Cold Enough For Ya?

Wild turkeys eating bittersweet berries in trees; Charley Freiberg photo

Last night, I went to bed wearing fingerless mittens, polar fleece knee socks, polar fleece pj’s all tucked in as thoroughly as I could tuck ‘em, in a bed made up with flannel sheets with an extra flannel top sheet and a red, a purple, a pink, and a tan – yes, that’s four – blankets on top. And a large Maine Coon Cat-dog beside me. I woke up this morning still wearing all but the fingerless mitts. The Cat-dog had left for a warm basket down by the woodstove.

It was -4 degrees Friday night when I drove home from the Upper Valley. It’s January, and this is New England. We’re in it – the January Freeze, which we get every year, sometimes earlier, sometimes later, sometimes more than once, and sometimes for two weeks or only a few days. I got the serious winter coat out (bought in Montreal one winter many decades ago) and the serious winter hat and scarf, and the serious winter mittens, and as I write this, I’m sitting at my desk wearing legwarmers under my pants, ankle-high moccasins, fingerless mittens, a scarf, a sweater and a shirt, and I’ve got a lap blanket draped around my shoulders. And I’m dreading having to head down to the cold cellar to clean out the Furry People’s litter boxes and fold the dry laundry and put the wet laundry into the dryer before I can go to bed. 

I checked with my dear Florida friend tonight, to see what the weather is like in the nether regions. “Oh, it’s been kind of chilly,” she said. “70 today, and only 60 tonight.” 

Yeah. Well. Life is tough all over, doncha know.

The British Car Gal and her sister were up from the more temperate zone in our state this morning, both also dressed in their serious winter clothing, but reporting that when we had more than 9 inches of snow this past week, they got basically nothing. We got ice and sleet – my windshield wipers are still thick with ice from that part of the storm - then lots of snow, then enough wind to blow gaps in the snow off the ice so places in the driveway are wicked slippery. The BCG says they have the ice, but not the sneaky snow cover. I think I prefer what we’ve got – I can walk from the house to the garage without my crampons on so long as I tread lightly and don’t dig my foot in deep enough to hit the ice hiding below. That reasoning is how people in the Northeast wind up suddenly flat on their backs in their driveways, seeing stars and wondering what just happened.

This is the only time of year when it’s probably safe to venture into the woods (hunting season’s over and we assume the tick population is buried in ice or otherwise not a threat), but oh, it’s a nice thought -but a thought it’ll remain. I remember when I was young and foolish going skiing in weather like this. I must have had a better-stoked internal furnace back then, now I get cold just thinking about it. Even the Catman, who has fur between the pads of his paws and an incredibly thick winter mane, will only spend about 4 minutes outside in this weather. The little black one sticks her delicate snoot out the door for a second then backs up quickly and goes back into semi-hibernation in one of her winter nests. She isn’t even bothering to patrol the cold cellar for mice. Catman did bring a live blue jay indoors the other day, which was a little too exciting for all of us. Note to self: no matter how cold it is, don’t just open the door to let the cat back in - check the cat’s mouth first!

Giant Calla leaves; Deb Marshall photo

 

This is the time of year when we all have dry skin, chapped lips, cold toes and fingers, goosebumps, and the idea of having to take the compost out to the bin is just – well – horrifying. All winter long, the compost bin feeds and possibly heats and houses the outdoor mouse colony, and crows keep it fairly mixed up on days when the top layer of snow has melted down. Getting there can be an adventure, between ice, snow, wild turkey droppings, storms, howling wolves, abominable snowmen, and so on.

The Buddha statue on the front wart has twice been covered to his head top with snow, and hasn’t yet, since the first storm this season, lost enough snow to uncover more than his shoulders. The garden is just lumpy white – no signs of the deer who were hanging out there earlier, there’s nothing left for them to browse at this point. Something has stolen the big sunflower made of seeds from the railing on the wart; and several cakes of suet, which this year totally disappear instead of landing on the snowbanks beneath the railings, so I don’t think the very fat squirrels are pushing them off.

Even though we’ve passed the solstice, it feels like midnight at 6 pm and some nights my body just longs for bed before 8 pm. I indulged it one night, but woke up in the wee hours and spent the rest of the dark time reading, then wanted to sleep again when the day had started and I had to be up. Not going to do that experiment again. 

This winter, my windows are full of giant-leaved calla lilies that haven’t produced a single flower, long-leaved amaryllis that bloomed months ago, some more long-leaved freesia that produced two measly flower stalks but no more, paperwhite narcissus that also bloomed two months ago and are now just really tall green leaves, orchids that aren’t in bloom, Christmas cactuses that bloomed at Hallowe’en, lush green bushy bay tree and kaffir lime trees, and a hibiscus that’s produced 2 flowers three weeks apart. One of my pink prittithangs has bit the dust and the other is sending out flowers, but none are open at the moment. The greenery is nice, but I need some color, and some scent would be nice, too. 

Kaffir lime leaves; Deb Marshall photo

 

I’m also missing dog energy in the house, and still finding myself in tears every so often when something makes me acutely aware that Roo and Abu are gone. Come spring I’ll probably go dog-hunting again, but realize that much as I adore large dogs, I need to find one that I can lift and carry down stairs if need be, and will be able to do so 10 years from now. It’s going to be hard not to fall in love with the first large dog I see that needs a home. Catman-dog is trying to fill in for the dogs – he’s taken to peeing on car tires, for example, and chasing turkeys and deer out of the yard, and terrorizing visiting canines – but he’s not fooling me, he’s really an opinionated puddy and sometimes benevolent whiskered Lord of the Universe, after all.

I’m definitely feeling a lot of discontent this winter – no flowers blooming, my feet are cold, no dogs to hug, now that the holidays are over no interest in cooking and can’t think of anything I want to eat, my feet are cold, avoiding doing my work inventory and other tedious things that have to be done before taxes can be calculated, can’t find a book that really grips my imagination, my feet are cold, I can’t bear to listen to any more politics, stories about people shooting each other, arguments about gun laws, anything to do with our Great Orange Idiot - and my feet are cold.

It seems like a good time to do some hauling out and tossing. We could apply that to DC, for certain, but since that takes more co-operation than seems possible right now, I’m finding myself looking around the house and narrowing my eyes at stuff. Why, exactly, do I have a basket full of plastic container tops in the pantry? Do I really need to keep those notes for articles I wrote for now-defunct magazines more than three decades ago? Just because I’ve had these books that someone gave me/I bought/I inherited forever, do I really need to keep them if I’ll never read them again? Does anyone actually need 10 used cardboard berry boxes? Why do I still have that pair of pants that doesn’t have pockets deep enough to be useful so I never wear them? I haven’t worn that dress in at least 100 years – does it even still fit? What is that stuff on the top shelf in the pantry, and under the bottom shelf in the cedar closet? 

Clearing out can be very satisfying, but, at least amongst those of us brought up in northern New England, the process runs head-first into two potential problems: The first is that we don’t throw anything out because you never know when you might need it again. That proves to be true often enough that it’s hard to fight.

The second is the idea that something you really really like is too good to use. If you use it, you might break it, or wear it out, or some other disaster may happen to it, and then you won’t have it any more. If you don’t have that concept stored in your brain you won’t understand how difficult it is to surmount; but if you swallowed that concept as a child, you’ll understand why it took me more than 20 years before I could convince myself to actually wear the hand-made moccasins that cost me more than I could comfortably afford when I bought them all that long time ago.

A related problem is that of the stuff you inherited from people now dead. This kind of stuff is often “too good to use” as well as being somehow especially valuable in our minds the older it gets; and if you do get rid of it, you never know when you might wish you still had it. You may not even like the thing – but if it’s a thousand years old and belonged to great great great great great aunt Mabel, or worse, was made by that old lady by hand, how can you possibly get rid of it? And if you love it, even worse, because that makes it irreplaceable and thus, too good to use. The only solution is to open a private museum.

The human mind is a snarled and sometimes scary place – especially in the middle of the January Freeze. Good luck getting through it. I suggest buying a bunch of flowers at the grocery store to make you happy, then starting the clear-out with the filing cabinets. Great great great uncle Bert’s stuff can wait.

Bay leaves; Deb Marshall photo