Feasting Week

I have found the last week of my life to be incredibly hard to keep track of. I keep remembering things that I am sure had to have occurred at least two weeks ago only to realize that they happened within the past seven days. After giving this matter some thought I have concluded that the problem lies in that on one Friday there were several inches of snow on the ground with temperatures in the low twenties. Two days later on Sunday the snow had melted and temperatures were headed towards the 50s. On Wednesday we had another few inches of snow on the way, and by Sunday once again we found temps in the upper 40s. This weather confusion has led to a time confusion on my part and I am unsure what part of the year it is anymore.

I do remember days of heavy feasting. There were at least two though I remember being more or less continually full for at least half of a week. I have memories in the midst of a food induced sleep fog of my brother downing a plate of food piled at least six inches high. I recall he stumbled off afterwards and lay moaning on a couch. I went over merely to make sure he was all right and poked him some which seemed to aggravate him somehow. I thought it best to poke him a little harder to ascertain whether it was a serious problem, and then I tried to sit on him mostly because it was funny. He rolled off the couch at that point so I sat down on it.

Luckily I’ve been able to sleep off a good bit of this food as the winds have been calmer recently and the walls of our house flap in the wind a lot less. I’ve actually been feeling remarkably sleepy with little sun to speak of and gray clouds all day long to keep my spirits dampened. This time of year always makes me think that we might be better off hibernating for a month or two. This of course wouldn’t go over too well with the cows, who get unhappy if you only take half a day off. My arrival in the milking parlor in the mornings has been trending towards later rather than earlier in the past few weeks.

We try to make the best of the gray days though. When we had a few inches of snow on the ground, and we had recovered from feasting, Hannah, Lizzy and I went out to try a little sledding in the field. We didn’t have a standard sled available, so we used a piece of cardboard and a sheet of plastic. It worked remarkably well, though the steering was a bit iffy. We also found that there wasn’t much snow on the ground to cover the cow manure that had been spread a few weeks earlier. Lizzy pointed out that one has much greater desire to stay on the sled when manure is involved, but much less desire to repeat the ride.

The sledding not much to speak of, we spent hours and hours playing Settlers of Catan near the toasty warmth of the fire. I suppose there could be time better spent than this, but I don’t think it likely. Sometimes the best thing to do is to spend time with friends, eating, laughing, throwing dice at one another’s heads. We stave off the bleakness of winter as best we can. Stay warm, friends.