A shift has occurred in the weather. The unseasonably warm days are no more. The girls came home from school with a story of a bus ride so cold that their bottoms went numb. There is a little sledding on the hill before it gets too dark and then we are back in the old routine of homework and piano practice while I hang wet laundry over the heat vent after supper. We’ve been working on the holiday leftovers pretty steadily but last night I announced, sadly, that we were back to our usual meals and was surprised (and pleased) to hear they had missed having the simple stuff  I usually pull together. I think I’ve gotten caught up on sleep. Or maybe the four mugs of tea I had this afternoon have something to do with the reason I’m still up past nine. The last few nights I went to bed as soon as I had tucked them in, with my book.  Last night I piled on the extra blankets and Billy probably got a better night sleep without me clinging to his side for warmth.

. . . . .

I’m back to my real life, full time. Meat needed to be picked up from the butcher and delivered. Errands run. There was quite a bit of laundry and one of the big freezers needed to be emptied and defrosted because it wasn’t closing properly. I check on the lambs but they have their own  mothers and are fine.

. . . . .

If I can manage to stay awake, and if the cat lets me, I’m reading. At the moment it is A Month in the Country by J.L. Carr. He died in ’94 and somehow it is the first of his books I’ve read. He’s good. Sometimes his sentences are intimidating when you think you will get up next and write something. Here is one passage to give you a taste:

their mother worked out how it was with me and usually sent a bit of whatever was being manufactured in her kitchen-rabbit pie, a couple of current teacakes, two or three curd tarts. So, over the weeks, a splendid repertory of North Riding dishes was performed amanti bravura to an applauding Londoner, dishes Mrs Ellerbeck had helped her mother bake, who helped her mother bake who…Sometimes I’d share this bounty with Moon and it is he who suggested that we were eating disposable archaeology.