"Snow-Flakes"

by Mary N. Prescott, "St. Nicholas," March 1880

"Come," said the Snow-flakes, "it's time we should rally,
     To tuck up the roots of the grass,
To shine on the hill-top and whiten the valley
     And touch the world up as we pass.

All the huts that are ruined and ugly
     Let us change into marble halls,
We will cover the naked hedges up snugly,
     And festoon the ragged stone walls.

We will build our drifts on the king's highway,
     Mimic the shape of star or feather,
We will silently waltz the livelong day,
     Or sculpture garlands together.

Never, outside of the spider's loom,
     Shall be spun such laces as ours,
And never, after the summer's bloom,
     Shall be seen such wonderful flowers."

Second Sunday of Advent: A Christmas Miscellaney

This snow storm unexpectedly delivered to us on Friday has been novel in many ways. It pretty much almost set a record for Atlanta snows, depending on where you were. The record is 8.3 inches from 1940, and if it hadn't rained I think we would have made it or gone over. We had 7 inches on our deck on Sunday morning. Furthermore, today we still have snow on the ground—not some small bits of white stuff in perpetually shady places, but snow still on lawns and bushes. It commonly snows one day and then goes up to 60℉ the next.

So it's been a nice Christmas-y coda to the weekend (except for the poor folks who are still without electrical power). It sure was beautiful on Friday. I'll not soon forget crunching on the new fallen snow, watching the streetlights and the Christmas lights come on, the unearthly silence that a mantle of snow throws over the landscape, the beauty of the clearing sky the next morning with the stark white against brilliant blue.

James started the day in lovely fashion by making biscuits. This cleaned out our Bisquik. Since apparently we can't go to the grocery store without forgetting something—this time it was onions—there was another item for our grocery list.

Our most pressing need was getting James a new hard drive. So our first stop today was MicroCenter. He got a hard drive and a hard drive enclosure so he could get his files and his Eudora mailboxes off the old hard drive (then perhaps he can reformat it and use it as a second drive). They had Fitbits on sale, so for Christmas I bought him a Fitbit Alta with a heart monitor. When he does cardio rehab he has a certain heart rate he is not supposed to go over; I want him to find out what that is so he can do exercises at home during bad weather or other times he can't attend. The doctor gave him stretching exercises to do at home, and he has weights he lifts. He can use the Fitbit to monitor his heartbeat.

So we stopped by Publix to get onions and Bisquik and a little more yogurt, and picked up a few more things like always. We had a fun time in dairy: they always put my yogurt on the top shelf and being a shrimp I can only reach so far. This time they were so far back I couldn't even get them with James' cane. So a lady with a schoolage son helped us, and he was quite chuffed about the whole thing. And then we went by Mink's, where I had to once again go on a search through the dark corners of the store to find a bottle of hearty burgundy (all I ever find is Gallo Brothers, so it's not like I even have a choice) so I can make cookies.

And now for the fun portion of the afternoon, it was our annual attendance at "An Atlanta Christmas." Last year they did all our favorites; this year they did mostly new scripts. My favorite this year was "The Role of a Lifetime," a previously-performed story written by Brad Strickland about a down-on-his-luck actor playing Santa Claus at a 1950 department store who is stunned by a little girl's Christmas request and what he does about it. It's very sweet and very reminiscent of stories written by Thomas Fuller, who wrote the original "Atlanta Christmas" sequence of tales. Kelley Ceccato did a new story this year, "The Sleigh of Unbroken Dreams" (or it may have been a typo in the program book and it's "Unspoken"), about a trio of elves at the North Pole who dream about giving a different type of toy to children rather than the commercial standards, just like another elf did long ago. With the help of a retired reindeer, they work on making their own dreams come true. I really, really enjoyed this one, and think it would make a fantastic children's book! I was listening to it envisioning the characters as illustrations and wishing I could draw the way I saw the pictures in my head! "Rory Rammer" was "A Visit from St. Rex," a perennial favorite.

We picked up Chinese food on the way home and ate by the light of the Christmas tree. Watched Alaska: the Last Frontier, which ended on a tragic note with Shane having fallen off the roof of their new house (it was finished a week earlier) and broken his back.

On the Feast of Stephen

Despite the dire predictions on the weather, we woke to find only a breezy, chilly day; the wind crept under your coat and down your neck with iced fingers. The snow gave everything a nice frosty look, but even the side roads were dry and clear. We drove to Kroger in an off-and-on swirl of flurries that were leaving small, perfect flakes on windshield and car sides. Plus Radio Classics still had some Christmassy shows on, including a Bing Crosby variety program. We stopped at CVS on the way there, and Walgreen on the way back, looking for bargains, but just found a little china grocery to go under the library tree and two automatic candles—LEDs that you turn on at a certain hour, they burn for eight hours, and then turn off until that same hour the next day, and run until you shut them off. I suppose I need to go buy enough tinsel to replace what I used this year (about two and a half boxes) since you can't reuse it any longer.

We had a gathering to go to this evening, so we just had a light lunch and relaxed this afternoon. I thawed some of our turkey soup—there was a method to my madness, as we needed the space the soup was in for the little cups of ice cream we bought—and we had it with leftover rice. Watched More Crazy Christmas Lights, with folks decorating in Brooklyn, the Bronx, dairy country in California and also at Newport Beach; Lewis Black's special on surviving the holidays, peppered with comedians like Richard Beltzer, Rip Torn, etc., which covered from Thanksgiving to the New Year; plus the Christmas Keeping Up Appearances where Richard is supposed to get dressed as Father Christmas (but Emmett gets him snockered), and had the St. Thomas concert on when it was time to leave.

Well, it's a good thing I checked e-mail before we left, because there was one from this morning saying the gathering was canceled because of the ice on the road. We were a bit flabbergasted, because we didn't see a speck of ice anywhere this morning, and the wind and the dry air had evaporated even the little bits of ice that were on our front steps and in front of the garage. We were really disappointed, because we were so looking forward to getting together with everyone!

Anyway, there wasn't anything defrosted for dinner, so we ate out at Ken's, the Waffle House-like grill near our house. I had pork chops, as always, with just some tomato slices. Yum! Then we drove to Barnes & Noble to use our 25 percent off coupons.

When we arrived home I continued the DVR marathon. (Oh...yeah. Turned the DVR on this morning and the sound was working again. Yay and grrrr at the same time.) Watched Nonna, Tell Me a Story, which was Lidia from Lidia's Italian Kitchen telling stories about her childhood in Italy with little limited-action cartoons and baking sequences thrown in; European Christmas Markets, which went to Christkindl Markets in Germany, Austria, France, and Switzerland, and Christmas to the Extreme, with things like Bronner's in Frankenmuth, MI (huge Christmas store; I wanna go!), the fruitcake toss, extensive light displays, a Christmas hotel, etc.

It's Always Snowing Somewhere

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