Wednesday, December 21, 2005, 20:16
Winter Solstice
As of 1:35 p.m., it is officially winter.
To tell you the truth, it has been looking like winter around here for the past month.
That's one of the interesting things about the seasons here in Wisconsin, though. There is so much overlap. Late fall looks like winter, early spring looks like winter, late spring looks like summer, early fall looks like summer. Summer generally looks like summer unless it's a cool year, and then summer might feel like spring or early fall.
I am glad it's winter. This is the shortest day of the year. Now we can start going in the other direction. The days are so short now that I can hardly believe it. By 7:30 a.m., it is just getting light outside enough to really be able to see what you are doing, especially on cloudy days. And then by 4:30 p.m., it is starting to get dark already again. That's a huge contrast to summer when the eastern horizon begins to lighten up at 4 a.m. and then there's still light in the sky at 10 p.m. That's 8 hours of daylight compared to 18 hours of daylight.
In a couple of weeks, the days will be noticeably longer. Instead of full dark by 5 p.m., full dark will arrive a bit later, maybe around 5:15 p.m. You wouldn't think that 15 minutes would make that much difference, but it seems to. Besides, now that it's officially winter, spring is next! It's just that it will take a few months, many days of below zero temperatures and/or windchills and a certain amount of snow to get there. I don't mind the snow. I don't even mind cold weather too much. It's the short days that get to me.
Yipee! The winter solstice has arrived. Things are looking up!
LeAnn R. Ralph
Tuesday, December 20, 2005, 19:38
Marathon Runner
I feel like I ran a marathon this morning. All I did, though, was clean up 19 buckets of frozen horse manure, carry the buckets through the snow on 19 separate trips and dump it over the fence on the piles by Kajun's and Isabelle's pastures. (I don't even want to think about cleaning up the piles in the spring, but it will be okay then because the weather will be much warmer and I will be looking for any excuse to be outside.)
I did not clean up any horse manure yesterday because it was, after all, 10 degrees below zero and the horse manure was frozen. Of course, it was frozen today, too. Just not as frozen. You wouldn't think there would be different degrees of frozen, but there is. Seeing as it is 10 degree above zero today (heat wave!) the horse manure was not quite as frozen down. Yesterday it would have been like chipping up concrete. Today it was only like chipping up rocks.
I hope all of that exercise is good for me.
I am going to get more exercise this afternoon. This morning, my dear, sweet, wonderful, adorable husband took the books out of the bookcase that is in the corner of the living room and moved the bookcase out of the corner. Now I am going to have to clean in the corner and paint so the bookcase can be put back. Randy goes into work later on Tuesdays and Thursdays, so that meant he had time to take out the books and move the bookshelf this morning.
The good news is that the china cabinet is back where it belongs. I've got it all washed down with Murphy's Oil Soap and the glass cleaned and wiped and polished. I even have one shelf of items wiped off and back in the china cabinet where they belong. Only two more shelves to go!
See, now, that's the problem with painting. The painting itself is actually the minor part of the whole process. Doesn't take hardly any time to paint. It's moving all the furniture out into the middle of the room and cleaning that takes most of the time. And then of course, you have to let the walls dry before you can move the furniture back.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder if we ought not to implement Randy's idea. The other night he said, "Here's what we should do. When everyone comes here on the 31st for Christmas, we should hand them each a paint brush as they walk in the door and tell them that nobody eats and nobody opens presents until the painting is all done."
I am tempted. Very tempted.
Unfortunately, it would never work. I would still think that I had to clean before everybody came, and as long as I'm cleaning, I might as well be painting.
Too bad there isn't some way that I could get back the three weeks I lost from the flu!
LeAnn R. Ralph