longer except that I think Mary Ann was calling him to dinner. So that was a nice way to end the day.
Now I'm going to read a bit more and try to get to bed a little earlier tonight. I don't know why it took me so long to take my bath last night, except that I took the time to scrub my feet. Anyway, I don't need to do anything much tonight, so unless I read forever, I should be in bed at a reasonable hour. It's a cloudy, fairly warm, calm night in the field.
February 12 Well, I got to bed shortly after 9:30 last night. I had some trouble getting to sleep, but eventually I did. I was up around 8:00, but that seemed a bit early, so I went back to sleep and i finally got up around 10:00. I actually might have slept longer except I got a phone solicitation for money.
While I was knitting, Carolyn called and said she was canceling the ladies' meeting for tomorrow, because her furnace was out. I was sorry, but it saved me from having to make a decision. I love these Copper Country natives - she was totally unfazed by the furnace, that her daughters had just left this morning and she was heating her whole house with a woodstove in her great room. And she's in her 80s. Eh - no problem. We'll cope.
So I knitted my two rows and that was all I did. I felt all right, but my knees were pretty sore. I guess it was a delayed reaction from Sunday.
Late this afternoon I got an email from Bonnie, via CHIA, saying that there will be an Ash Wednesday service at Shepherd of the Sea tomorrow, led by the pastor of Bethany and Sherry, whom I know from Carolyn's. I wasn't planning to go to St. Pauls' service because it is going to be in Hubbell and I don't fancy trekking all that way in the dark. Now I have to decide whether I want to go to Shepherd of the Sea, since I rather abandoned them a couple of years ago, but I probably will. I hate to miss church on Ash Wednesday. I did last year, but St. Pauls' is in the evening and I didn't know if Shepherd of the Sea was having one. Now I know they are, so I guess I will go.
The weather was nondescript. We had our requisite snow shower this morning, but mostly it was cloudy and dull. The temperature was between 21º and 24º all day, and while it was windy overnight, there was almost no wind at all during the day. Blah.
The kitties were blah, too. When I got up, Grayson stayed asleep in the window seat. Louie came into the bathroom and promptly went to sleep on the rug. Later Grayson went bump on the floor and came in, and he went to sleep, too. Today, at least, they seem to have a truce. Louie got his love-in and so did Grayson, but mostly they slept.
So now I think I will read for a little while before I go up to the north end and take my bath. It's a dark, cold, quiet night in the field.
February 11 I turned off the light at 8:45 last night, and I got up at 9:15 this morning. I feel much better. Not that I actually slept all that time - I was up at least five and probably six times. That was actually a good thing, because my feet were very swollen when I went to bed and I got rid of a lot of fluid overnight.
When I went to bed, it was snowing so hard that I couldn't see the lighthouse. The snow eased up by the time I got up for the first time, but it snowed more or less hard all night long. All day today, too, but more lightly. The Road Commission report says there was 8" yesterday, which I assume was actually until sometime this morning. It was at or above freezing all night long, but around the time I started for Johanna's the temperature started to drop and the wind picked up, and it's been getting colder and more windy all day. Now it's 21º and the wind is from the north in the 25-35 mph range. Ron was on the road when I was awake around 6:45, and he did the road, but he didn't do my driveway. There was a solid 6" in all of it, and getting out of the garage was interesting. Fortunately, at that time, the wind had just begun to swing around to the north, so there was no drifting. I'll be interested to see what it looks like tomorrow.
I got my massage, and I feel much better for it. It's so good to see Johanna again. Things are still not really good with her father, but she will be here through the height of the snowmobile season. Eos was happy to see me, too, especially when I gave her six cookies - her Christmas treat, since I didn't see her then. Johanna said Eos was just about beside herself when she came home. Johanna liked her socks, too, although they are a bit long. Probably washing them will help.
Short pause while I opened the garage door and turned on the floodlights so Jack can do the driveway, and of course I had to talk to him. I appreciate him coming. With the couple inches more of snow we had today, I'm afraid I would have a hard time getting out of the garage. He is an excellent snow remover. This snow was wet and heavy, and it's a pain to move, but more than the light stuff, it needs to be moved before it freezes in place and turns to ice.
So I got home around 1:00 and finished my surfing and didn't do much else for the day. Massages always make me tired.
Well, I've talked about the weather. The temperature was 33º at midnight, and it didn't begin to fall much until around 11:00. In the meantime, the wind shifted around to the north and picked up. The high was at noon, with 37 mph gusts. It doesn't look like there was more than a couple more inches of snow after I got home, and it seems to have nearly stopped now, but it's cold and the wind is strong. It will be another good night to sleep.
The guys slept for most of the day. When I came toward the studio this morning, they had spread the fleece and the mohair throw all over the floor and they were very comfortable on it, but I had to move the fleece so that I could get to the studio with my hands full. I bunched everything up, and we'll see how it is tomorrow. I could tell when Jack started down the driveway, because Grayson was looking out the window and he growled and ran away. Most sounds don't bother him, but he does not like the sound of that tractor. I wish I knew why, but since he can't tell me his life's story, I'm sure I'll never know. He must have been out most of last winter, so I'm sure he encountered tractors and snowblowers. Louie ran away, too, but that's mostly because he is so timid.
So now I will read a bit, until Jack finishes with the driveway, because I have to go around and turn off all the floodlights and close the garage door. Then I hope to get to bed at a reasonable hour and sleep as well as I did last night.
Now it's a cold, windy and snowy night in the field, and another good one to hunker down under the comforter.
February 10 I went up to the north end early last night, and I was in bed by 9:00, but I didn't sleep well. I was up any number of times, and I was wakeful, at least until the alarm went off, when I was sleeping. Sigh. I got up and got myself ready and left the house shortly after 9:00 - at least 15 minutes earlier than usual.
The covered road was partly snow-covered, but the Road Commission had sanded the curves and it was cold enough that it didn't seem slippery, although I took it at a cautious speed. It was better, but still partly snow-covered, after Delaware, but it wasn't slippery. I had to pass two cars that clearly weren't locals, from the way they were driving. People who habitually put on their brakes before entering a curve drive me absolutely nutty. Once I got beyond those two, however, it was pretty clear sailing, and from Phoenix south, the road was clear and only a bit wet. They use a lot of salt in Houghton County, which I hate, but with the increased amount of traffic in those parts, it made the road pretty good.
Calumet and Laurium do a terrible job on their roads. In fact, it looked to me like they hadn't done much plowing at all, at least until I left church and ran into a place where they had plowed the east-west street (Second Street) and only cut one narrow lane through Tamarack Street on the other side. Geez! And right in front of church, there was such a big mound of snow on the other side that the person who had parked there had actually parked in the middle of the road. As one of the ladies said to me, there really is no excuse for that - they collect enough taxes.
Anyway, I got to church about the time i usually do, which was nice, because I had to stop in the bathroom and there was some stuff I hadn't seen, and I had to talk to all the ladies. Today was Transfiguration Sunday, and Pastor had a very good sermon, and there was communion so it was very nice.
I stopped at the bathroom again before I left, and then it was off to Pat's to load up on food. They don't do a good job on their parking lot, either, and some jerk had left a cart right in the middle of the first handicap parking spot. There was a very nice lady who came by and moved the cart for me, or I would have had to get out and do it myself, and it was slippery. The parking lot always makes me chuckle. When it's covered with snow, people start making their own parking places, especially one or two slots between the handicap spaces and the building, which is clearly marked no parking when the lot is clear. I know they know that, they just choose to ignore it.
Anyway, I did my thing. I'm slowly learning not to load up on stuff I'm not going to eat, so my bills have been lower lately. After talking to a nice lady who works in the frozen food section, I finally got my favorite shrimp lo mein. It turns out it was there, but somebody had put a package of another variety in front of it, and besides, it was in the back of a bottom shelf, so I never would have found it. Yum. I was going to have it for dinner, in spite of having gotten a chicken, but I got a sandwich and some pasta salads and I atef so late that I didn't really have dinner.
Then it was off to the gas station. Gas has gone up 40¢ a gallon since the last time I got it, and I swear there is no reason. It makes me mad all over again. Actually, if what I read on PastyNet is right, it went up 15¢ a gallon in the course of the week. Grr.
Then it was off for home, finally. There was less traffic going home than there had been going down, at least on my side. I passed a number of skiers and a number of snowmobilers going in the opposite direction. I didn't get home until about 2:30, and the guys were very glad to see me.
It was a pretty yucky day, actually. It was only around 21º when I left here, but by the time church was over, it was 27º or so, and there was a little glaze of snow on my windshield. I was coming down the hill toward Ahmeek when I noticed that there was some kind of haze around the cliffs, and it persisted all the way to Lake Medora. I couldn't figure out what it was, since I couldn't see anything coming down, and now I guess it was fog. Weird. It was getting a bit windy by the time I got out of church, and the wind had a cutting quality to it that made me glad to get indoors. The high temperature got to 32º here, and the wind was from the southeast, with gusts up to 17 mph. The snow finally got here around 4:00, I think, although at one point I looked outside and it looked like it was raining. By the time it got dark, it was snowing thick and fast and I guess it's supposed to do that all night. The temperature is still 30º, so the snow will be wet and yucky. It's a good night to crash.
The guys were quite energetic when I got up early this morning, and they were very glad to see me when I got home. I bring in the groceries in two stages - car to breezeway and breezeway to kitchen, so I don't have to do the steps more than once. While I was bringing stuff from the car, both of them were inside the door looking out, and Louie actually reached up to try to turn the door handle. Oh, so he does know about that! I've had a couple of other cats who knew about door handles. Grayson isn't quite long enough, but Louie is so big, he can get his paw over the handle. What he doesn't know is that the door opens toward him, so he couldn't have gotten out anyway. Anyway, after I got everything put away and settled down at the computer, they went to sleep. Mom is home again, and that's a good thing.
I was surprised to find that I was almost without aches and pains this morning. My back seems much better, and I'm coming to the unhappy conclusion that my sitting in the bathroom for a couple of hours in the morning isn't doing my back any good at all. Of course, by the time I got home, my legs and feet were horribly sore, and they still are, but my back was good today. Of course, since I'm supposed to see Johanna tomorrow.
So that was my active day, and even though it's very early, I'm going to crash. I'm tired, and I didn't get enough sleep last night. Now it's a dark, windy, very snowy night in the field and it will be good to hunker down under the covers and sleep the blizzard away.
February 9 Well, after I wrote here last night, I switched over to the Trine story and it was almost 12:30 when I got to bed. I was going to re-read what I wrote, but I never got around to it. I got up around 9:30, which is a reasonable amount of sleep but not enough, it seems, and I was tired all day.
I knitted my two rows this morning, and that finished the first repeat of the main pattern. Actually, that pattern is only 16 rows long at most, but the beginning and ending parts, where the decreases are, only repeat every 32 rows. So now I have 475 stitches (the other day, I miscalculated rather badly) and I will start on the second repeat the next time I knit.
The only other thing I did today was to unload the dishwasher. Sigh. I just did not feel very robust. It's strange that I can feel so good during the night or when I get up in the morning and by the time I've eaten my breakfast, I'm about ready to go back to bed. Sigh.
The weather was so-so. The temperature has finally gotten up to 28º. It was only 1º at midnight, but it rose pretty much all day long. There was a rather brisk southwest wind, and for a while we had 25 mph gusts. Now the wind has gone calm. It was mostly cloudy all day, and there may have been a snowflake or two - I can't remember if that was today or yesterday or both. Late tomorrow, it's supposed to start snowing (wet, heavy stuff - yuck!) and continue through most of Monday. At least I should be able to get to Calumet tomorrow.
The kitties were sleepy again, although they did have a wrestling match this morning. It was Grayson's turn to be on top.
Aaron and his friend towed the ice house out onto the harbor around noon with their ATV, and I think they were there for most of the afternoon. I do hope they're getting some fish for their efforts. I couldn't understand what was going on when I heard some rather loud noises, then I saw the ice hut sliding across the ice, and it made more sense. I think I heard it go back, too, but I forgot to look. They had a nice enough day that I doubt they had to have heat inside the building.
I'm glad the weather sounds like it will be all right in the morning, because I really do have to go to church tomorrow. Not only has it been three weeks since I've gotten there, I need food and gas, so I really have to go. I hope to get to bed at an early hour tonight so that I can go do tomorrow.
I think it was sort of clear all night last night, but even Jupiter wasn't very bright, so there was something in the atmosphere that was dimming all the bright winter stars. It was nice to see Jupiter, though. Mercury is having a showing in the west, but I was too late to see it last night and I'll miss the conjunction with Mars altogether. Well, maybe there will be another evening show sometime later in the year when we're more likely to have clear skies. I've seen Mercury several times since I've lived here, but it's so elusive that I try to look again any time it's in the west.
Speaking of things astronomical, I had to reset the start and stop times of the camera yesterday. It had gotten away from me. We now have 10 hours (exactly, today) of daylight and we're adding at the rate of over 3 minutes a day. Much as I like having longer days, this is the time of year that is difficult, because the camera is still running when I'm eating my dinner, so I can't turn on the lights. For the next couple of months, I will be doing my evening stuff by the light of the monitor and the task lights, before it starts to stay light long enough that it doesn't matter. That's all right - I'm just glad we're beyond the days of 8½ hours of daylight!
So that was another quiet day in the field, and it's a cloudy, fairly warm evening.
February 8 I had just gotten to the bedroom door when my tummy started to gurgle and before I made it to the far end of the bathroom, I had an accident. Yuck. These things come upon me so fast sometimes that I just can't do anything about them. At least I had intended to take a bath, which I really needed by that time.
It was around 10:30 when I turned out the light and I went right to sleep. I was wakeful in the middle of the night, but not for long. I got up around 9:45, and I knitted my two rows before I got dressed. That was about all I did, I'm afraid. I was sort of sleepy all day.
When I set up the dishwasher, I noticed that the main soap dispenser had never opened the last time I washed dishes - I don't know why, except that that was the time we had a power failure - and I'm happy to say it did open this time, so the dishwasher is so far so good.
The weather was rather interesting. The temperature got up to 21º for a while this afternoon, and we had quite a bit of sunshine and blue sky. It was clear at sunset. However, we also had our daily snow shower, big flakes coming lazily down for half an hour or so. I'm sure there was no accumulation. Now the clear skies have caused the temperature to plummet to 9º, so it will be a cold night.
The guys were sleepier than I would have thought for such a nice day. They didn't even have any wrestling matches to speak of today. Louie sat on my lap for quite a while, but Grayson was content to sleep by my feet while I was knitting this morning.
This afternoon I tried a little writing. I'm not sure what will become of this story - it's a new one that I only started a while ago - but I've been thinking about it at night, so I wanted to try it. The trouble is, when I'm thinking about one of these things, I think in scenes, and it takes work and concentration to knit the scenes together. I'm not sure what I'll do with it. I may stop and go back to that part 14 of Trine that I have to completely rewrite. Or I may not. It does feel good to do a little fiction for a change.
Oh, yes, and even though I haven't gotten to talk to her, I will be seeing Johanna on Monday. Yea! I need that!
I'd like to stay and listen to the radio, where they will be playing Beethoven soon, but I'm tired enough that I'm afraid I will just have to totter up to the north end. It's a frigid, calm, clear night in the field.
February 7 I turned out the light around 9:30, and after I turned over at 10:00, I went to sleep, but I didn't sleep very well for some reason. I was up any number of times and I had trouble getting back to sleep afterwards. Around 7:30, I woke up and the cats were being such nuisances that I shut the bedroom door on them. We have this ongoing disagreement about whether they should eat the things they don't like so well. I got up around 9:00, I think, and I knitted my two rows, although now I'm only knitting 437 stitches, down 100 from when I started. It's still a lot.
I didn't do very much today, although I got the dishwasher almost ready to run and put the rest of the pans to soak, although my dinner tonight got one dirty again. That was about it. My surfing took a long time today, as it always does on Thursday.
When I got up it was snowing rather hard, and it continued for a couple of hours, I think, but that was all there was. The temperature got up to 23º for a while, and there was a rather brisk wind - 15-25 mph - from the southeast to east. There was one brief ray of sunshine, but it was cloudy and dull for most of the day. A typical Keweenaw winter day. There has been 18" so far this month (through yesterday morning), and 155" for the season, so unless the bottom drops out like it did last year, we're on track to a respectable winter, it seems. I hope so. We deserve that.
i determined that the ice house is Aaron's, and he and his friend spent most of the day out on the ice. It's a nice, rather large thing, and it even has a chimney, so they can have heat inside. Late in the afternoon, when I looked out, they had carted it back to shore, and they were doing something around their holes in the ice. The fishing klatch is this weekend, and besides, there is a tournament on Lake Fanny Hooe. At least this year we have ice!
Thanks to everyone who explained mAh to me today. I guess it's been so long since I needed batteries for anything that if I knew what it meant, I'd forgotten. The phones are both fully charged, so I'm back in business. I hope that the new batteries will give me a lot longer call time.
By the time I got up, the guys were sleepy again, so I didn't have any further trouble with them. Louie spent a long time on my lap, and he just can't seem to get the idea that using my hand for a pillow isn't comfortable for me. Grayson got his time while I was knitting this morning and he went to sleep on the rug not far from me.
I want to wash my hair again tonight, to begin to get my scalp back into condition. I have formed a zit right in the middle of my chin, which annoys me just as much as it did when i was 15. It surprises me that I'm still so oily, but I'm not complaining much, since it keeps the wrinkles to a minimum. They're coming, but a lot slower than most people's. So I will read for a little while before I finish filling the dishwasher and totter up to the north end. It's a dark, cloudy, windy night in the field, but I don't think it's snowing.
February 6 I got my hair washed and I think it was before 10:00 when I got to bed. I had to turn over to get to sleep again, but then I did rather well, although I was up several times. I woke up around 8:30 and that seemed too early so I wiggled around and it was 10:00 when I got up. I knitted my two rows before I got dressed.
I didn't do very much, but I did get to the post office and the store. The batteries for my phones came, and even though they aren't completely charged (they say to charge for 16 hours before use!), I can tell they're going to be the answer to at least one of my problems. I will have to call Debbie and see how they hold a charge. I was a bit concerned that the new ones aren't exactly the same as the old ones. The new ones are rated at 800 mAh rather than 750 mAh, (I know what a mA is but I'm not sure what that h is about), but I guess more is better than less. Rick, are you reading? Or anybody else. It doesn't surprise me that after 12 years, I can't get the exact batteries. Even when it isn't fully charged, I noticed that the backlight doesn't flicker anymore, so that's an improvement.
The weather was nondescript. It was cloudy and there was almost no wind. The high temperature was 17º. About the time I got back from the store, it started snowing lightly. I love it when it snows and there is no wind - there were big flakes floating lazily down outside. I think it may have stopped before sunset, but it's supposed to snow tonight.
The guys slept for most of the day, as usual. Nothing to report there.
When I looked outside this morning, there was a set of footprints coming from between the bushes on the north, across the yard and apparently under the window seat. The light was such that I couldn't get a really good look at them, but they looked like they were about 1½" across and round. The set that came across the yard were all in a straight line, one print right in front of the last one. I think it might have been a small bobcat, but without being able to examine them, I can't tell for sure. There were all kinds of prints in front of the garage and close to the house on the deck. I think most of them were squirrels, but some of the ones in front of the garage were too big for squirrels, but long - possibly bunny prints. If that's the case, it would explain the bobcat. Ron said he had a white bunny run in front of his car the other morning. I didn't know our bunnies turned white in the winter, but it doesn't surprise me much, with the predators around. I wish I could stake out the house at night to see some of these critters, since they don't come out much during the day.
I'm glad to say I wasn't having much trouble moving around today, although my back was stiff this morning. Slowly I'm getting over my back thing. Johanna is supposed to be back in town, but I haven't been able to get in touch with her. I need her. I'm sure she could work the stiffness out of my back.
So that was another very quiet day, and now it's a dark, cold night in the field and we will probably have some more snow.
February 5 Oh, another lost day. Sigh.
I went up to the north end at a reasonable hour last night, but I sort of fooled around for a while. I tried to knit a bit, but after I screwed up the third repeat of the main pattern, I put it down. So I got to bed just before 10:30. When it felt like I wasn't going to get to sleep very fast, I turned right over, and then I went to sleep almost at once. Oh. I know for a long time in the '90s, I would start out and say my prayers on my left side then immediately turn over to my right side. I guess I'm going to have to do that again.
I got up around 9:30, I think. I knitted two rows on the shawl with no problem at all, but they are very long rows. it's decreasing slowly, but this is the one that started with 541 stitches, and I'm only decreasing four stitches on most right side rows, and I've only done about 40 rows, so it will be a long time before it gets down to a reasonable size. I still don't like it very well, but I started it, so I will finish it.
And that was about all I did except begin to load the dishwasher. There is another load of dishes soaking in the sink, and when I have those out of the way there are a whole lot of pots and pans that need soaking. It never ends. I've always hated things I have to do over and over again. All the dirty pans were clean four or five days ago.
The weather was about as usual. The temperature got up to 20º briefly, and the wind was from the north for most of the day, in the 15-30 mph range. When I got to the bathroom this morning, there was some sunshine for a while, and then I looked out a while later and it was snowing rather hard. That continued for a while, and then it was just cloudy for the rest of the day. So we had our daily snow. According to the Road Commission, we had 15" the first four days of February. Yeah, snow!
The guys were active around 6:30 this morning, but then they got off-schedule. Louie wanted to play and Grayson didn't. They went off to sleep after breakfast, and Louie spent a good part of the afternoon on my lap, sleeping. I didn't see much of Grayson after breakfast, although he just jumped off the desk with a thud.
I had just finished reading my email when we had a power glitch, which annoys me, because the computer reboots and that takes time, and everything needs restarting. Besides, something happened to the camera software and I had to restart it to get it going again. It's all right now, though, because I checked it right away and noticed that the tree branches weren't moving.
Tonight I have to wash my hair, so I will be going up to the north end shortly. I might knit a bit, but maybe not. I've been awfully tired lately, so I want to get to bed at a reasonable hour. Now it's another cold, cloudy, windy night in the field and there will probably be some more snow.
February 4 Well, I got to bed by 9:30 again last night, and I must have needed it, because I went right to sleep. I was wakeful between 12:00 and 3;00, but after that I didn't do badly. I got up a bit before 9:00 and I finished the Icelandic shawl. Now all it needs is to be blocked. Right now it doesn't look very good, but it needs to be stretched a lot, and I'm sure when it is, it will be nice.
And that was all I did. My surfing always takes a lot of time on Monday, and after I did that, I did nothing. Blah.
The weather calmed down a bit. There was some snow, but there was also a little sunshine and I saw blue sky a couple of times. The temperature got up to 12º or so. There was still quite a north wind until around 4:00, when it died down. Not blah, but not very interesting, either. The sunshine was nice.
The cats weren't very active. They had a little wrestling match while I was in the bathroom this morning, but I could tell their hearts weren't in it, and they slept for most of the day. I didn't see Grayson, but Louie got his love-in late in the afternoon.
So now I think I'd better package up the shawl and the left-over yarn in plastic, and then I think I'll read a bit and try to get to bed early again. I was stiff today, and it will feel good to lie down. Tomorrow I will be working on the Faroese shawl again. There's another one I'd rather start, but I think I'd better not do that again. The Faroese thing is boring enough that I want to get it over with as soon as I can.
Now it's a dark, frigid night in the field again, but I'm not sure how much snow there will be.
February 3 First, if anybody tried to read this before about 1:00 this afternoon, I apologize. I wrote it last night, but I simply forgot to upload it. One nice reader emailed me and I did it at once. That happens every so often. I guess I was too hung up on whether to go to church this morning.
Before I went up to the north end, I got involved with getting all the stickers off my new cane, which took longer than I thought it would. I got to bed around 9:30, but something kept me from going right to sleep again, and it wasn't the best night. I did have one very vivid and interesting dream, which I've mostly forgotten now, of course. There was stuff about being in a strange sort of church with two people who have been dead for years. What brought that on, I do not know.
Anyway, I was awake a bit before 6:00 and when I looked out the windows, I couldn't see the lights of town at all, so I turned off the alarm. When I saw the report of the conditions in the morning, it was a wise decision. So I went back to sleep - slowly - and got up around 9:30, I think. I didn't take the shawl up to the north end last night, so I grabbed the only thing up there i had to knit - a baby bootee - and after I finished the ankle part of it, I tore it out because I didn't like how it looked, so that was futile. I won't forget the shawl tonight.
It was a wise decision to stay home. The wind picked up so abruptly around 5:30 that it prompted an off-hour report from the NWS station, and by the time I would have left for church, it was from the north in the 25-35 mph range. The heaviest snow, though was evidently between 3:00 AM and 8:00 AM, although I'm a bit suspicious about that, considering what I was seeing. I have a suspicion that the amount of liquid precip that station reports depends a whole lot on which way the wind is blowing. Anyway, the temperature hit its high about the time the wind picked up, 14º, then it went down to 9º, where it has stayed, plus or minus a degree, all day. It was dark and cloudy and I couldn't see beyond the fort anytime, and sometime a lot less. It would not have been a fun drive to Laurium.
The wind gusts were blowing the snow horizontally across the end of the harbor in billows and it was hard to tell what was coming down and what was just blowing. The yearly fishing klatch was today, and there were half a dozen guys out on the ice with a very large shanty - the same one I saw the other day. I don't know how long they stayed out there, with the wind chill below zero, but I hope they caught some fish for their efforts.
I vegged. I did absolutely nothing all day.
So did the cats. Grayson sat on my lap for a while and Louie sat on my lap for a while, but mostly they slept. They had some kind of disagreement while I was awake at 6:00, which I guess they're now over. Grayson slept on the rug in the bathroom while I was there.
So that was a lost day. Now I will read a bit before I go up to the north end and try to get to bed early again. It's another frigid, windy, snowy night in the field. It's not fun to be out in, but it's fun to watch.
February 2 I worked on the shawl when I went up to the north end last night, and I got about two-thirds of the crochet done. It was sometime between 10:30 and 11:00 when I turned out the light. I had a bit of trouble getting to sleep until I finally gave up and turned over, and then I was fine. Of course, I was up several times during the night.
When I turned out the light, it was snowing hard enough that the lighthouse light was reflecting from the snow, but later on, it was shining straight in and I could sort of see the lights of town. It snowed all night.
I got up around 10:00, maybe - I don't remember - and I finished the crocheting and started working in the ends of yarn. I got about half of that done before I decided I was hungry and quit.
That was all I did all day. Sometime in the middle of the afternoon, Jack came around on the tractor and did a lovely job of cleaning the driveway. He runs that tractor like a pro. One thing Ron could learn from him is that he never goes too fast. I suspect he breaks fewer shear pins that way. Anyway, my driveway is all cleaned up for the next lake effect snow, which is starting now and will go until at least Monday. I was surprised by how much snow we've had since the last time Ron cleaned up - 6" to 8" at least, and that is that dry, powdery stuff we're getting since it's so cold.
It was cold. The low for the day was 6º and the high was 9º. For most of the day, there wasn't a lot of wind, and it didn't feel bad when I went out to talk to Jack. You wear your down parka and your hat and gloves (I discovered I have a lovely, if ugly, pair of down-lined gloves) and you don't stand around a lot, but it isn't bad. If I were a skier or a snowshoer, I wouldn't mind it at all. We had a ray of sunshine or so sometime in the morning, and I did see the mountain for the first time in a number of days. Now it's snowing again, I think.
I just checked the snowfall, and we had 92" in January, which is more than we've had that month for several years, and is even more amazing since it didn't start until the middle of the month. Now, if we can just keep up the pace...
By the way, the camera hung up sometime during the day, but I can't tell quite when, since it looked about the same all day. I fixed it, and I think it's all right now. Not that there was much to see.
The guys were more active this morning than they have been in a while, but then they went to sleep as usual. Grayson spent nearly an hour, I think, asleep on my lap, purring most of the time. Then sometime later, Louie got up and got his loving, although I had to move him when it was time for dinner. Grayson has been a lot more loving for the past few days, and I don't know quite why, unless he's remembering last year. Louie is always a lover.
I'm not sure I will be going to church tomorrow. If there is lake effect snow, it's just too hard to drive. I guess I will get up on time and see what the situation is when it gets light. I would love to go to church, since I haven't been in two weeks, and I keep watching the gas gauge in the car go down (I hear gas prices are spiking again!) but I'm getting positively scared of driving in this weather. The Road Commission isn't good about clearing the roads on Sunday mornings, which means it can be pretty ugly down to Mohawk. So we'll see.
Now it's a dark, frigid, snowy night in the field and another good one for a long winter's nap.
February 1 Wow, It's a new month. Where does the time go?
I went up to the north end and knitted two more rows on the shawl last night and I got to bed around 10:30. I had some trouble getting to sleep, but once i did, I did pretty well, although I had several strange dreams. I was awake around 8:30, but that was too early, so it was 10:30 before I finally got up. I knitted two more rows, but that put me at 691 stitches, and even though they were plain knitting, it took me an hour to do them.
I was so late getting up that I didn't do much at all today. I need to get the dishwasher unloaded, because there were three bowls I couldn't get into it last night. I got the dishes and utensils off the floor in the dining area, but the glass and food is still there. It will come, eventually.
During the talking, I finished the last knitted row of the shawl and got about half the crocheted edge done. The points are coming out very nicely, but it really, really needs blocking, because the bottom is all knitted and it curls badly. First, though I have to finish the crocheting and work in all the ends. Ugh.
The weather was frigid, windy and snowy again. The "high" temperature, 10º, happened at midnight, and during the day it was 6º for most of the time. It has now dropped to 1.9º on the way down. It was windy for most of the day, with north winds in the 15-25 mph range, but lately it has shifted around to the west and dropped to under 10 mph. I don't know what that will do for our snow. It snowed for most of the day, more or less hard. I know it's been several days since I've been able to see the mountain. The lake effect advisory is supposed to end tomorrow at 7:00 AM, but they've been pushing it back 12 hours at a time for a couple of days now, so I'll see what they say tomorrow. If the wind does shift around to the southwest, though, that will shut down the lake effect machine. It's still going to snow tomorrow and probably Sunday, too.
The guys hibernated today again. At one point I went out toward the kitchen and they were curled up on the mohair throw together, with Louie just about lying on Grayson's feet and Grayson almost under the chair. They need to spread that throw out a bit if they're going to sleep on it together. Grayson spent some time on my lap after dinner tonight, and he almost fell asleep there. Louie didn't get his love-in. He didn't come around while I was surfing, and when he did, I was crocheting. When I wouldn't let him on my lap he jumped up on the back of the chair, so I rocked a bit until he jumped off. He needs a lot of love, but I don't like to slight Grayson, who loves his mama just as much as Louie does.
So that was still another quiet day, and I don't think I'll be up very long again tonight. I hope I can sleep a little better. Now it's a frigid and snowy but not windy night in the field.
Last updated 03/01/13 09:32 PM |