Brittle

A black cat at the back door. It's very cold, 3 degrees, when I get up to pee. I don't want a cat, though I am probably more of a cat person than a dog person. The snow on the back porch is a crust, and the footing is good, because of that; you break through, and stick to the substrate, because even the outside of your shoe is so much warmer than the air. Granite, 2.69 specific gravity, 168 pounds a cubic foot. While I was outside I was thinking about the dual jetties at the harbor in East Dennis, on the Cape. All granite. Rip-rap of large stones, 500 to a thousand pounds each, topped with a fairly flat cap stone, a walking surface, maybe six feet wide, eight or ten feet long, four feet thick. 6x8x4 times 168 is a large number, 32,256 pounds. I would love to have been on the crew that built those jetties. I digress. One of the first winters I spent on the Cape, 1970 (?); and my usual footwear at the time were these double-soled moccasins, no arch support, made by a guy in St. Augustine, Florida. I wore those for years. Finally realized I needed some arch support. I walked down to the harbor almost every day and the bottoms of the moccasins would get a little damp from walking in snow, the jetty was frozen solid, and my every step would stick just enough to give me perfect traction. Right now the driveway is frozen hard, the high today was 23, five degrees last night and ten tonight, and the ice layer is like glass. My crampons weren't breaking through and it was a perilous walk. I took one controlled fall, into a snow bank, when I found myself sliding backwards. A nothing day at the museum, lost to the hospital party. Tomorrow, clean-up from that, then Saturday the reunion party people set up. I'll be there all day Sunday, then Monday for the pick-up of all the tables and other party related items: the portable bars, the booze, left-over food. We should be a museum again by Tuesday morning. The floor will probably be a mess. I vote that we hire Leo; young, strong, and a hard worker, to come in and clean the floor. I may be done with mopping. I'm done with a great many things.