Living it up last night at the crazy family New Year's Eve party that my sons concocted. We ate big shrimp and crabmeat canapes and, yes, a plate of beef jerky for dinner. We made ice cream sundaes. We wore funny hats from the dress-up box and played poker and shot each other with cap guns. Then Tom and I went to bed at 10, and the boys stayed up to recklessly watch David Letterman and drop a frozen water balloon into the ash bucket at the stroke of midnight. Apparently the semifreddo splash was quite impressive.

As you can surely tell by now, the Milton memoir seems to be quotable for every occasion; so here is the New Year's bit.

This morning, first light of a new year, I wake knowing that my car has a flat tire and we’re almost out of dog food. Sleet rattles against the roof. Through the window daylight pulses and shivers like the wan, ticking breath of snow. I sigh and roll out of bed, clump downstairs, rake the dead ashes from the woodstove. I light a fire that sputters, but it stays lit: that’s a small triumph.

At the kitchen sink I run hot water into a five-gallon water carrier; after months in an unheated barn, old goats need a hot drink to stay alive. I swath myself in coat, boots, gloves, scarf, hat. I collect a pail of scraps for the chickens, heave the water carrier out of the sink. I stump outside into the wretched morning, draped with burdens. I am not in a good mood.

Beyond the tree line, a town snowplow clanks and scrapes, far away, now closer, close, too close, a roar, and fading now, far away, groaning and muttering, a distant scratch, gone.

A crow shouts once and falls silent.

Now the only sound is sleet, clicking, whispering, pecking the plastic sled my sons have abandoned in the driveway, wriggling a grainy trail between my scarf and my neck. The crow shouts; another shouts back.

I park the water carrier in a snow crevice and work my gloved hand into the container’s narrow handle, seeking a better grip, trying to save myself from getting wet. Eventually I start my trudge toward the barn. On alert, the goats begin bawling: hurry! hurry! The splayed spruce branches glitter ominously under their ice load. Happy New Year. Hunger and cold. Today’s thin snow doesn’t hide yesterday’s frozen boot tracks.

“If ye be found obedient.” How can I be otherwise? If I don’t feed and water the animals, they’ll die. My instructions are clear, my guilt poised and sensitive as antennae. But what about these circumstantial pleasures, these amusements and distractions that insist on surfacing, even as I bask in the grumpy glow of self-pity? Bragging crows and bossy goats, the fragile tick of sleet on the scrap pail, the cozy scrape of a snowplow taking care of business. That plow driver: this morning he’s been obedient way longer than I have. His belly’s bumping up against the steering wheel; he’s draining the dregs of a giant paper cup of cold coffee and smoking his fifth cigarette as the defroster clears a vignette frame of windshield fog and slush. I send both of us good wishes for a long afternoon nap. In the meantime, we’ll make our rounds.

Meanwhile enjoy

[Our] fill what happiness this happy state

Can comprehend, incapable of more.