Drifted

I was going to lead off with that line of Mae West's "I was pure as the driven snow but I drifted" but I was afraid it was too long for the space up there.  Yesterday was a bad weather day.  Overnight we had freezing rain so my car windows were iced over enough that the deicer spray Durwood got me didn't work all that well.  Then it freezing rained and snowed through the day so that when I got off work they were iced over again, and by then the wind had kicked up big-time so driving home was an adventure in slo-mo sliding around turns and creeping along in lines of cars.  By the time I got home I figured that most drivers have forgotten how long it takes to stop their vehicle.  I wasn't driving particularly slowly but I did leave a gap between me and the car ahead.  Not so the pickup behind me on Mason and then on Fisk.  I was glad to turn off on Seventh just to get his headlights out of my rearview mirror and his grille off my tailpipe.  And it was one of those jacked up numbers so I'm quite certain that the driver had lots more testosterone than sense.

This morning it's clear and sunny again and not nearly as cold as it was last week.  I went out to clear the snow so our renter didn't do it all and quite enjoyed being out in the morning.  I've decided to enjoy the winter instead of wishing it away.  If you wake up grumpy about it every day the season is very long.  If you (or I) enjoy it (or pretend to, which works out to the same thing over time) the season moves right along and before you know it it's be spring.  That's my theory and I'm sticking to it.

Today I'm going to fire up the DVD that came with my Windows 8 for Dummies book and learn how to use this thing all over again.  The author said in the DVD intro that "Windows 8 is totally different from any previous Windows" which made me feel a whole lot less stupider about flailing around for the last couple weeks.  The only thing I plan to do today is go to knitting around 5:30 so it's time to buckle down and LEARN.  I'll let you know how it goes.  I still might need to rent a teenager or make an appointment with loom-knitter TG's husband, TG, because he's a tech guy and works with it at work already.  He gave me a tip at snowshoeing that lets me play hidden object games better, no, that doesn't sound right, he told me how to hide the taskbar down at the bottom of the screen so I could glom onto objects down there so I can clear puzzles.  Anyway, he is now my new Windows 8 fallback plan.  Hope he doesn't mind.

February 8--Camille Pissarro, Still Life with Apples and Pitcher.  The sun coming in the open door shone on the plate of apples, releasing their fragrance.  The wine tasted like mushrooms and blackberries.  Cecile stood at the sink washing the pots so that she could relax after supper.  She had changed in the months since they had come to the country.  Life had slowed.  There was no traffic hum, no horns honking at midnight, no angry drivers calling out.  She hadn't slept the first week out of the city noise.  The wind in the pines and the crickets kept her awake but now she felt like they lulled her to sleep.  The air was lighter without the metallic tang of car exhaust.  How had she ever tasted her food or taken an easy breath of the thick city air?

Okay, time to oil the hinges of my old brain and see about cramming new info into any available cracks.  We'll see how that goes.
--Barbara