Same old same old

Weather forecast for tonight: dark. Continued dark overnight, with widely scattered light by morning. -- George Carlin

Sometime in the early 1990s, my mother gave me The Book of Days as a present. I am not sure when exactly.  The year is organized in 5-day increments on a page with the date but not the actual day, so it is “perpetual.” Every other page is a painting or a detail of a painting from the National Gallery of Art. It is beautiful.

The first entry that I wrote in it was in 1993, when I noted on September 16 and September 17 that that I spent some time both days digging bulbs and replanting them in the front flower bed. Then on November 6, which would have been a Sunday, I got dressed for church and put on for the first time that year my long gray wool coat that was full of moth cocoons and worms. I had quit smoking by then but was still plagued by "smoking dreams," and I noted a few of those in November as well.

On March 4, 1994, I had cold. On November 4, 1995 I was working in the garden and dug up a toad that had buried itself for the winter and we were apparently having a problem with fruit flies in the house. 

Then in January 1998 I began writing a brief comment about that day’s weather.

• January 6: cloudy, rain
• January 7, temp dropping, rain, possibly freezing rain
• January 8: Snow off and on all day. Not much accumulation
• January 9: snow melted...
• January 20: dry, in the 50’s.

In fact, January 20 was the last day that I decided to keep track of the weather, and I stuck it on a shelf and mostly forgot about it until I visited my sister in September and noticed she was writing scriptures or promises in a similar book every morning as part of her devotion time.

After I returned home, I decided to do the same thing. I have been using the book since January 1 of this year to jot a verse or part of a verse from that morning’s reading that speaks to me in some way (today’s verse: “The Lord is my rock, my fortress, my deliverer in whom I take refuge… I will call to the Lord, who is worthy to be praised…”).

When I saw the weather for today from 1998 -- 20 years later -- I went on the internet to check the temperature (every outside thermometer we have purchased so far has broken so we have given up) in town, and at that time it said 49 degrees.

So I called my friend Judy and asked if she would like to meet me for coffee. Although a friend came and got her on Friday for a doctor’s appointment, she had not driven off her place herself since last Sunday when snow started falling. The back country paved and gravel roads in these Ozark Hills can be very treacherous. Snow plows do not go down these roads, and the snow and ice can linger long after it has melted everywhere else because of the shade and the thick woods on either side. There are a few particularly steep hills between her house and town, and one is particularly dangerous – it is steep and curves about halfway down and deposits you at a low water crossing over a creek. That road is not safe to drive sometimes for days after a snowfall like we had on Sunday.

She was happy to meet me in town and we spent a delightful 90 minutes chatting (and each of us trying to remember what we had just been thinking about before it flew out of our minds) over very good coffee. Coffee that I found was good enough to drink black given that the person who served us forgot to bring cream for mine until I was about halfway done.

Afterward we went to the antique store next door, and I found a nice 8x10 picture frame for $1 in which I put the photograph of my brother behind the wheel of our dad’s pickup truck that he restored, dressed in costume, for his scene as an extra in a movie (I think it was Jersey Boys).

The weather today was about the same today as it was 20 years ago. As the day progressed, the temperature rose to 59 degrees – a welcome relief to the minus 3 the other morning when we woke up. It is lovely to see liquid water in the bird baths and that the snow has melted. It almost certainly will not last, but we’ll take it with joy while we can.