MONDAY MUSINGS—LONGING FOR SPRING

We’re braced for more very cold weather. It’s been an up and down ride between cold and very, very cold weather the past two weeks. We’ve had lots of snow, over ten inches in one storm, last week and then an added inch or two in each of the several storms since. Right now, we have probably six to eight inches on the ground. It’s no longer fluffy easy to maneuver through snow. It now has a three inch crust of ice covering it. That dropped on Friday when we had thunder snow and sleet.

The weather people say thunder snow is rare. I don’t think it’s quite as rare as they say probably more a case of not being able to observe it even when they know the conditions are right for it to happen. When there is heavy snowfall accompanying thunder snow, it tends to muffle the sound of thunder (which normally can be heard five- six miles away or more, in the summer to about a mile or two in the winter) and certainly masks the flashes of lightning. When you’re directly in the storm, the thunder is loud and rolling and you definitely see all the flashes of lightning.  Very surreal to see a flash of lightning light up the backdrop white fields and ice sickles hanging from the trees.  For thunder snow to occur the air layer closer to the ground has to be warmer than the layers above, but still cold enough to create snow—a very particular set of circumstances. Snowfall rates during a thunder snow (or sleet) event can reach two inches an hour, as was the case here on Friday night.

Saturday the weather was a warm 38 degrees and turned everything a bit mushy only to freeze again in the below freezing temps of Saturday night. Sunday morning it was pretty landscape but oh, so dangerous to navigate. Poor Gidget, my Great Dane, slid right down the three steps to the yard from the patio and spun around a few times before coming to a stop about four feet away. It took her a few minutes before she could get back up and she was very careful, after that, in placing each foot in the snow. The horses were also careful in foot placement. You could hear each foot break through the snow crust. Doctari is a 1200 lb horse and even he was careful in cutting a path for the mares to follow to the feeding areas. Pretty much a single file. The cats? Pfft. They walk on top of the snow and use their claws when necessary, for traction. But they were fun to watch as they would climb the snow banks made, from shoveling the driveway, and sit on the top surveying their world and then sliding down the other side. Very deliberate and hilarious to watch.

 

The driveway is slick ice. Jake and his best friend have a couple of old skateboards without wheels and had a ball sliding across the ice there and trudging over to the hilly area on the property and surfed the icy snow. They had both had on their skate shoes and had a merry time sliding across the ice.  “Hey, Mom, you should try it—it’s fun.” Um no, after last year’s fiasco on the ice and totally FUBARing my shoulder, I’ll pass. If I go out it’s with good snow tread boots and I stick to the thicker snow areas where I can break through the ice for traction. All the paths the guys made are all ice right now, so those are off limits for me.

As I sit here this morning, bundled up against the cold (3 degrees), sipping my morning coffee I have to say I love the light of the early morning sun on the icy snow. I can admit it’s a beautiful landscape but I’m longing for the bright green of spring. Like tomorrow morning, please.

WHAT I WANT AND WHAT I GOT...

Due to circumstances beyond my control this will be a late Monday Musings and early IWSG (click to get a list of other participating blogs) I just combined the articles. I'll be visiting blogs over the next few days and cracking the whip to get back into blogging after some much needed time off.

WHAT I GOT THIS MORNING AT THE FEEDERS AND
WHAT I WANT IS THE LAST PICTURE.

I've noticed a difference in what I'd like to see happening and what is happening—what I want and what I got. For instance, my editing tasks. I've been helping hubs edit his book. It's a good story but lord have mercy, the man is heavy into he said/she said. That drives me nuts. He's actually very good with dialog but when he wrote these stories they were done with old school tags. Pulling his mind from then to now has been...a struggle. Magnum PI and Spencer meeting Burn Notice. Don't get me wrong, Magnum had some great story lines and some great oddball humor (and my husband loves oddball and corny humor) and Spencer did as well, but if they were written for today's market they'd have to have some major updating to grab the audience. Same genre different methods of telling. 

What I want is someone who likes to read those sorts of detective stories read for story content and word usage. What I got is me. 

Then there is my writing. Talk about insecurities and frustrations. I have two manuscripts completed in a series I wrote. Mine had to go on a major word diet. In fact the first in the series lost 10k. I was very proud of that. Now it's in pieces—kinda like Humpty-Dumpty with all king's horses and all the king's men at the ready to put it back together again but they've all gone into stasis waiting for the orders to proceed. Sigh....

What I want is free time to concentrate on that and what I've got is itty-bitty sound bytes of time to do it.

Then there is the weather. 

What I want is green and flowers. Like my brother Rob’s house in early May.

What I got is the heaviest snowfall in our area since 2002 and minus 2 this morning.

Hey, the sun is shining on this bright Monday and that’s good. It’s actually beautiful but wicked cold even with the temps up to almost 15 degrees, but the wind bites hard.

Hubs is bundled up in multi-layers of clothes (he loses 10 lbs and 10 inches once he peels that bundle off) and you can see how much we've accomplished after a couple hours of work. We haven't even started on the driveway to the road—which is also unplowed and likely to remain so, unless our neighbor decides to run his tractor over our road a mile down to the blacktop which is also not plowed. They rarely plow it. Getting anywhere is problematic.  

Then there is the driveway. 

What I want is a nice cleared driveway. What I got is this—can you even tell where the driveway is?

Uh, no. 

Just in case you're curious, curves around the little oak tree and out the break in the hedges. I'm standing in the cleared area to take this shot. 

We've already been out two hours this morning and barely have made a dent in clearing the snow from the garage so we can open the doors. It’s several more hours of shoveling time to get down to that break in the hedges.

And then come Wednesday afternoon we get more snow and sleet (I much prefer the snow over icy slush) and again over next weekend.

There you have it. The battle of wants and gots. I suspect it will be an ongoing battle this year, especially with writing.

What's your ongoing battle right now? 

Happy New Year!

WHAT I WANT TO SEE. TOMORROW WOULD
BE GOOD 

MONDAY MUSINGS: WE INTERRUPT SPRING...

One of the things I love about living in southwesten part of Missouri is the fact that winters are usually short. Most of the snow we get starts late December through mid February. The week of Valentine's Day, in a normal year, we've been known to get a few substantial snowstorms. Mind you, I don't particularly like having to break ice for the animals or tote water, but I can live with it. 

Ask anyone and you'll hear that the weather has been caddywumpus the past few years. Last year we barely got any cold weather and not much more than a dusting of snow and my tulips and daffodils were budding by this time. This year, however, we've had many of the big storms (10 plus inches) passed us by—either tracking a bit north or south of us.  We've not escaped the snow and have gotten 3 or 4 inches, which is usually gone in 36 hours. Valentine Day came with a dusting. Whew!

Well, I breathed too soon. Two days later we got hit with thunder sleet. That's when the weather starts out warm with rain and temps drop dramatically and you end up with icy sleet. Thunder and lightning with, not rain, sleet pebbles. Very strange to hear thunder rumbling across the sky and snow and sleet falling. They closed down the Fort except for keen and essential personnel and the kid missed work too. Hubs has had 4 snow days in the past two weeks. Driving out here, on rarely plowed country roads, is hazardous. 

When it was all done we had probably 3 inches of white on the ground. Nothing fluffy about this white stuff. It promptly froze into solid sheets of ice. You know its ice, and not snow, when you see a 1200 lb horse gingerly walk across it without breaking through and UPS drives up your driveway and slides to your patio—without breaking through the stuff. You should have seen him trying to go out my drive. I thought for sure he was going to keep right on going and end up in the middle of the pasture across road.  I was envisioning either an over turned truck or one of those huge tow trucks having to pull him out of the field. He merely slid; nose first, into the bank. He got real cozy with the shrubs but managed to stay upright and with some careful maneuvering, to slip-sliding his way down the road. Yeah, I was hearing echoes of Paul Simon. It was a real Kodachrome moment. J

Thursday, Friday, and Saturday I watched fresh snow falling while I worked. The sheets of ice were almost gone but ended up with a few inches of wet snow on top. In the past two weeks we've had about 3 or 4 days without snowfall. It could be worse. Forty minutes north they got 19 inches of snow.

 

Cardinals watching  the cats below

The poor Robins, who arrived just recently, were confused. I don’t think they got the memo that spring has been delayed by snow. Feeders have had tons of birds and more than usual. Of course nothing starves at Sia’s house. I've had suet bars for all the feeders and my usual peanut butter bark for the woodpeckers. I buy cheap peanut butter and stir in sunflower seeds and smear it in the bark crevices of the huge oak tree out front. 

Blue Jays thru the window

The Blue Jays and Woodpeckers argue loudly over territory and the yummy peanut butter. The birds love the snacks and my cats love watching the show perched on the window sills within the warm house.

Today,  all the snow is gone (except for some ice piles), but we’re expecting more tonight. I think spring will be delayed a few more weeks with all this white stuff and the deep-freeze temps.

I’m so ready for spring and flowers.

Last year's apple blossoms. 

MONDAY MUSINGS: The Joy Of Savoring Life

Come on in and sit a spell.

Savor: property of a substance that can be identified by the senses. To take pleasure in. To enhance or enrich 

December day in Missouri

The last couple of weeks we’ve had some fabulous mild weather and a lot of sunny days. It’s been warm enough in the middle of the day to be outside in long sleeves. I turn off the heat until about an hour before sundown. Temps drop quickly as the sun sets. Friday was one of those days where it was in the upper 50’s, lots of sunshine—stiff breeze though, so a jacket was necessary.

I savor these December days because I know our winter snow usually hits us in January and February.

Today the scene was wonderful around the homestead. The birds were gossiping around the feeders, horses frolicking and kicking their heels in the pasture. Fed them some apples and got lots of soft nickers and rumbles of appreciation. Me Sassy darlin’ gave me hugs—that’s her head over my shoulder contentedly munching her apple and leaning on me. Apple kisses. J

Beautiful but ugh!

I know come January I’ll be seeing more of this:

I think this year has taught me some lessons on savoring life. The little moments that makes lasting memories. Sometimes we get so caught up in chasing the big things we forget that it’s the little things that really are important and add contentment to the soul.

This year I want to savor things. Let them soak into my soul. I want to concentrate on those things that are important—good health, family, and friends.

I would like to get rid of guilt. Instead of zeroing in on all the things I can't do or should have done; I’m looking at what I have accomplished. There will always be those things I can beat myself for not doing. But what’s the point? All you can do is the best you can do on any given day—that changes daily. Guilt tends to put me into the negative and accomplishments move me into the positive—a much better place to be both mentally and physically.

I’m also not beating myself up over my creative endeavors either with the ranch or my writing. I used to be able to sit down and write and the words just flowed—thousands at a time. In the last eighteen months there have been days I’m lucky to be able to verbally string together a sentence or two without stuttering. My body has been warring against an invasion and it’s wrapped up in that function and not extras. Writing is hit and miss. I might write two days in a row and skip three. I might write well for a half hour or an hour before the words stop. I’ve decided to stop comparing myself of today to what I was able to do two years ago. That was then, this is now. It will change again, but until it does I’m celebrating what I can do.

Welcoming the sunrise with the wind
in my hair

For me, this is the year of savoring. Of tasting life. I’m taking pleasure in the sunshine, the wind in my hair, watching the antics of my animals at play. Watching my garden grow. Seeing another sunrise.

• What are you going to savor this year?