Christmas may be a tad bit late this year

Thursday Afternoon

I’ve always found it odd how the grey skies drains the color around us.  Everything is drab as if devoid now of most color.  The trees are skeletons of what they once were standing naked against the skyline.  The sun is nothing more than a white spot slowly moving across the sky.  A white spot, that is, when the cloud cover isn’t so think as to obscure that it’s even hanging in the sky.  The wind bites cold at exposed skin.  I’ve been huddling inside the house to escape the north wind and to stay warm.

It reminds me of when I was a kid in southern Iowa during the cold winters there.  I’d lay on my bed reading some book and trying to stay warm in our drafty old house.  Momma kept the furnace set at 62*F to save some money.  She’d always say to put on a sweater if we thought it was chilly.  I guess kids that grew up during The Depression had habits that were hard to break.  You could whine all you wanted about how you were freezing to death but those complaints usually fell on deaf ears.  It also would result on Momma getting mad and then chasing you out of her kitchen.

It’s hard not to think about that when I’m out walking during the day.

Thursday Morning

It’s cold out there this morning.  Another tropical -8C (18*F) day with that white stuff supposedly falling sometime this morning.  The house was cold too.  I didn’t want to get out from underneath the mink blankets.  But Miss Lily and Big Boy had other plans and were persistent with coaxing me out from underneath.  I don’t know why they do that given that they have automatic cat feeders and it had already spun to a new dish of food for them.  I guess that they like the idea that I’m here to wait on them hand and foot.

I had to nudge up the furnace to warm up the place.  Putting on my Aran sweater helped too as I went about my morning rituals.  The cats were fed and have new water in their dishes.  I took my morning meds and had some yogurt.  I checked the bird feeders and put fresh water in the bird bath.  The last thing to do was to sit down with a cup of coffee and open my email and WP.  It’s still awfully cold out there but the coffee warms to the bone.

So I guess that this is another year where I don’t get to witness the solstice due to the overcast skies.  All it’s going to do around this part of the Hundred Acre wood is go from dark to dark grey skies to grey skies to dark grey skies and then back to dark.  It will make for a short day with natural light.  Maybe the weather guy is right and we will have partly sunny skies tomorrow.  Maybe we can see the low hanging sun for most of the day.    The definite plus up of all of this is the days start getting longer once again.

I’m looking forward to a new Spring already.

A Thought for Thursday