Hunkered Down

Snow is nice because it covers up all the mud and piles of junk and other unsightly things. It sort of smooths out the world, giving the illusion of tidiness. I like that.

It snows up here more often than it does in the (Willamette) valley. We’re up around 800 feet elevation, so we get a little extra winter weather. As long as I don’t have to leave our property (which would entail driving down our extraordinarily steep driveway and semi-private road), I’m pretty happy when it snows.

We had a crazy wind storm here on Sunday night. I barely slept all night, partly because the wind was so dang loud as was the barrage of tree debris pelting our metal roof and partly because I couldn’t help but have visions of giant trees falling on our tiny house (or one of the trees below our house tipping over and upsetting the pseudo-foundation, throwing the whole cabin totally off kilter). Henry got up two or three times in the night to make sure that no lids had blown off bee boxes, which would leave the poor buggers exposed, but thankfully with the help of heavy cinder blocks, the lids stayed secured. Monday morning came without the loss of any big trees or major damage, but the whole place was littered with tree branches and bits of arboreal ephemera. I do not like windstorms, not one little bit.

The kids and I stayed indoors for most of the day, cleaning, playing with Legos, having impromptu dance parties, and snacking. Yesterday, I finished reading Little House in the Big Woods (clichéd, I know) out loud, and today we started in on Farmer Boy. I think I may need to pre-screen my children’s literature a little more thoroughly after unexpectedly encountering more than a little of what I would deem offensive/violent/unpleasantly old-school content. The kids seemed unscathed, but still…

Reading chapter books aloud is something newish for us, although now that we’ve started, we love it. The last one we read together was Charlotte’s Web, which left me in a heap of tears, but the kids thought it was great. I’ve been wracking my brain to remember what I like to read/hear in early elementary school (or pre-K), but somehow, that bit of my past is a little fuzzy in my memory. I’d love to hear your suggestions.

And then, of course, I made a pie because that’s what one is supposed to do to ward off cabin fever, right? I used frozen blueberries and peaches with some turbinado sugar and flour for the filling. The crust wasn’t my best effort, but no one complained. Actually, the thing kinda tasted a little like summer. I don’t know why, but it doesn’t seem like summer has been gone that long, maybe because we’re just getting started in on our supply of canned and frozen goods, but with snow on the ground and Christmas just around the corner, I guess I’ll have to accept this very definite changing of seasons. *sigh*