One of the things I like about January: the absence of bright blossoms, leafy canopies, and an abundance of grasses forces me to look for small things, inconsequential things, tiny miracles. Like the intricate lace wrapping this bare sumac in a weather-proof web, the work of some small, industrious spider, weather-proof herself. The past few nights have been below freezing, and the days blustery, so the web is recent. How does she keep warm? What does she eat? Not many bugs out and about in such chilly weather, I wouldn't think. But she's doing her best, laying her traps, setting her snares. Or maybe this is just practice for spring, or something to do, an artful web-doodling while she's waiting for the weather to warm. Or a trick of snagging the sunlight on a winter morning in order to seduce this passerby, walking through the field with her dogs. The world has many wonderful ways to surprise us.
Zach's tests are back and yes, it's Cushings. We're seeing the vet next week about treatment options next week. Meanwhile, we're on the night shift, doing duty at midnight, 2 and 4 a.m. It's easy during the day, because we're home. But what do people do when they have to work and the weather is too cold to put the dog outdoors? Thanks for your emails. It helps to know that other people and their animal companions have weathered this particular storm.
This week: the Story Circle conference (there's a link in the sidebar). I'm doing two workshops and a panel--fun for me, and I'm looking forward to it. More goody: my daughter is coming from Colorado Springs and will be rooming with me. But this means that I need to cram the week's work into a few days. Peggy and I spent yesterday setting up web page and eletters--she's busy too, since she's managing the conference. Hard work all the way around, but worth it.
Reading note: more from Eudora Welty, One Writer's Beginnings: Ever since I was first read to, then started reading to myself, there has never been a line read that I didn't hear. As my eyes followed the sentence, a voice was saying it silently to me. It isn't my mother's voice, or the voice of any person I can identify, certainly not my own. It is human, but inward, and it is inwardly that I listen to it. It is to me the voice of the story or the poem itself. . . I have supposed, but never found out, that this is the case with all readers--to read as listeners--and with all writers, to write as listeners. It may be part of the desire to write. The sound of what falls on the page begins the process of testing it for truth, for me.