Sunday, December 13, 2009

in the here & now

This has been a year not only of rain but of wind. We had big windstorms in the spring that took lots of trees down, and then again last week and this week, big wind. I haven’t been out and about to see which trees it might have gotten this time. The first windstorm killed someone I knew, not well -- blew a tree down on her car, freak accident they said. Here we lost power both times, this last time for four days.

When I’m home it seems I’m always doing dishes, and so while the power was out I did dishes --I just did them differently than how I do them with the power on since we generally do not have running water without the electricity. And then the dirty water became chicken water to further conserve what water we hauled. We had a wealth of books from the library so we read them by day and then by candle light when the sun went down. We kept the fires going because it was cold, really cold. We genuinely enjoy being around each other for the most part. The first evening without power we told stories and tales and eventually shared dreams we’d had throughout our lives, all six of us. The second day, husband and I had a deep discussion about the theological implications of “saved by faith” vs. “saved by faith alone”, and Presbyterians vs. Baptists, and the like. That night we got the whistles out and the kids learned to play Christmas songs on them, and we all took turns playing various songs for the rest of the time. And we read more and told more tales and played more music and read more books and eventually the power came back on and we all took showers.

Here are some photos from the snowstorm between the windstorms:


10 comments:

Madcap said...

I like how that last photo looks hand-colourized, the b&w background and the o&w cat.

Anonymous said...

All the trees look like Christmas trees after a snow. And that little cat definitely looks a bit elflike. It's all just beautiful.

Wendy said...

Ahh ... the simple life, eh?

CG said...

you know, it wasn't bad. And snow is always fun. When I went on my walkabout, I had the dog with me and remembered my old dog who loved the snow more than the current dog. We had the worst snowstorm ever when she was around (out of power six days for that one) and I have a photo of her burying herself in snow in about the spot the photo of the road was taken.

I always like photos of the road for some reason. I liked how fuzzy the first shot was because that's what it really looked like out there (more grey than b&w) (although it looked better bigger than it does on the blog). And the cat -- how cute is he?

We got the tree today and the kids played "Oh Christmas Tree" to it.

Bjarthur the Baptist said...

And came to the conclusion that Baptists are better?

Perturbed Presbyterbian said...

Pshaw

Deadpan Taoist said...

No better. no worse. Just here and now.

CG said...

Kmoo, is that you? MISS you!

Anonymous said...

Ahoy the homestead! Any tales to tell?

Walter Jeffries said...

I love the cat photo!

Happy New Years,

-Walter
in Vermont