December 2: Shivering Winter's Night, North Pole, Homemade Turkey Pot Pie

When on that shivering winter's night, the Pequod thrust her vindictive bows into the cold malicious waves, who should I see standing at her helm but Bulkington!  I looked with sympathetic awe and fearfulness upon the man, who in midwinter just landed from a four years' dangerous voyage, could so unrestingly push off again for still another tempestuous term . . . 

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas.  It has been snowing since about midnight, and it's still coming down.  Mix in 35 mile per hour winds and subzero wind chills.  It's not just looking like Christmas.  It's looking like the North Pole.  I'm staring out the window right now, and I wouldn't be surprised to see Santa pull up in his sleigh.  Or Krampus to hunch by.

Of course, for a ten-year-old boy, this weather is prime.  My son just headed outside in his snow trappings to have a little fun.  Roll in the drifts.  Throw snowballs.  Shovel.  (Yes, he thinks shoveling is fun.)  He is a Yooper kid, through and through.  He's got blizzards in his blood.  In about a half hour, he'll come back inside, crusted with ice, asking for hot chocolate.  When I suggest he take a hot shower, he'll look at me as though I've told him to swallow a burning piece of coal.  He is ten and a boy.  That makes water a death sentence to him.  (Say it with me, "You cursed brat!  Look what you've done!  I'm melting!  Melting!  Oh, what a world!  What a world!  Who would have thought a good little girl like you could destroy my beautiful wickedness?!  Oooooh, look out!  I'm going!  Ooooh!  Oooooooh!")

The light is disappearing from the sky now.  It's almost 5 p.m.  The storm has been storming for about 17 hours now.  A year ago, there was no snow on the ground, but Nature was still putting on a show.  December 2, 2017, there was a Super Moon.  No snow on the ground.  I was wearing my fall jacket still.  If this storm doesn't let up soon, my kids aren't going to have school tomorrow.  That won't hurt their feelings at all.

I remember when weather like this filled me with excitement.  It was when I didn't have to shovel and hire people to plow my property.  When I didn't have to get up at 4 a.m. and drive 20 miles to work every day, rain, shine, blizzard, or monsoon.  Days like this meant sleeping in.  Watching movies.  Reading great books.  Recording cassette mix tapes off the radio.  They were the best.

However, I've spent a good portion of this day with a shovel in my hand.  I have lost my youthful enthusiasm for snow storms and blizzards.  It happens around the time you become a property owner and have a family of your own.  I experience it vicariously now, through my kids.

Saint Marty is thankful this evening for a warm house and homemade turkey pot pie.

Last year . . .

This year . . .

January 13: Nostalgia, Tracy K. Smith, "The Good Life"

Nostalgia is a strange thing.  It makes a person happy and sad at the same time.  This morning, I was watching my son sleeping next to my wife.  He always crawls into bed with her after I get up to get ready for work.  He looked really small next to her, like he was still two or three years old.

And that made me think of my daughter when she was four or five.  How she would get off the bus from preschool and climb onto the couch with me.  We would watch "Frosty the Snowman," and she would fall asleep on my chest.  She was like a little furnace, and I would stay there, sweating, replaying Frosty's trip to the North Pole over and over, until she woke up.

I didn't know it then, but that really was the good life.  My beautiful little girl, sleeping in my arms, completely trusting me to keep her safe. 

Saint Marty misses those times.

The Good Life

by:  Tracy K. Smith

When some people talk about money
They speak as if it were a mysterious lover
Who went out to buy milk and never
Came back, and it makes me nostalgic
For the years I lived on coffee and bread,
Hungry all the time, walking to work on payday
Like a woman journeying for water
From a village without a well, then living
One of two nights like everyone else
On roast chicken and red wine.