Post-Snowblowing

What I want to know is how come the snowplow driver stopped plowing at the edge of Jenny's driveway and started up at the bottom of mine. Just so I'd have to snowblow 3' out into the street? Realy? But it's sunny, which I love, and it's above zero, which is good too, so I can work on Herman today in a good mood.

January 17 & 18--Joseph Mallord William Turner, The Fighting Temeraire Tugged to Her Last Berth to Be Broken Up. (Now that's a painting title!) Lucy tugged at her mother's sleeve. "Come, Mama, it's cold here and the mist is making us wet." The small hand in its mended glove pulled again at Elizabeth's woolen coat. "In a minute, dear, in a minute." Elizabeth watched the ghostly ship slide quietly through the mist pushed by a black tugboat that spewed oily smoke that tinted the white mist black. Her thoughts slid back to the autumn day fourteen years ago lit by the setting sun which turned everything golden when she stepped down the gangplank of the Fighting Temeraire as a refugee from the fighting in France. She had been barely a teenager when her world turned upside down by war and changed forever. No more school, no more food in the market, no more young men to flirt with on her walk to the town. The juggernaut of armies ranged back and forth, back and forth over her father's small holding churning the fields to mud and stealing any food they had managed to save. Starvation and despair had set Elizabeth, her mother, and three younger siblings on the road to Calais. Maman had wrapped a few onions and a loaf of bread in a scarf for provisions. Papa stayed behind to try and save the farm. They never saw him again. It took them a month of walking and hiding to reach the coast. Elizabeth's shoes were full of holes and her feet bled as she shuffled in the leaves along the edge of the road. She carried her littlest brother on her back and she remembered feeling how shallow his breathing was. He had contracted a cold when they had hid in a ditch under a bridge for a day and a night to avoid soldiers and had only gotten worse with no warm place to sleep and no healthy food. He weighed so little that only his soft breath on her hair reassured her that he still lived. Maman had traded a necklace to the ship's purser for passage for the five of them and it was on the Fighting Temeraire that Elizabeth got her first sight of England.

I decided to combine the weekend's writing because I was certain I wouldn't find 2 days worth to write about this painting. If inspiration strikes maybe more will come tonight but don't hold your breath.
--Barbara