Scene, not seen

There is an ox reclining on a turned-leg spindle table next to the inglenook at the Lemon and Stick.

To be more precise, the table, inglenook, and ox are in the back room of the L &S, because the inhabitants of the front room can, on occasion, bump wobbily into things and people and the ox doesn't care for all that hot nonsense, so he stays where it's safer for him.

Oxen are notoriously fussy about their bodies, and the care thereof.

The Lemon and Stick has two main rooms, the pub in front and the kitchen at back.  To one side of the kitchen, pressed against the great stone fireplace, shouldered in next to the warming oven and fuel depot, is the inglenook.  It is the only dependably warm spot on cold days and the only dependably cool one on summer days, when the cooking goes outdoors and the folks of Banner Bank eat from the large pot that hangs over a fire in the pit out back.  Season after season, warm and cool both, the ox reclines, comfortable in his frail skin, content to observe that comes and goes through both front and back doors.

The ox doesn't have a name.  This troubles him, but not to the point of saying anything about it.  To say anything about it would reveal too much about him, and he has had enough revelation in his past to know the comfort of a good long silence.  He can accept namelessness, for in that anonymity his past is kept a secret, though he knows well what he is supposed to be called.

It was a long time ago though when last his name was spoken, those who brought him here don't come around anymore.  The ox espies an afternoon sunbeam creeping across the far lip of the spindle-leg table and decides, for the the fourth time today, to nap and reflect on when next to blink.

Don't be me

Hey y'all.

It is 7 a.m., and I have been run over by a stampeding horde of giant bunnies. 

Which is to say, apparently I have sleep-talked all night long.  The LOML tells me so.

With my hands.

Now, I have felt this happening before - when I fall asleep, my fingers start to twitch and jump like they are trying to convey something.   It's annoying to my bed partner, I'm sure, so I try to keep them digits cornered to make life more tranquil, but lat night, it seems, things were terrifically free range.  FOR HOURS.

The dreams that came with?  Let's just say that my first novel is written.  Oh, it's a good one too.  Full of Stuff I don't yet get, but my hand will tell me in time, I'm sure.


So, happy Tuesday, I hope you are sharp of mind and clear of purpose this morning. It's a good day to question something!

Putting down a stray thought.

Banner Bank wasn't much, at first look to a wanderer.  A few houses, a wide spot of flat earth where a barn was built.  A pub, 5 homes in a cluster with three more up the hillsides, some wisps of smoke.

Banner was three days' walk from the nearest inland hamlet, which wasn't much itself but had a smith and shop, which was something.  Banner was a days' boat ride Northward from the nearest Keep, but that was in good weather, and the seas almost never had that in store except in Sommer.

The Bank on which Banner Bank was set wasn't much to speak of either, but it was enough to keep the Winter spray from the roads and the babies from braving a tumble down its side to get to the water below.  Folds of hills rose from the bank and cradled Banner Bank in velvet hands to shield it from the winds from the East that roared over, creating many interesting cloud formations for the sedentary babies that lived below.

A quiet place of 40 souls or so, who kept tight-knit and shared meals of aspen and fish, of algae and pemmican, of grain and roots.  One pot fed the whole of them, and when from time to time a stray goat of stoat or garblin hit a snare, then they'd feast. 

Not much happened in Banner Bank, a wanderer would say.

-Tiff out.

NOW what?

Fair warning, this is turning into a weather blog, because chit's been crazy around these parts lately what with All the Winter and Suchlike.

No kidding, fully one MONTH of winter.  It's like living in the Arctic, or Connecticut!

So, naturally, after all that winter, comes this forecast for tomorrow:

Y'all.

Y'ALL.

Today = gray and rainy and wet wet wet and cold (again); tomorrow will be, apparently, MAY.

And almost no chance of rain.

<Celebration break> Oooo-WEE!  Happy happy happy dance, move yo' tiny feet!  Happy happy happy dance, to the Springtime beat!  Wooo!!!!!</Celebration break>

It's a though the weather has heard the collective groaning in NC and allowed a 1-day respite, a reversion to what it's almost supposed to be like here at this time of year (normally closer to mid-50's), to tease us and please us before bringing back the rest of the week's weather woes:

• Thursday - high of 50, rainy
• Friday - high of 38, cloudy
• Saturday - high of 53, partly cloudy
• Sunday - high of 60, partly cloudy.

Well, OK.  Friday will be a pure misery, but maybe I can allow my hopeful heart to allow in a speck of positive thinking that the Terrible Month of Winter might finally be leaving town.

Please God, make it so.  Hear my prayer.

NOooOOOOOOOOOOOoooooo!!!!!!!!



Tiff out.

Nature doesn't understand hyperbole.

OK, the last time I posted I was being 'funny.'

No, really.

It was meant to be a humorous look at the way Southerners react to the portend of dire weather conditions, and not AN ACTUAL INVITATION for such direness to show up and stay awhile.

Let me complain:

We got snow.  Many snow.  Many much snows, to heaping proportions.  Like, 6 inches.

If it had be fluffy-bunny snow, it would have been 2 feet.

Alas.

Not fluffy bunny snow here, but CLYDESDALE snow, with tromping clods of slush being flung from on high, so dense that it was, nearly, coming down in already-formed snowballs.

Then, some folks lost power.  We did not, and felt happy.

Then, it started to melt, then froze over.  Nothing good can come of this.

By last Friday, the ice of the morning gave way to a reasonably clear afternoon, so I ventured out to get supplies and to see what and-of-days things were going on since I last glimpsed the bigger world three days before.

Kind of like this...the snowslides

Nothing much had changed, but the size of the puddles.  And the amount of snow sliding off the roof, which, because it was so heavy, completely obliterated the boxwoods out front.

Ka-RASH.  Goodbye, shrubs.

That was the 'good' day.  Then Saturday came, with more precipitation, ice, general horribleness to scare one into a preppers lifestyle at least as far as stocking up on good movies and batteries are concerned.

Today?  FREEZING RAIN.  Temps hovering around freezing, so any trip out would be a real adventure of 'spot the black ice!' before spinning out and over and an embankment, where you'd join several other cars who Also Did Not See It Coming.

All the while, the rain came down.

I think we own lakefront property now, is what I'm hinting at.

And I don't own a pair of boots.

On the upside, it's supposed to be in the upper 50's on Wednesday!  And then Thursday?  35 degrees and RAIN.

We need to go buy some paddles.

Tiff out.