Idiopathic Malaise

Feeling a bit off my feed, and my feet hurt. Damned glad it's Friday. D got the first panels of cherry plywood cut today, got two coats of stain on them and all the trim, so that they actually look like cherry (some of the trim is poplar, but it takes stain very well and will match when we get done with it). I spent the afternoon trying to restore order. Stopped at Kroger on the way home, another heavy pack to tote up the hill, but I'm well supplied now and will probably follow Mac's suggestion to blow off the laundry and just sit on the ridgetop for three days. I might reread Pynchon's "Mason And Dixon", a masterpiece of fact and humor and stylish writing. Soon as I get home the slight drizzle turns to hail or sleet, BB sized droplets of frozen stuff. It's gone very quickly because the ground, finally, retains some heat, though the air is below freezing. Beautiful clouds, just after sunset, lit from below, vibrant pinks and lavenders; then they wisp away and the temperature drops like a rock. I have enough firewood for the rest of the winter, and I want to burn everything possible from the woodshed, so I can organize the space. Before the sap rises I'll drop a couple of oaks. I hoard impossible wood, Osage Orange, various knots, and those pieces where a major branch bifurcated, that are impossible to split. Some winter days I'll go out and spend an hour splitting a recalcitrant stump into wood I can fit into the stove. Just something I do, there's not a point, other than the obvious BTU's. And the fact that I'm outside. Knots and crotches are incredibly dense, so there is a return on invested labor. They burn all night, and rekindle, easily, into a fire the next morning. The layer of clay, where the driveway cuts through, at the top of the hill, is slicker than snot; it's all I can do to keep from falling. Right foot here, left foot there, it's all very precise, or I end up on my ass. Careful is the watch-word. Basho, walking back to his shack, three sheets to the wind. Crows are a mainstay of winter. I often stop, down at the lake, to hear them complain. Indulgences. Three crows, two Pileated woodpeckers, a single agitated duck, might well make your day. The difference between me and almost everyone else I know, is that I do stop to look or listen, sort through a pile of detritus. Precisely because it is brain science. Bagpipes in the distance, a penny-flute in the fore-ground, maybe a kettle drum off-stage, announces an act. A genie, with some talent, and his assistant, wearing almost nothing, make you believe something that isn't true. Fools you, right? I don't believe anything anymore.