An Old Sock

I don't know how it happened.  I don't know who to credit.  Had I asked for it, it could have been the miracle someone needed for sainthood.  An old sock appeared on my bathroom floor last night.

I like winter.  I like snow.  I love snow days, and in part that might be a reason I don't want a 4WD vehicle - an excuse to stay home.  I don't like being cold, but I love bundling up, fuzzy sweaters, warm socks, over-sized mugs of tea, crackling fire in the stove. 

Four years ago I received a multi-colored striped pair of knee high socks - lovely autumnal colors.  The next year I received a similar pair in purples.  I have a great drawer full of winter socks, but one of those autumnal striped socks has been missing since last winter (at least).  The other one sunk deeper and deeper into the drawer - I just kept expecting its mate to turn up, hoping it would surface when we moved out of the trailer, but it never did. Just a week ago, I was culling through my socks and saw it, speculating on a craft or some other use for which it might serve

Monday it snowed.  Tuesday I had a snow day.  Decked out in warm clothes with an over-sized mug of tea, I sat at the counter and worked from home.  I allowed myself a couple distractions - made a loaf of focaccia bread and did a couple loads of laundry.  The second load went in after I worked out and showered, just a load of towels, my workout clothes, and a few other things from the hamper. 

When I got home from work on Wednesday, I pulled the laundry out of the dryer to grab my workout clothes.  After exercising I needed a shower, and while I had already hung new towels up, I reached into the laundry basket to pull out an old yellow towel I have been using for my hair.  I flung it over the towel bar and went back out to the kitchen to get a drink of water.  When I came back into the bathroom, there on the floor in front of the towels was the lost striped sock. 

There was nothing in the laundry in which the sock could have hidden for so long; nothing we hadn't worn or used so thoroughly that we'd have failed to notice a sock.  I looked in the drawer, and the un-lost sock was still  there.  I just don't know how to explain it!

Snow, Snow, Snow!

My dad is used to getting calls when it snows, but this time he had just left for a business trip.

Monday afternoon it started snowing.  It was coming down in big fat thick flakes.

By dinner time Tom knew he had a two hour delay the next morning.

By bed time I knew school was canceled in town.  

And it was still snowing.

 In the morning I knew I wasn't driving anywhere.

I also knew we'd been invaded by rabbits and deer and maybe some other animals.  

Tom thinks the deer were looking in the window.

The snow was so bright and beautiful.

 In the afternoon it started to get darker...

 and darker....

 and darker.  

It also got noisy as the chunks of snow slid off the roof and crashed to the ground.

This particular section crashed down in a 6-8 foot chunk with a very loud thwump!

A number of times I thought Tom had come home, but it was just the noise of the snow.

In the afternoon, with no heaters and no fire, it was 74 degrees in the house.

Way to go windows and sunshine!

Two days later the world is still melting and dripping outside, but we're supposed to get some more this weekend.  Hooray for all the moisture!!  Boo for all the mud...

A Month of Something

We have been keeping busy, and I haven't posted anything in a long, long while.  We've had snow at least once a week, which has been delightful.  We went down to Santa Fe for a date night and shopping at the end of January.  And we've started working on the house again.

In Santa Fe we picked up shelving material.  While I spent a weekend in bed recovering from who-knows-what, Thomas put up some bigger shelves in the cellar, so the smaller shelves could go in the maintenance room.  The next weekend we tackled the "entertainment" shelf.

 I take credit for emptying boxes and boxes of jars.  The cellar is slowly starting to shape.

The elliptical stays in the mechanical room, so Thomas can use it, too.  

(He's so tall that he pops up between the floor joists when he uses it.)  

The narrower shelves work great in here, and we're moving stuff out of the craft room.

 The wooden shelf in the corner looks like it was always there.

Thomas thinks he might need to buy some more movies to fill up the shelves.

My stereo from eighth grade graduation, my tapes, records, and CDs have finally been unpacked 

after six and a half long years without them.

Getting the music unpacked has been awesome, and listening to all the old mixed tapes brought back great memories of my years in the Jesuit Volunteer Corps, as well as all the fun road trips from the Columbine House.  And then there is the old Michael Jackson cassette copied from ??? that I remember listening to as a child in the mini-van on the way to swim lessons and anywhere else!  Awesome!

Last weekend we actually had sunshine and no mud, so we loaded up the remaining pieces of drywall from the horse barn and tackled the craft room.

Neither of us is excited about texturing again, but at least the walls and ceiling are up!