Winter has returned after a number of unseasonably warm days. I slept until almost eleven o'clock this morning, which I have rarely done since I was a teen-ager. It was windy and cold, and I wanted to stay under the covers with the dogs and enjoy their radiant heat. Eventually, though, they had had enough of lying around and began to insist that I get up and feed them. Patrick's tongue slithered under the sheet to lick my hand and Lytton tapped my shoulder with his paw. Benny began to scratch, wiggling the bed. Though I remained as still as I could, they were not persuaded to go back to sleep and started to jump down off the bed. One by one they hit the floor and the sound of their toenails clicking permeated my consciousness. Before long that dreanlike state of half-sleep drifted away and I was more here than there. Sleep was beyond retrieval and I got up.
Before I had really established myself in the real world, David called and asked me to come over and clean out his refrigerator. He was leaving for Bangor, closing up his house for the rest of the winter. I spent almost a half hour scraping the ice off my car before I could drive it. Even then I had to peer out of two six-inch circles of windshield I had managed to expose. The roads were slippery and some indeterminate kind of precipitation swirled around in the air. The sun was out, too, though, so it was the kind of morning that promised nothing either way.
I arrived at David's with a tote bag to carry home the bouty I expected and I was not disapointed. I loaded up with bags of peppers, potatoes and onions, containers of mik and juice, lemons, apples, ice cream.......enough to keep me out of the grocery store for a week or more. Tonight I will eat some of the Finnan Haddie that David had frozen after our Christmas dinner. It seems right to be having it alone on the day that I lose my friend for the next four months. It will not be a melancholy meal, but a quiet farewell with fond and now wistful remembrances of the time we spent preparing and eating it together. Already I look forward to his return.
The rest of the day was rather quiet, though Sydney came for her lesson and put some cheer into an otherwise undeventful afternoon. She wasn't feeling well, but she always remains happy and fun to be with no matter what symptoms her heart disease or her diabetes may be causing. After she left, she called to offer a suggestion for me to make money to pay my exhorbitant fuel bill. It really isn't something I would actually do, but she is always there trying to help, no matter how trivial or serious the problem. Meanwhile, I have the thernostat set at 61 and wear a heavy sweater. When I go to bed, I turn it down to 57. I hope to make the fuel I have last for a long time, since I don't know how I will pay for what was delivered last week. Without payment, the fuel company will not deliver any more. When I was in eighth grade we saw a movie about the fact that the oil resources of the world would eventually be depleted and we would have a crisis. It terrified me to think of it then, but now that it is happening I feel rather bland about it, knowing that life goes on no matter what..... Somehow we manage to get through, one way or another.
