Greetings fellow travelers:
“No one’s mouth is big enough to utter the whole thing”……………………………………………………………Alan Watts
“Through the Red Sea costs
extra”- Israeli movers
overcharge Moses………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Haikus for Jews
Well…a reluctant and BRIEF (promise) mid-winter Sunday dispatch due to overwhelming popular demand to keep The Blog going from the flatlands……………………………………
Bee-Bop- A- Lupa………Manish Tanah Khalilah Chazeh………Go tell it in the mountain……….Da-doo-run-run-run, Da-doo-run –run……You can’t always get what you want, but…….
These are the chants of the mid-winter blues. Is anyone else quite done yet? We are at a balmy 20 degrees today ,after a week of numbing cold that never exceeded ten….and we are apparently one of the warmest in the eastern half of the country (it’s BAD in the Greens)…so what to do, what to do…..
Apparently the answer is….Bedding…after ten days of sleeping in our lovely double bed with two dogs (Cousin Rosie has been with us while The Nave and Suba were off on the heated slopes of the Rockies)- we are committed to find a king bed setup that we can schlep up the narrow old- farmhouse stairs (the kind that inflate on contact with the air and may explode– but are worth it for a good night’s sleep)
So we are trolling the internet, visiting the new state of the art IKEA nearby, dealing with a variety of scammers on Craig’s List who purport to want to purchase our Sleep Number double unit, but in reality want to steal our identities…… and are busy procuring a vast selection of bedding regardless of whether we yet have a bed to put these on.
This, along with the daily pick-up truck availability report…..and…a list of a dozen or so pending new home renovations (yes, it comes with us from Vermont to Ohio) are making for a busy mindset of winter activities, not allowing for much else. Of course-we all know what this array of activity means for your faithful scribe…..yes, you guessed it- checking in to the Marriott…..any Marriott. Which I had planned for this week, but spent the best part of a miserable day on Thursday at the Columbus airport unsuccessfully trying to get flights to Philadelphia, where there was apparently another storm of the century. I wept when I had to call the Marriott to cancel my reservation and trudge back home to the waiting tasks at hand.
Not much else has happened over the holidays, which were very quiet in a Zombie sort of way. Been reading a lot of books (I am now able to solve the mysteries by page 17) and seen a lot of movies….and burned a full cord of wood in less than a month trying to keep the old house warm (I am wearing nine layers as I type this- along with a coonskin cap and giant skunk mittens with the fingers cut out).
We had a low key family Christmas with Tess and Jake…with the possible exception of four insane dogs going berserk for 24 hours- and spent the stroke of New Years senior- dozing on the couch after a nice afternoon trip to the fine Columbus Museum of Art (hence the Impressionist photo)….and now we are just in the deep freeze and waiting for the basement to fill up with melting water and the sump pump to once again cease to function…but who’s complaining….could be worse, no?
I have another week at home before I begin a bizarre two months of travel to all the places you would not want to go in the dead of winter (excepting a week with the prodigal in sunny San Diego paradise). But- I get ahead of myself-since today is clearly about bedding, project preparation and truck hunting….though ..there ARE a few Marriotts nearby, and Jenn seems to be horded away at the moment making fiendish plans….so maybe a slip away into the cold, and some room service is not yet out of the question….
Be that as it may…enough is enough….a wink is as good a nod to blind horse…and so on……..
Where is Leonard Cohen when we really need him? Or Jim Harrison? Or MacGyver? C’mon people now , smile on your bother….……..right now…..right now…..right now……….
In Sha Allah (look it up)
Stu-brahim
