I ended Sunday feeling inspired by an evening conversation with my younger son. It was as wide-ranging as they get--pretty wide--and when it ended I was feeling good about Jess, good about life in general, and hopeful about my particular one.
Monday began well. More snow and gray. I had my tea, my toast. Snapped weather photos. Resumed work on a poem I started one night in December and then dropped, unequal to its subject. I pulled it from the folder with no idea really that I could add to or build on the framework I'd made. But as my mind bounced around it for a while it began to strike sparks, and I was happy to flesh it out some and find a conclusion for it. But it's pockmarked with little empty boxes--squares I draw in early drafts to stand for the perfect word or expression I just can't find. So then I thought I'd study around it a little to find a vocabulary, and I pulled down an old physics text to look at. My head exploded a little bit. Although I managed to contain it, I did grow very excited by all the beautiful new words and concepts I was learning. Restoring force. Simple harmonic motion. Critical damping. The magnitude of x. Radian. Pulse. Amplitude. A wave on a string. A specular reflection. And so on. I missed this part of high school.
"A vibration propagates outward and thus also constitutes the wave...."
By noon I was feeling very happy, indeed. We drove out for the mail, and then the bank, the market, the feed store, the nursery. We received many unexpected gifts: a beautiful and warm handmade throw came in the mail, crafted by Zanna in Montana and her son Nigel for my brother Brian. It's done in all his favorite colors, and clearly he is so pleased with it
Then, because the feed store was out of oats, the owner gave me an opened bag for free--more than 20 pounds of crimped oats for the llamas! Next, the nursery owner felt so badly about having no seeds to sell me yet, he gave me a free 12-quart bag of seed-starting medium for being patient. What an afternoon!
Then home, and groceries put away, animals fed. I found a couple of very welcome comments waiting here at feral. I made supper for my brother and then settled in for an hour's respite in the TV room with chips and guacamole. Sat on a cushion in front of the fire and watched a very bad documentary about a very good woman--Mae Chee Sansanee--and wept in spite of the really simpleminded production values.
I spent the evening trying out soft cookie recipes, but failed. This oven's malfunctioning thermostat sends the temp soaring just when I think it's evened out, after an hour, at 350F. And there you go, delicate white cookies with blackened edges. I have more planned for today, but we're cutting it close--if I don't get them in the mail tomorrow they won't arrive in Wikieup in time for Easter/Uncle's birthday on Sunday, even priority-mailed. I have a perfectly good new stove in the garage here, but I'd have to plumb for propane to bring it in, and I won't do that unless I know for sure we'll be here another year, and so I'll fake it a little longer with this screwy electric one.
Anyway, by bedtime I'd fallen back into my old groove of obsessing sadly over my older son, but managed to triumph there with some chanting, some meditation, and a little prayer. Read some more Banfield. Passed out.
This morning we kept the gray, the passing occasional squall. The wind sounds delicious at the not-quite-closed bedroom window. I sat there early in my pajamas and listened to it howl while I drank my tea and ate ruined cookies. And now a shock of midafternoon sun, in time for a second run out to the mercantile. Soon we receive our Easter-week boarders Gunter Tortoise and Ranger Bigblackdog, and we must prepare.
2:07:10 PM 
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