Three days ago, on Paul's birthday, the sun was shining, and my car thermometer read 60 degrees. This morning it's snowing. In the bare dawn I can see that my yard has assumed its winter prison garb--the spiky firs, shrouded with white, are posted around the clearing like a crowd of sentries; and this is what I will stare at gloomily until March, or maybe April.

Of course this early snow will undoubtedly turn to rain and melt away. But my gut is having its winter seize-up.

Today I'll be picking snowy cold kale, and freezing kale, and boiling down chicken stock, and baking buckwheat sourdough batards, and reminiscing with Paul about the thrilling Texas Rangers' closing pitcher, and doing something or other funny and unexpected with James, and wishing Tom didn't have to drive in the snow, and feeding animals, and reading snatches of Melville and Bronte and Wordsworth, and vacuuming the living room, and remembering I forgot to buy Halloween candy, and doing laundry and doing laundry and doing laundry, and wondering how I will ever fit a side of beef into our freezer. Here's hoping that you, too, will have an ambiguously busy day.