Brrrr!

In a highly unusual set of days, I have just spent nearly the entire weekend in the company of my husband, and only my husband. It's been like an enforced vacation or something - really nice. He couldn't go anywhere, and after he'd winterized all the fluid-containing things (like the pressure washer, forgotten a few winters ago until it froze into a very expensive repair need) he stayed home. We watched movies. The Apartment and Across the Universe. And the director's cut of Woodstock.

Yes, Woodstock. Most of my readers didn't know me when, but for those of you who did, I have an announcement to make. The girl has evolved. Seriously. I have at last come to the place of genuine appreciation for the genius, generosity, and extreme, defiant, and hopeful youthfulness of Woodstock. I even "get" what Hendrix was doing. Weird, huh.

The arctic deep freeze currently holding our part of the world in its crackling grip made it impossible for either of us to go anywhere this past weekend, and instead, we drank tea and watched movies and discussed culture and music and the delicious surprise our lives have turned out to be -- mostly because the life we've built together turned out to be possible after all. All you need is love.

Today the man filled the wood pellet stoves in my house and his mother's, and brought an extra bag in for me for later. He has taken his 4-wheel-drive vehicle out onto the frozen freeway to drive to work, and may the holy Guardian Angels keep all idiots far far away from the old pale yellow Isuzu. Modern urban idiots. I wish there were a way to keep them in their homes when they're a danger to themselves and others. It turns out that a huge gas-guzzling vehicle with 4-wheel-drive does not increase driving expertise. At all. Seems to have the opposite effect, actually.

We don't generally get this much cold this many days in a row, and when we do, it's not usually this early in the winter. More snow expected too! Weird, man. It's just weird. And cold.