Blizzard

And I mean blizzard. Right here in Silver City,NM. Snowing like mad, blowing like mad. Juncos and sparrows like pufferfish against the cold on the feeder right outside my floor to ceiling window. I've been splitting wood and stacking it against the coming of this storm--and against the north side of our house. The forecast said the winds would be from the southwest, so I thought the wood would (!) be dry. But no. The winds are from all points of the compass and the wood is snow-covered. The last time I went out to get a load, I took the whisk broom and brushed off the snow, put the piece in the carrier. Before I could get the carrier full, snow was covering the wood again! Boy, am I glad I don't live in a REALLY snowy place.

But it's fun having severe weather warnings/blizzard warnings once a winter. We all like dramatic weather. At least I do. I like the Weather Channel's features on weather phenomena. I like reading books about severe weather stuff--The Perfect Storm (which was not good in movie form--remember at the end that totally fake wave?), Shackleton's Endurance, Scott's lonely trip to the South Pole where he died. I like remembering the tornado in Ogallala, Nebraska, the flash floods of my youth. I don't like fires, though. Much too frightening. Anyway, they're not weather.

Random, not Free, Thoughts

I don't write anymore--except in my journal. I used to be a good writer. Other people said so, not just me. But I don't get the urge anymore. Maybe it's like praying--I need to sit down and write until I feel like writing again. I have just read my friend's blog which I haven't read in months. I read her writing--which is always so good, such a good way to bring her back to life again, so to speak--and like how she does it. She practices.

My mother died. She was 93 1/2 years old. I loved her so much. So much that I miss her every day. I miss her smile, her laugh, our online crostics of an evening when we would laugh and laugh at the clues, our political discussions every morning at the breakfast table--actually the minute I came in from my walk (another thing I don't do much anymore), her vast knowledge, her curiosity, her love of life--even after my dad died 2 1/2 years ago. She did speak to me, kind of, when I was praying about whether to move to this house. She said, in my mind, Proceed as way opens. I have the small piece of paper (about 2 inches square because, like her father, she never wasted ANYTHING) with this typed on it: A Quaker saying in times of indecision and stress: PROCEED AS WAY OPENS, and underneath she pasted a sticker of a stream in the woods at sunrise--or sunset. I can't tell. She loved stickers too. She loved a lot of things, and I knew it. I mean she didn't keep it in, she wasn't embarrassed to be excited about the little stuff. Cheerful. Happy. I want to be like her. And it's funny how I am trying to now that she has gone. Well, she left me a year and a half--and a lifetime--of example.

Writing and Spring and Kittens

Oh dear. I see that the last time I wrote here was March 8 and this is April 8 and so I'm writing to stick with my kind-of goal of at least one entry a month. But I have been writing elsewhere, and I am glad of it. It's such a wonderful feeling to go for a walk and have a piece I'm working on to work on as I walk. I had forgotten. I wrote to a friend today that I've had a long hiatus. I guess an hiatus can be any length, but it's been three or four years.

Lovely spring. Windy, but sunny. Lovely little Keziah cat sleeping on my bed. She is kind of wildish--I haven't yet picked her up except at the animal shelter. But she loves to be patted and have her ears scratched--in the dark. When it gets light, she sees me and seems to say, what was I thinking. Funny little kitty. She's orange--all over, no white. Only 1 in 3 orange cats are female because the gene for orangeness is carried by the male. So Kezzie is unusual in several ways. I like her.

Snow? In New Mexico?

Yes. Once again, it has snowed today. It was a spring storm which is much better than a winter storm. Wind blowing mightily, a blizzard actually, when I got up at 6:30. Then, on the way to Curves, blue sky above me. And that's how the day went--furious snow followed by sunshine and steaming pavement followed by tiny pellets of snow racing to the ground as the sun shone bravely on. I went out to split some more wood (when will I ever get a break from the wood stove??), and it was nice on the lee side of the house. Then came the pellets and I said to myself, I'm just staying out here or I'll never get this done. Snowed and sunned about five times over while I was out there for ten minutes.

Southern Utah has 123% of normal snow right now. Northern Utah has 69% of normal. Southern New Mexico has had plenty and more. Let's hear it for the South this year.

This and That

I have a winter cold: runny nose, slight cough. That's it. No other symptoms. Allergies? Well, it's getting better, so I guess not. I'm not--haven't been--an allergic person. But my sister reminds me a person can start having allergies any old time in her life.

Anyone have snow allergies out there?

It's February, though, and that is good. My brother turns 60 on Monday, my mother 93 a week from today, my sister 65 on the 26th. My mother then has all of her children in their 60s. Lucky her! And lucky us because we have her in her 90s.

Past and Future

Elder L. Tom Perry, in his conference talk in October, quoted Pres. Reagan: "I do not want to go back to the past; I want to go back to the past way of facing the future." I wonder about that as I think of the people of Haiti. How can they ever go back to the past way of facing the future? Everything in their world has changed--the geography, the city parks and buildings, the people they knew and loved and just passed in the streets. All gone or changed, mutilated. Familiar sights now strange, bent, twisted, collapsed. Their future has shortened to hour by hour--food, water, sleep without tremors? I wonder if this complete upheaval of life and surroundings erases a past to draw comfort from?

112,000 official death toll. Burning bodies in the streets because there is nothing else to do. One more man saved after 14 days in a collapsed hotel. And we rejoice for him, the one, because life is so precious. One life is so precious.

A 2nd Grader. That's 7 years old.

My niece brought her daughter's school journal with her to our New Year's Day get-together. She had written, for example, "This day is flawless." When my sister asked her what "flawless" meant, she knew, of course. Perfect. Alex and I went for a walk New Year's Day. On the way back, two large boxer-like dogs raced up a driveway and across the road, one leapt up on Alex, then turned on Banjo--on his leash--and attacked him savagely. I shouted, yelled as fiercely as I could, and they backed off. Alex said she wasn't afraid of the dog--just the suddenness of his attack. Today, two days later, as Kelly, Alex, and I were returning from our walk, we told Kelly about the incident. Alex said to her mother, "I just disassociated myself from him." New Year's Eve: Alex, playing around with a fabric remnant—"Isn’t this absolutely dazzling, eye-popping?" She liked the sound of it, repeating it several times. Karen: "I don’t want my eyes to pop." Alex: "They won’t—it’s just a figure of speech." A bit later, Karen sent Alex to her room to calm down. When she came out she said to Karen, "You have subdued me." Today, we had the Quarter Ceremony. Actually, the Guam Quarter Ceremony. Alex, on a small stool draped with a bright pink shawl, read from her little black diary: "We are here to celebrate the Guam Quarter. I will now place it [on the state quarters map]." She, under Karen's apt tutelage, sewed a pink tablecloth with two-inch lace around the edges, and four napkins. This to use with the porcelain tea set she got for Christmas. Isn't she great?