If You Drop A Salt Grinder Into A Big Pitcher Of Tea...

... all the salt disolves and makes the tea taste different.  Ask me how I know.  Okay, I'll tell you.  See I was carrying the salt and pepper from the supper table to put it on the shelf over the dishwasher and just before supper Durwood had boiled his daily 8 cups of water to make his high-lycopene green tea so that was sitting on the dishwasher and the S&P tray tipped and the salt fell (glub, glub, glub) into the tea.  I jerked it out as fast as I could but most of the salt had dissolved already.  Of course he didn't just dump the tea and start over, no, not with 8 teabags "wasted" if he did, he's drinking it, at least he drank one cup of it.  I tried to talk him out of keeping it but I think I lost.  Today it looks like Christmas outside, or it looks like Christmas is coming anyway.  It snowed all day and into the night.  We got, oh, a couple three inches, nothing much, just enough to need to clear off the car and scrape a shovel over the driveway.  It sure looks pretty out there, though.  DS & DIL1 drove home from Minneapolis yesterday and drove in a blizzard all the way.  It took them 7 1/2 hours instead of just under 6 but they took their time, stopped often to unkink their shoulders and steering wheel hands, and got home safe and sound.  Whew.  It didn't occur to me to worry until I overheard the Vikings-Bears football game announcer say that they'd declared a snow emergency in Minneapolis.  I knew that the kids are smart enough to start early and take their time, even stay over someplace if it gets really bad, so I wasn't prostrate with worry, just... aware.  I called DIL1 about 5:30 (called her because I guessed, correctly it turned out, that DS was driving) to check how they were doing and they were just over an hour from home, and she promised to have him call when they got home.  I didn't sew after all yesterday, I just putzed around playing spider solitaire on here or knitting on the sofa and listening to an audiobook.  Just after noon the doorbell rang and there stood Olivia, the smaller of the two neighbor girls, asking if they could "use" my snow.  "What snow?" I asked, not understanding.  She turned and pointed at our front yard.  "That snow (the "dummy" was implied)."  "Oh, sure, as long as you don't knock over the flamingos."  So she and her big sister Angel made their very first snowmen and we got to have temporary worm-trails in our yard.  It kept snowing so they're gone now but they were fun while they lasted.  Today's Photo a Day theme is "under."  Here's one of the birdfeeders with a little sparrow sheltering under the snowy roof overhang.  When I took that one I looked up into the bare trees behind the house and, look, it's our neighborhood Cooper's Hawk surveying its domain.  Very cool.

December 10--Italy, Venice, Relief with Half Figure of an Angel.  She looked frozen up there in the dim corner of the church.  Way up high where the walls arched into the coeling she nestled in the fan-shaped space.  Her wings spread gracefully to each side and her gown lay around her in soft folds.  I rolled up Mom's copy of the church bulletin to use as a telescope trying to see her better.  It kind of worked.  I needed more light to shine up there.  Maybe I could borrow the little mirror Mom keeps in her purse.  There's that ray of sunlight coming through Saint Peter in the stained glass window of him in a boat with Jesus ready to step out.  I could maybe use the mirror to shoot that sunshine up into the angel's dark corner.

What do you want to be that she lights the church on fire?  Kids.  Hey, I need to go out, broom the snow off the car, and scrape off the driveway before eating, showering and going off to work.  Maybe I'll have a few customers today, maybe even three.  I'm taking my sewing stuff again to see if I can't lure them in... and I just realized that I forgot to make anything for lunches.  Dammit.  Guess it's pb&j on flatbread for me with an apple and some carrots on the side.  *sigh*  I despair.
--Barbara Sue