Whirlwinds of ice crystals racing each other along the snow-covered road…
Long and snowy road
Shoveling the driveway clear and salting the footpath. Crisp whiteness, icicle cold air to breathe …
Wintertree – up to her knees in the white stuff
A halcyon time, seven days long …
Widderlake – frozen over
… and now?
… it’s raining … again.
This, from The Bluebird of Bitterness …
The owner did say to leave the package on the sidewalk, but the delivery guy insisted.
After torturing me with well over two months of UN-RE-LENT-ING rain, the temperature finally dropped low enough for this to happen …
Our backyard – the bean pyramid, our newly enclosed patio, and falling snow
It’s not much, just a handful of centimeters, but there’s more in the forecast.
Will we, or nil we, the Seasons turn … The Summer Tree takes on new foliage and becomes the Winter Tree …
Wet snow drapes the windsock low
melina-ilustrates (Australia is burning)
‘Melina who is Greek Australian painted this heartbreaking image. It seems to have touched many people and her post is going viral. She has given permission for the image to be shared but asks that a donation be made to one of the many charities set up to deal with the crisis. Her website on face book is called Melina illustrates – if you would like to follow the thread and see the photo /comments/ links to donation sites.‘ – quote from Sue Llewellyn’s post, ‘Australia is Burning’
A song-list (video quality will vary) that says a whole lot more about me than anything to do with Mondays … except that it’s yet another rainy Monday …
8pm Friday night … I’m trundling along, minding my own business when I noticed a certain sparkle out of the corner of my eye. Turns out that was in the corner of my eye. That familiar and slightly nauseating ‘cracked glass’ vision distortion that is a migraine’s harbinger.
I do my usual, swallow a couple of pseudoephedrine so they take effect as the headache part of the migraine takes hold. If I’m lucky this’ll be a mild one. I’m not lucky.
I reschedule, cancel, and otherwise rearrange all plans for the weekend.
4am Saturday morning … I can finally lay down without feeling like I’m going to throw up.
7.30pm Saturday evening … I’m chatting with Mrs Widds when suddenly half of her face disappears in a soft blur of colour that is the harbinger of the ‘cracked glass’ effect.
Yes folks, we’re in a cluster. My personal best is five migraines in four days. I morbidly wonder if I’ll break my record.
More pseudoephedrine. I try to keep any pharmaceuticals down to a minimum. Decades of painkillers for my knees have taken their toll on my gizzards.
I break out the hot water-bottles. One on the back of my neck and one on either side of my head. This helps me relax my shoulders and head muscles that I squinch up into tight knots in a futile effort to subvert the crushing pain inside my skull.
4am Sunday morning … I can finally lay down without feeling like I’m going to throw up.
3pm Sunday afternoon … I surface long enough to eat a piece of toast and delicately sip a cup of tea, both of which stay in my stomach long enough to satisfy minimal blood-sugar requirements. Soon thereafter I crawl back into bed.
Weekend. Done. Now it’s Monday … and it’s still raining.
I had a completely indulgent day today.
I had the house to myself.
I stayed in bed, all day, reading and sipping tea.
Because Winter has finally taken the plunge into the minus temperatures, (and it’s finally stopped raining, for a few days at least) I had a little fan heater to keep the chills at bay. (we don’t use the built-in bar heaters in the bedrooms – little cottage, not necessary – and when we do the entire place smells like scorched dust bunnies! … so the fan heater steps up to the plate when the occasion arises)
I was reading book 9 in the Mary Russell series by Laurie King – a fabulous take on the Sherlock Holmes mythos … and Dragon Wing by Margaret Weis & Tracy Hickman – a 7 book series that I haven’t read since they were first released thirty years ago. I don’t usually read more than one book at a time, but it was a Day of Indulgence, so I did!
I was listening to my favourite music streaming channel, AccuRadio, when on a whim I did a search of their ‘Chill’ category, and came across their ‘Lounge/Exotica’ playlist, (which is an let’s call it ‘eclectic’, collection, I’ve listened to a few times) and what should be the first song off the rank but this.
If nothing else I hope it puts a smile on your dial …
The ‘united against the enemy’ thing isn’t working for us, so the ‘finding something in common’ thing might, eventually.
(Apologies – I can’t edit out the ‘ad’ at the end)
