and then the ice

I lay awake from midnight to three am listening to the ice fall out of the sky. It thunked down, bouncing and pinging. I'm sure if I was up in a fancy ski lodge with a cup of fortified cocoa and an elegant pair of woolen socks I would have thought it was pristine and mesmerizing.

Lying awake half the night listening to it and fretting about all the work you're going to have to do tired--when the weak winter sun finally drags is sorry self up to the cloud line, not to shine but to make all the darkness gray with dawn--is not so romantic.

The sunroom floor is covered in snow suits half dry and now very cold. Somehow they all have to be put away and some pies made and the table extended. There's a bunch of other stuff too but listing it will just make me more fretful.

The children won't probably want to go out today even though they did have fun yesterday. At first. But then Elphine ticked everybody off by trying to control the snowball fight. She worked herself into an angry froth and then spread it around to everyone else.

I'm pretty sure I do the same thing all the time but I'm a little more subtle about it. I make everyone bend to my will, usually in the matter of cleaning up on Saturdays before Sundays, and give everyone a bad time. It's very likely I will fall into the same pit today. "We have to get ready for Thanksgiving!" I'll bark and snarl and whine. "You know, the one day of the year when we have to be thankful! Now clean up so I can feel thankful!" 

I might not say it exactly like that. Maybe I'll be self controlled and loving all day like a good mother would. You know, all those other good mothers out there. All those ones on the internet. The same internet that is both flinging itself into fits of encouraging, nay, commanding me to tap into that deep well of thankfulness that should abide in some part of every human soul, but is also, the internet that is, advertising to me so that I will be dissatisfied with everything I have. Which is it, oh internet world? Shall I buy or throw away? Shall I be satisfied or fuss? Shall I eat carbs or eschew them?

Neither, I think. Don't think I'm going to take my cue from the interwebs today. St. John told me just now One, that perfect love casts out fear and Two, that He who is in me is greater than he who is in the world, and I think we can safely lump The Internet into the category of The World. It is only the alien love of Jesus, the perfecting, life giving love of God that can bring about any gratitude from any place-- that place being not the jumbled sinful well of my own heart but from his own self. But don't worry, tomorrow I'll probably still post the 365 things I'm most thankful for. It's a useful exercise. Maybe, as a working out my way toward the perfect life giving mind of Christ, I will even include the snow. But don't even mention the ice. That is never making it onto the list.

yuck

We get to have a new furnace today so that will be nice. As for the scene outside the window, I can't think of anything less nice, except maybe chunks of ice barreling down from the sky. Getting the children to consider putting on a sweater and a pair of socks the last few days has been well nigh impossible. They just stand and look at me blankly when I suggest it, and when I command it because we are going outside (you fool!) they whine that they can't find a sweater or socks. And they say the word 'socks' like it is some foreign item they have only read about in the dictionary. And yet they complain of the cold. And complain when I won't let them out because it is cold and they don't have on a coat or socks. It's like being stuck in one of those loops where you say something and then the other person says something unhelpful and so you repeat what you said and then they just repeat what they said and you go on this way for five or so minutes and then by mutual frustration you drift away from each other. Except with children there is no where to go. "Can't they go play in the parking lot?" My mother wished whistfully yesterday. But they can't because it's so cold. And it's only November.