one one two thousand six

I woke up several times in the new year morning. I got out of bed at almost eight. Eight to me is like noon to a lot of other people. I am an early riser, usually. Early as in 4:00ish.

It is a cold, grey day. Right now at 1:25 pm it is 23°. Very light snow cover on the hard frozen ground.

Yesterday, I went looking for deer antlers with my friend PS. We didn’t find any. There just aren’t enough bucks around to make finding antlers very likely. The conditions were perfect: not too long after they have been shed, so few Rodentia are likely to have chewed them up or carted them off, and little snow cover to make seeing them possible. But no luck. We had a good hike. This shelf fungi is deceptively small looking. It is easily 14" wide.

My neighbors S&L helped me get a good load of wood in the house. L did a lot of splitting of the larger pieces (she says splitting wood keeps her from getting splitting headaches) while S carried and stacked the wood inside. I tossed wood on the porch from the pile outside so S could load up the cart more easily.

While I enjoy the activity and the organic experience of moving the wood around, I can get frustrated. I am impeded by the limited use of my right hand. I can’t easily grab a stick of wood. They’re just a bit too large for me to grasp easily. I am limited to using one arm almost exclusively for all the wood handling.

I have a pot of Hoppin’ John on the stove. (I leave out the dead pig parts.) I’ll bring it up to S&L’s for dinner. We’re gonna play Scrabble later.