A Post About Whatever Is Happening Around Here

My Journal Of This Week So Far…

Slightly More Than The Usual Entry

Just For Practice

Sunday 1/2/11

I woke before dawn. I could see the stars out my window even without my glasses. The feather tick had slipped again and I was cold. I tugged and got some back. Elv threw his covers back in the startling cold and tramped downstairs to stash wood in that old barrel stove. It was important to stave off some of that Minnesota winter chill for a while longer but the tick helped the most. The stars were very brilliant. I would love to be able to open my eyes to tree tops and stars every predawn morning.

The chill was off the house by eight or so and Elv fried eggs for our breakfast. We settled in our chairs in the living room with our Bibles for a couple hours. I was looking for a phrase we had been hearing lately. The search led me in a rather thorough perusal of the four Gospels. If you sit and read every word of Jesus in one setting, it helps to see Who He IS a new way. Do it sometime.

By noon or so Elv and I dressed in our warmest winter togs and headed down the trail away from the cabin to visit our friends the Lattins. Herb has been sick for three weeks with dizziness pinning him to his bed and chair, so we were there to give them a Sunday fellowship. The trail was a foot path broken through two feet of snow. The trees were sugar coated with snow, and the sun gave color and depth to every animal track and over every surface flat or drifted. As we walked away from the cabin we both turned and looked back to see what our current shelter looked like in winter against the spruces and snow. Lovely! …

As was the day with Herb and Susan. We had a long afternoon of visiting. The temperature was around zero as we left the house to head back to our cabin. The snow crunched underfoot while our flashlight made a moving pool of light just ahead of our feet on the whiteness. There’s nothing quite like walking through the starry darkness through the woods in winter.

Monday 1/3/11 Back to work for Elv and home for me to catch up on a huge laundry. The house here at home needed sweeping up from 48 hours of firewood hauling and fire building. The children were doing school work when I got there. Brad settled down to his Language Arts book and announced to me that now he was going to write in cursive and asked for my help to get started. His penmanship is very nice this year; but a letter from a cousin at Christmas time in cursive had caused him considerable frustration. So I sat with him in the living room by the fire and he mastered cursive in about an hour’s time. I knew he could. It certainly wasn’t his first introduction to it.

Elv and Lance went to the regular Monday evening firemen’s meeting. Elv came home solving…again. He woke at 2:30 AM again, tossing and still solving. So he got up to “sit by the fire and study awhile”. I went back to sleep with a whole warm bed to myself and slept…till morning, decently. Elv was long gone off to work when I got up.

Tuesday 1/4/11 I went in to see Dr. Dunlap today. She is a good friend after “seeing” us for over 12 years. We visited for an hour. Her words as she walked out of the room, “I always have more to think about after being with you.” It is mutual, yes.

Frank’s friend Charity arrived at our house before supper. She is home for Christmas break from her job as nanny in Colorado and she and Frances have a lot of catching up to do.

Elv had a meeting with LaMar. He slept better for a change. I’m glad.

Wednesday 1/5/11 I was having quiet time this morning when I realized that we needed milk for breakfast. So I headed off to town to do the weekly shopping. Home again by 9 or so for breakfast. The two girls got ready to go for a snowmobile ride with their brothers. I was sweeping in the basement when I thought of getting pictures of the snowmobiles taking off. Raced out in my slippers and camera and did.

The day turned into a day for others, pretty well, what with Evangeline’s children here and running errands. There was no time to write, read, and work on the puzzle that lives on the coffee table. Since I had two extra boys at my disposal I made a deal with Lance that we’d go scrape the snow off the rink if he would flood it. He is on the fire department and has the use of a tanker to haul the water for that job. So I took three boys over to plow. We have two new barn scrapers that work perfectly for getting rid of a couple inches of snow. It just takes some time. But I had Jaden, The Innovator with me so he rigged up a way to plow with the homemade goalie box. That took two boys to push,(Brad, The Dreamer and Jaden) which left me and George, The Persevere-er to each use a scraper. It takes all kinds to make a world, they say. When we got home I had a few minutes to sit with the two little girls and scrapbook before Evangeline showed up to take them home again. It was a good day. Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Brad’s helicopter came today. We ordered it for him for his 12^th birthday. It has the most amazing propensity to fly smack into ankles and around corners behind the wood stove almost out of reach.

Thursday 1/6/11 Happy Birthday Frances! She’s 17! Today, I settled down to fold laundry for a change. It had been all piling up on my chair downstairs beside the drying rack and the children had started gravitating to the pile to find duds. I had made quite a hole in it when Charlotte chatted in to say that she needed a ride to the clinic in Minong for our sick little Benny Baby. I left the house at quarter to twelve and returned about four hours later. The children did school without me and had started on evening chores of dishes, firewood, and cleanup in general. Amy finished folding up the laundry for me, too. But I enjoyed today’s errands. Benny is rather ill. He had a patient smile or two for me, and Charlotte is relieved that there is a tangible reason for his fever. He has his first ear infection. I was home about an hour when Elv got home. Knowing that we couldn’t take Brad to the rest home singing, because he has a bad cold; I offered to take the two girls and go to singing. Elv was happy to stay home with Brad. Lance had a breakdown today and had to run all the way down to Prentice for parts and is just now on his way home from work at 9 PM. (He has not had a chance to flood the rink.) I am home now with the family. Elv, Brad, and Frances are reading books here by the fire with me and Amy is upstairs rattling around in the sewing room looking into a new brainstorm, no doubt. Brad says his helicopter is breaking up and simply won’t respond to left and right commands on his remote.

Friday 1/8/11 It is cold this morning and the air is full of falling snow. I am sitting here at Spanish class with Amy. Another morning gone to running errands. This time I brought my computer along so that I could sort pictures and write while I wait. (The stove fan is too loud.) I think I could make excuse and never get anything done just running the errands each day.

This evening Elv and I are planning to go down to Rice Lake to drop something off at Moberg Electric before 4 o’clock. Then we will go out to eat somewhere. Clark asked where we will go, and suggested that we eat at the Casa Mexicana. I like the Mexican House well enough but was looking for more atmosphere than that. On the other hand, we have to dress so warmly in this weather that atmosphere seems a little facetious. So it could be a good choice. If we go to Norske Nook I won’t quite know what to order. It seems to me that the plates always look a bit scanty somehow. I’d use more gravy, more meat, and fewer potatoes than they serve. Or we could go to Perkins where the menu is like the law of the Medes and Persians which changeth not. Last time we were there, they were training in a batch of gelled and perky young men. But we would have privacy which is not to be had neither at Norske nor yet at Casa Mexicana. To be honest, Wisconsonites haven’t a clue about atmosphere. Or maybe they have used up the quota of said amenity at the Supper Clubs scattered throughout the woods of our state. So I don’t know why I mention “atmosphere” as something one can have at all.

Always more later.