WINNER: Sunday Add-A-Caption Game

The Birthday Boy has chosen from all your excellent captions. . .

Congratulations, "It's more fun to stay anonymous!"

A therapist observes a patient undergoing Stage 3 of treatment at the region's controversial new clinic, Caligula's Cure for Claustrophobia. Patients who endure 8 hours under the bed progress to Stage 4: a night alone in the clinic's unlit crawl space, accompanied by a variety of spiders and rodents.

From the b'day boy, you get:
a maplewood dinette set
a trip for two to beautiful Baffin Bay, off the coast of Greenland, way north above the Arctic Circle,
and a Hot Pocket.
Enjoy them in your dreams, "it's more fun to stay anonymous"

All right, Wazooers, a few more hours and Martin, newly 35, who made fried rice and dim sum-style dumplings (with handmade dumpling dough) last night for 29 people to celebrate his own birthday (I did make a complicated, many-step black-out cake, and while I was grumpy about it, it was rich and delicious)--anyway, THAT Martin is going to vote on the Sunday-Add-A-Caption Game. So get your last entries in for possible consideration and questionable virtual prizes!

And don't forget to say Happy Birthday to my gal Sal, wonderful friend, indispensable auntie to my children, and an uncommonly strong ray of sunshine in my daily existence.

Sunday Add-A-Caption Game: Birthday Special

Go to it, ladies and gents! And don't forget to send happy thoughts to Martin, who is 35 today!

Just an FYI: I was pleased to find out that a poem of mine that appeared recently in The Christian Century is now available online--you can access it by clicking on the link in this post or the link on the right. And if you're feeling peaky, read my story in the O-R this Sunday--hopefully it will make you count your blessings :). . .I'm full of steak and happiness; I got to go out tonight to celebrate Martin's Birthday while good friends took care of the brood. Lovely.

Winter Exercise

We've all been doing what we can to get a little exercise around here. By virtue of her size and determination, Bea's been fitting quite a bit of cycling into her winter schedule.



Today I clocked thirty minutes on friend Sal's treadmill, followed by a spinach salad. Despite Elspeth's observation that "Mommy, it looks like you're going to have another baby," I feel virtuous. Now, if I can only keep it up. Since most of my non-parenting work requires me to sit at a computer and bury myself in the rapid fire of keys (at least my fingers get some exercise), I must find a way to get my legs moving and my heart rate up--I mean, not by hyperventilating or throwing nervous fits, but by beneficial, orderly exercise. And a steady diet of bonbons. My mother just sent some to Martin for his upcoming birthday and so I had to sample, just to make sure they were good enough for him. They aren't--they're good enough for me, me, me!

I'm working on an essay right now, my first essay in quite a while since I turned my attention to other things, like poetry, newspaper columns, fiction and bonbons. The personal essay is perhaps the trickiest genre for me, and brings up many questions, such as how much artistic license I can take for the sake of coherence and flow, while still at least lurking in the doorway of nonfiction. I think I outwitted the genre this time by braiding reflections about my grandmother with a story based on the legends and tales of my Finnish ancestry, all mashed about in my imagination. It's been a lovely bit of diversion during the last couple days of steady snow and cold that grips my fingers when I work upstairs in our freezing bedrooms. Now, for instance, I am dressed in layers with a blanket wrapped about my shoulders and a warm cup of tea on my desk--and my hands are still as cold as if I'd been storing them in the refrigerator. Ah, the charms of an old, beautiful house.

Friday night. More bonbons in my future, I think. Happy weekend, dearies.

Lessons From Grassy Sam

Sonya-on-the-ridge apparently got much more snow than we did down here in town. In fact, it dumped so much wet, slushy snow that her father, snaking around in a tractor trying to pull her husband's truck up their driveway, almost slipped into the next world. That's a high price to pay for the beauty of the ridge, but at least Sonya seems to be strapping and muscular from shoveling, walking the dog, and whacking night creatures with a big flashlight (I just cannot let that last one go). She looks more fit every time I see her.

I, on the other hand, waited until I was in the comfort and privacy of my own house today to unbutton my jeans and let the winter happiness free (the winter happiness is my ever-growing gut, I'm afraid). I got some exercise by baking banana bread with two sticks of butter, which I will consume during the next two days. Things are not looking good for me; in fact, they're looking a bit Winnie-the-Poohish. Elevenses, here we come, and tut, tut, it feels time for a little something to quench the rumblies in the tumblies.

Friend Sal told me that I've been indoors so much lately that when I finally do emerge, everyone will be watching to see if I spot my shadow or disappear again. Sounds about right. Grassy Sam, Wazoo Farm's resident groundhog, is smarter than he looks. Right now he's curled up in a warm nest somewhere under our shed, dreaming of eating our spring garden.

Oh, looks like it's time to put the kids to bed, which means I must walk up the stairs. Don't. know. if. I. can. endure. that. much. exercise.

Slushy Snow

I keep glancing outside to check for more snow. Today the sky spit and glopped down a great big mess on us. No feathery, light snowflakes dancing and spinning like fairies to glaze our gardens. Nope. Big shovelfuls of wet stuff that proved almost lethal for pedestrians (I watched my friend Michelle dance the watootsi on her way across the street in her Just-Come-From-Work pretty red toe shoes.) With slush in my wheelwells, blocked breaks and a lot of luck, I slipped into the intersection from the grocery store (yes, the classical music was blaring, so we were absorbing a little culture at least) into an unusually empty street. "Well, I guess I'm going," I said as we slipped down the road. I've had this experience several times in the past on icy roads, and I've felt that same mixture of dull panic and resignation--probably, ironically, the closest I'll ever get to zen ever. I'm out of control! So be it!

I'm happy to report that the sky has stopped dumping, I imagine much to the relief of my friend Sonya-up-on-the-ridge, who was talking crazy earlier, all panicked about stocking up on water and the generator still wrapped and in the garage and how her husband had to be pulled up their endless slushy driveway by a tractor. There was no resignation for her--no, siree, not after last year when they were without power, water, or heat for two weeks in the middle of a blizzard. I'm glad to think she must be feeling a bit better--and now she's all clean, too, since she thought ahead to impending disaster and grabbed a hot shower while she still could, picturing herself possibly without water for the next fortnight.

But, look, no snow! And though we had an early dismissal today, I do believe the children will be disappointed tomorrow. School looks likely, blizzards unlikely. And now Martin is ready to ditch all our work for the evening to eat cupcakes and watch TV, and I'm more than ready to join him. It's hard to feel like working in the face of a vanilla cupcake with chocolate icing, wouldn't you agree?

Just Another Exciting Grey Day

More snow, light but it comes steadily.
On the agenda today: get off another column, stay sane, stay happy, keep the kids happy, make a big outing to store to pick up diapers, milk, and kleenex. Just another exciting morning for Wazoo. I think we'll play classical music in the car for a little bit of culture, and then we'll eat chili for the third time in a row for lunch, and then we'll take a nap. Perhaps somewhere during that time someone will rent the clouds asunder and send down a blast of sunshine, in which case we'll be so confused and excited we'll dump our plans and go to our central park, strip down to our skivvies, and perform a wild dance of gratitude. But I have a funny feeling it will be the former agenda we'll be pacing ourselves through, finding reasons to grin, like a big kleenex sale or extra-wet disinfecting cart wipes.

Letter Corner

Letter Corner:
From a Reader, to Wazoo, received this AM, Re: Last Sunday's Caption
Letter Follows (I'm serious, I actually just got this letter in my e-mail; it's from a man, [hint: related to me by marriage] in Washington State). I include the photo once again for further edification.

I thought it improper to compete with the anonymous winner of the
amorphous prize in the caption contest. Now that due recognition has
been granted, I'd like to point out that having just one caption is
inappropriate, given the many layers of meaning that must be carefully
peeled back, as an onion, to find the deeper layers beneath.

9. Fungal transmission
8. Vladivostok Vixen votes vor Victor.
7. Now the rage, in Connecticut.
6. Today's podiatry: Empathy
5. Tickle Me Timothy
4. Hey, look, now we can count to 42!
3. Happiness is amorality.
2. Does it matter who these toys love?
1. What does it mean to be a man?

Monday Night Confession

At this point in January, my head begins to feel fuzzy from lack. My fingers have not encountered soil outside in months. My eyes have not seen green; I look at the deciduous trees that ring our property, their bare skeletons, and feel a dull longing. I begin to dream about my own childhood floors, flooded in sunlight, about standing under huge trees waiting for the bus, the wind sweeping up through coffee bushes, around the red clay track where I once ran hurdles (yes, me, really and truly), and sweeping around my own seventeen year old legs. I do not feel sentimental for this afternoon, for the wind and the sky wider than the sea, because I want to be seventeen again. No. It's because I want to feel warm again, and alive, and full of the energy that comes from sweater-weather and being outdoors with all my senses open and receiving, in no hurry to rush anywhere.

I tried hard this year, as I believe I try every year, to feel optimistic and full of vim for winter. This year, I swore to myself, I will get out every day for a walk. Winter will not get me down. A friend asked me yesterday if I suffer from SAD, and I don't think that's it so much as the fact that I was utterly spoiled growing up in Nairobi, where it was never colder than sixty-something degrees and never hotter than mid-eighties. My entire school experience was marked by outdoor living; we sat in classrooms (often with the doors open to the sweet air) and then walked outside to talk around our lockers (they were indeed also outside), to eat lunch under trees on a hill. The whole concept of a high school being contained within walls was foreign to me. I spent most of my years in Nairobi, whether it was at home or at school, barefoot.

And I hate being cold. I can't spin it any other way, and I will not tonight. I will just admit it: I am pathetic, and I absolutely, positively, abhor being cold. I see it as something I must endure, and that makes walks sort of silly; and though my brave, lovely mother has made us have picnics in sub-zero, snowy weather, and admonished us to think of it all as a great adventure, I have a hard time convincing myself that this is a good idea.

I have never been allowed to complain about anything. Instead, I've been charged to always see and seize the positive and celebrate it so furiously that the negative melts to nothing but a little puddle at my feet. So be it, but not tonight. Winter, I am tired of you. Runny noses, I am tired of all of you. Colds, begone. Frigid sheets, yuck to you too. Hats, scarves, mittens, coats, wool socks and snow boots, to all the mornings I have been tempted to swear as I bundle yet another child, end immediately. Bring on the robins, the mud, the flip flops and faces lifted to sun. I'm ready. Now.

THE WINNER IS. . .

Some fight. Some sing. Some dance. And others simply sit foot to foot, staring each other down in order to win the favor of the female.


* * * *
To claim your sizeable prize, Anonymous, please write your bank account number on the bottom of a merigue, strawberry, and whipped cream cake, and send it to Wazoo Farm. Your prize will appear in your bank account in twenty years or so.*

*Wazoo Farm cannot be responsible for loss of prize, failure to give prize, or lack of follow-up whatsover.

Thanks for playing, everyone! That last one was a hard picture to make sense of, and you all did an admirable job. . .and kept this rather freezing woman laughing. Kudos.

SUNDAY ADD-A-CAPTION GAME

Alright, you know the rules. (If you don't, check them in the category for "ADD-A-CAPTION-GAME" at right.) Feel free to add as many captions as you think will increase your brilliance. Good luck.

Just a reminder, Wazooers. Sunday Add-a-Caption Game is just one day away. Martin's got a new wild photo, and you've got a new brilliant caption. Start whetting the old noodles.
Oh, and there's no column from me in the O-R, due to extended worship of the porcelain goddess.

Crazy Thief Bird

The sledding hill studded with footprints from a few brave souls, the garden glittering, capped with domes of snow--it's bright with sunshine and frigid temperatures in the negatives this morning and climbing now to single digits. Inside, the kids are watching Saturday morning TV, Beatrix is on a chair watching Martin flip pancakes, and NPR is whining out some filler jazz.

Last night I had a wild dream about a bird who chased me around a hotel. I'd seen the bird--an orange-feathered, sharp-beaked, rather pretty, rather large avian--about to steal eggs from a little mama bird's nest. The entire tree was full of unattended nests just waiting for this orange thief to pilfer. I knew I was messing with nature, but before the defenseless eggs were broken and scattered, I rushed over and waved my arms at the orange bird. And then he turned on me. The remainder of that section of that dream was spent trying to shake the bird from around my feet, which he seemed to be obsessed in snapping up like worms.

My friend T, whom I like to call Sonya in my columns, would have known what to do. She would have taken care of the whole situation by whacking the crazy bird with a big flashlight--or she would have blown the crazy thing away, if it were dangerous, with buckshot, and then planted an acre of garden, put up ten bushels of cherries, whipped up a pancake and sausage breakfast for fourteen, mended her daughter's toys, and hung out a fresh load of laundry, all before heading off to work for the morning in the OR. It's her birthday today. That crazy country girl deserves a happy break. All the best, dear Sonya. You're wonderful.

Rare Sunshine

After sleeping most of the day yesterday, Martin awakened at 2:30 last night and started rolling around the bed. "I can't get to sleep," he said, waking me, who had been blissfully accepting my first good night's sleep in three or four days. I was not feeling generous.

"Go over to your side of the bed and do finger exercises," I groaned (Martin informed me of this later). "You're like sleeping with a flipping fish."

I do remember feeling a little bad about this response even in my groggy state, and so I said something empathetic, like "So you're having trouble sleeping."

Affirmed.

"I did too after I slept all day," I said.

"What did you do?"

"I lay in bed and thought, It's so much nicer to be awake in the middle of the night and feel good than it was to be awake in the middle of the night and feel awful, and then I just lay there and fell back asleep."

Which, I think, is what Martin did as well, because when we opened our eyes again Beatrix was parting our curtains to say, "It's a sun-up day," and indeed, the sun was lighting up a deep, smooth snow outside our window.

It's a snow day, the children are home from school, and knock on wood, it's the first day in almost a week when we're all well. We celebrated by eating toasted waffles smeared with Nutella and drinking a pot of tea. Martin is like a puppy, bounding around all full of health and gratitude, just as anyone who has slept for over 48 hours and finally recovered feels--so happy to be alive and ready to take on the world again, or at least a shower and real clothes, which is a good start. We will miss the endless reruns of the Munsters, bowls full of Saltines, and salty chicken noodle soup out of a can, but these are sacrifices I think we can make.

Flea in the Flue is better than a Few with the Flu

I have finally crawled out of the deep, long tunnel that is the flu. The flumeisters seemed to have shaken, not stirred, a perfect cocktail for lucky me--I had the whole shaboom served to me in courses. I picture the flu guys lounging somewhere, maybe on some soft easy chairs in my large intestine, having this pleasant planning meeting. "Let's start her with some chills, followed by a whole course of sweats, topped off, of course, by vomiting! What a wonderful time this will be! And then let's give her a real killer of a headache and more body aches, and then see how she's doing after all that." Thankfully my body kicked 'em out before they could go much further with their dastardly plans.

And no, smarty-pants I did not get a flu shot this year. This is what I figured: why get the antibodies with a thirty-second spray up my nose when I could get the very same antibodies by fighting for my life for two days? Why take the easy way out when the hard way only makes you weaker?

Two interesting things that resulted, I believe, from dehydration: one, I was prostrate on the couch with my hands around a pillow, when the pillow began feeling absolutely huge, and my hands started feeling smaller and smaller, like bird claws. The second trippy thing happened last night, when I'd actually been trying to hydrate for a good day, to slow results--I got up and started to putter around (Martin had by this time, succumbed to the party-planners and hit the pillows)--as I accomplished a few normal household tasks, I realized that all the colors I saw, on the counters, for example, seemed to be saturated, incredibly bright and vibrant. This sensation was far preferable than the bird-claw sensation.

I seem to be on the up-swing for sure, and I'm hoping that Martin endures a less serious, less interesting version of the flu, and that Elspeth, who I can't remember if she had the inoculation or not (Merry's was the first down and the first well and Bea's had the flu shot)--skips the yuckiness altogether.

So that's where I've been, lovies. Don't come over any time soon.

WINNER: ADD-A-CAPTION GAME 1

With a huge howdy-thanks to everyone who participated in this week's Add-A-Caption Game, and a special shout-out to the kid-contributors, I'm delighted to present the winners of this week's contest.

THE WINNER IS. . .ANONYMOUS
Your problem here, ma'am, is that this isn't a laundry chute--it's a handyman chute. They're just going to keep sliding out onto your floor until you turn off this valve ...

AND YOUR AWARD IS. . .A VIRTUAL, LIFE-CHANGING CYCLING TRIP THROUGH AUSTRALIA'S WILDERNESS!

We are not responsible for any harm that you or your bicycle may incur, virtual or otherwise. Please do not try to enchant crocs with your flashy rims.

WINNER: ADD-A-CAPTION GAME 2

**DRUMROLL PLEASE**

THE WINNER IS (yet another) ANONYMOUS!
back guy/gal: "so, do these stirrups make me look fat?"
front dude (muttering to himself): "no right answer, no right answer..."

AND YOUR PRIZE IS:
A VIRTUAL LIFETIME SUPPLY OF GIANT VEGETABLES!!!!

man in regalia not included

Wow, folks! Thanks for the wonderful response to our "Add-a-Caption" game! I'll leave it up for comments through the end of Monday just in case some of you didn't get a chance to dig up a caption. As Monday closes, Wazoo will VOTE.

PS. Martin just found Merry climbing into our bed (it's 11 pm) and asked her why she was getting in when we weren't even there yet and she answered, "A man named Triangle." The poetry of the sleep-walker.

Sunday Add-A-Caption GAME: 1

Oh, dear!

Add your caption in the comments section below!
For brief, tiresome explanation, refer to the "Guidelines" below!

Sunday Add-A-Caption GAME 2

Go on, now. Add your caption for big praise from Wazoo.
Once again, "Guidelines" are in the post below.

Sunday Add A Caption GAME: Guidelines

A little explanation may be needed for you all to participate in today's Sunday Add-A-Caption Game.

Martin took the photos of my parent's old Fisher Price doll house this past Christmas for the precise purpose of opening this wonderful game for all of you. Now, I know most of you who visit (about 35 visits a day to Wazoo Farm) never comment--and I love your visits regardless, you strong-but-silent types--but hey, this is your big chance to get a little vocal.

Here are the guidelines:
1. Take a good look at the picture
2. Offer your best caption for each in the comments section below. If you're shy about comments, you who have my e-mail address can shoot me off an e-mail. Remember, commenting anonymously is always an option! Martin and I, the king and queen of Wazoo, will award the winner with public recognition on this site (remember again, you can sign your name any way you choose.)

Thanks a million, lovies!

Maple Syrup

Coomb's Family Farms maple syrup,
Elspeth embarking on new project with five toilet paper rolls,
Merry closed in downstairs bathroom assembling another beauty parlor,
Martin standing by the waffle iron, listening to NPR's Scott Simon giggling over Seattle football team,
Bea pedaling her pink tricycle into the kitchen cabinets,
table littered with sticky plates, half-drunk milk, an sludgy Bodum. . .
everyone in pyjamas.
Ah, Saturday morning. We sing of your glorious slothy slippered goodness.

Happy weekend.

Stop for a minute

My Dear,
If you have a chance, you should watch President Obama’s speech from last night. It’s elegiac and restorative, addressing the Tuscan shootings. I found it—particularly toward the end—very moving (needed a tissue or two). The crowd interruptions are annoying, but they don’t detract much. About thirty minutes long, though you can skip the first minute or two.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/44/2011/01/watch-president-obamas-full-sp.htmlLove you—
Martin

I took his advice--and completely saturated a tissue and a papertowel with grief I didn't even know I had. It was good to stop, stop the rushing about, and take the time to be a person who is a part of this country, a mother, child, spouse, and person who hopes to help make this world one that is whole and good.

Our Piano Tuner is a Prophet

Martin is cooking bacon and the smell is making me feel like disgracing myself. Truth is, I don't even really like eating bacon all that much--I have a piece once in a blue moon, especially if it's our friend, Mike's, thick-cut, peppered bacon from one of his happy pigs--but the smell! It makes me want to bite into everything, hoping for satisfaction.

The snow is piled a good foot outside in our window box. Today the kids were off school due to the snow, so we all lolled around in bed, happy and satisfied until Martin realized he must pay the piper. So we all rolled out, he rushed through breakfast, and went out to shovel the front walk. Two minutes and he's back in, yelling, "The piano tuner is here!"

Wha?
I was in my big red robe, had just poured milk into my cereal bowl and mixed cream into my coffee. Ah. I have no pride left, not even a little. Stripped the piano of its philodendron, music, lamps, and throw, welcomed the fellow at the door with a big grin that showed the world I love being all mussed up in a robe and opening the door to company.

And tune the piano he did, and showed the girls a DVD of his impressive show dog, and prayed for my uncle, and took my hand a gave me a word from God. The piano tuner, who three years ago on his first visit, seemed taciturn and silent, turns out to be this sometimes very talkative man who is also a prophet. He gave Martin a word from God last year at our annual tune-up but not me. So I was kind of happy he was giving me one this time, and curious--would he make some fabulous prophecy about fame and fortune?

Instead he said, "God says you're doing a really good job with the kids. Keep on doing that good work, and take a break when you need it."

Well! Not a bad word, all in all, kind of nice and encouraging, actually, since he'd been in our house all morning and listened to me interact with our three girls, plus two more, and one boy. I'd only raised my voice once when Elspeth went tromping through the house with snowy boots. Was that the break God was referring to through the piano tuner? That is, I should have taken one right then?

And the news for the evening is, we have run out of diapers. We are absolutely bereft of diapers until some good Samaritan stops by and drops off a little pack of Huggies. Bea's been peeing, in her clothes and in the potty, and thankfully, mostly in the latter.

The piano tuner forgot his galoshes, huge rubber affairs that sat in our hallway like two slouching men until he picked them up just before dinner. "You tried the piano yet?" he asked Martin.

Nope, not yet. My man is cooking us a pot of chili. Time for mama to have a little, God-ordained break. Yes, siree. It was prophesied, after all.

Snow

Oh, my. Perhaps an inch to two inches of snow in a few hours. The flakes are heavy and soft and I feel like licking our porch railing--the ice crystals would dissolve on my tongue instantly. I expect there will be at least a delay for school tomorrow morning. It's the witching hour, the minutes of transition toward dark when my whole spirit feels heavier and heavier, when I turn on a lamp and its light seems meager and insignificant.

After darkness falls completely, my head will clear and I'll be able to better map out our evening. It's Girls Night again, the first one in a month, and though the girls are perfectly happy and well behaved, part of me still waits for someone to blow in the door, someone with fresh perspective and who is old enough to legally split a beer. I think, bound and tied by my own personality which longs for company almost all the time, that to live alone would be terribly hard. I crave the solitude occasionally but then when I have too much of it (which is only once in a blue moon, mind you), I begin to feel listless and without direction.

Last night, Martin and Merry took a warm loaf of pumpkin bread through the snow to the neighbor's house. According to Martin afterward, the house was incredibly warm and thick with cigarette smoke from all the relatives assembled, who sat at a table and "kept to themselves" while the woman, recently widowed, talked to Martin and Merry for twenty minutes straight. She said she'd always been most afraid of being alone, and now God has made her alone. Her love, with her for twenty years, talked so much, she said--at the sink, while he washed dishes, everywhere--and it used to drive her crazy, but now the silence is what she hates most.

Apparently the children found him at the kitchen table, bloodied and still, and called 911 (their mother works nights and was still at work), and then they clung to him until the police and healthcare professionals arrived.

The little girl met us on the sledding hill, her lips bright with lipstick. "Did you hear?" she said in a level voice. "My dad died yesterday." Her eyes were flat; her voice repeated the news to every newcomer. "Did you hear?"

"I'm so sorry," I said, and put my arm around her shoulders. And I am sorry, deeply sorry that family should be left without a husband and daddy.

Snow still falls. Elspeth is climbing on my lap, begging for Lightning McQueen music. The oven has preheated. Merry just finished her puzzle. And the darkness is falling, but it doesn't seem darker. Instead the snow spreads across the sky, piling on dark branches of trees, falling silently and steadily, a quiet and magnificent beauty.

Five-minute message

My dear friend, whom I know as well as my own hand, is in love with a man I have never seen.

My two-year old in blue mittens bangs at the front door: "I wanna come in! Mommy! I wanna come in!"

I am baking holiday pumpkin bread for a little girl who found her daddy dead when she walked into the kitchen two mornings ago. She is Merry's age, and her daddy was about Martin's age.

My five-year old mooned her sister and now is out in the snow making ice pies.

I am bent over the kitchen counter, typing, listening to the hum of my computer, the roar of a truck outside, the cries of my two-year old. I smell cinnamon and nutmeg and cloves. My hands are cold, my body warm.

Life is an odd thing, all in all, full of wonders and happinesses and tradgedy, all in the same minute. It's a cliche but it strikes me as new.

A little cold, a little optimism

I'm sitting at the computer here, half undressed but still wearing my winter coat. Don't even try to figure that out. We're home from church and shopping (bought four bottles of wine, 41 boxes of Annie's mac n cheese, two gallons of milk--set for the week!)--and though I turned up the heat on our return, it takes a while for the house to feel anywhere close to 65 degrees.

It is an exquisite Sunday afternoon. snow, snow, everywhere, marked with footprints and shadows, the fence in reflection, slats ticking up the garden path. The happy squeal of a child flying down our sledding hill. Hopefully said child has missed the various dangers at the bottom of the hill: cold fire pit, frozen creek, picnic table.

Though we watched a fascinating BBC series on the Crusades this morning that left me both laughing at the stupid men who trekked all the way to Jerusalem without proper suitcases, and also full of the awful weight of their sheer barbarism in the name of God--though it is down in my stomach like a ball of lead--I am still filled with gentle optimism. Winter makes me so grateful for sunshine (see my column in the paper for this week), so happy for subtle colors--the wheat-browns of the tall grass in our garden, the snow on the shed roof that catches a bright white light, Merry's ridiculously pink coat travelling by my window. And of course the birds, six black wings flashing up from the ground into a sky so pale it might not be blue, but is.

this and that and the puget sound

Feathery snowflakes fall outside, illuminated by the street light. Tonight we ate our first King Cake, a traditional New Orleans treat--tender brioche dough braided and topped with icing in three colors. I chomped into the hidden baby and quickly passed the piece to Beatrix, who was delighted to find piece of plastic in her mouth. I am now to bake the next King Cake.

At our lovely friends house, we drank wine and ate cheese and sauteed potatoes and freshly baked bread, laughed plenty, washed and dried dishes, and watched their oldest son, home from college, break dance. He said when he was doing field studies in the middle of Podunkity, West Virginia, he lived many hours in a tiny room and felt the need to exercise, so he decided to take up break dancing. (This, I imagine, is not a thought that would have occured to me). Bea was especially impressed, and she and Elspeth went rolling over the floor in imitation.

Now, finally, the Puget Sound from the ferry railing:


And congratulations to Martin, who just got two poems accepted at Prairie Schooner.

And tea, and more soft snow, and happiness to be home with heat roaring.

OH NO

OH NO!

My cry after everything--my pictures I'd downloaded, the entire post I'd worked on during a precious hour when Martin took the girls--GONE. Just because my computer downstairs suddenly stopped wanting cookies. Who doesn't want cookies???

Well, my return to all of you was fresh, full of hope for the New Year, glorious, sparkling like the waters of the Puget Sound on an uncommonly clear day. Martin was gazing into the noonday sunshine; my father was holding Elspeth over the railing of a ferry, and the Cascades were snowcapped. I believe there were even dolphins flipping and seals shouting hello--and now you've just got me, kind of grumpy, jaded, attitude ruined by cookies.

So sorry to return to you like this.

I also described how full of gratitude I felt for such a wonderful vacation in Washington and Texas, how Martin and I went away overnight for the first time without children in seven years, our beautiful presents, and such good food that I went up an entire size. I was witty in the way I described my present detox (hardly any sugar/fat, only a few truffles as compared to a steady diet of truffles), and slightly sentimental when describing how much we loved being with family.

I opened the post with three funny anecdotes: one about Elspeth smearing bubblegum on her eyelids and in her hair today in the car; another about Merry trying to leave the house in two items of my clothing; and the third about Bea's potty training, the way she loves sitting in the bathroom and talking about "peww-oup" and singing the song, "Life is a highway! I'm gonna ride it all night laaa-onge. . ." It was rather funny and meant to bring you back to the warm, silly fold of Wazoo Farm after such a long hiatus.

But it's gone, all gone. Disappeared in a puff of internetty smoke.

Well, folks, I'm back. It's really nice to be home, cookies and all.