Back in White

☐  So far it is the Winter of the Two Inch Snow–sissy weather by northern standards, just enough to put an edge on getting to town for a non-essential meeting or for the extra milk and bread all bodies mysteriously require when it snows; just enough to make getting in the firewood a bit more of an unsurefooted aggravation and a mess inside; and just enough disruption that the chickens fuss for much of the day in protest that their favorite free-ranging spots are obscured by some kind of white stuff. A smarter bird would know to just perform their usual scratch-jump-back dance like they do in the leaves on the south slope above the garden or in the mulch under my window, and find some edible grass tips or seeds.

☐  Well now I know it is not just my imagination that the tap water is way colder now than it was a few months ago. I suppose as it first comes out of the well it’s closer to 50 degrees–about what you’d find in a cave year round. That’s cold enough for bare hands! But after it sits in the pipes between well and house buried below frost line but still close enough to be chilled nicely by months of sub-freezing air temperatures, it goes down from 50. I would have bet on it. I took an old metal meat thermometer I found in high school (been sitting on whatever desk I have had since then) and stuck it under the tap water: 42 degrees. Makes quick work of washing your hands.

☐  Don’t you just hate it when…it’s wintertime and your hair gets all static-y in the dry air and levitates towards the interior ceiling upholstery of the car the whole way to town? Shorter folks and chrome domes, be thankful. Then, adding insult to injury, that same obnoxious static grants me a terrible sparking shock at the wood stove several times a day. The dog carries such a wallop of a charge that every time he comes within three feet of “Belky Bear” (a left-over from the kids early Christmases and now thankfully muted in a closet upstairs til next year) the dang thing begins automatically whining out its squeaky carols–three of them, one after another; it can’t be stopped once it starts. It’s sort of eerie, besides being obnoxious. We might need to call an exorcist–with snow tires and a Subaru.