Today it was 40 degrees and we had this beautiful sunset. I couldn’t think of a better welcome home from DeKalb. Coming from a warm lovely two and a half weeks in blessed California, I was seriously not looking forward to returning to the cold, to having winter for 4 more months, to our not sunny apartment, to everything in DeKalb that I make a big deal about even thought it’s not really that big a deal. Then on the plane I went over these supposedly big issues I’d been avoiding thinking about all break, wrote out the truth about each one, and what I CAN do about each one, and actually felt better. Sometimes you just need to get it all out, realize what reality is, realize what you can and can’t do about it, have a plan and leave the rest to God. And then in DeKalb it’s been in the 40′s, and I got to ride outside with the sun on one end and the moon on the other, drive home to a beautiful sunset, and realized we’ve lived in our apartment long enough that it’s warm and cozy now even if it gets no sunlight. Someone at the barn said spring usually comes in March, and it would be amazing if we got away with a mild winter like this, so I’m crossing my fingers and toes and praying. And this is after the weathermen have been predicting for the past few months that this is going to be the worst winter ever. My bank teller lady told me that weathermen are right around 85% of the time. She said, “If I’m right 85% of the time I lose my job.” I said, “Airline industries have to be right 100% of the time.” She said she guesses it depends on the industry. I think weathermen need to up the ante. I worked with a guy that had his degree in weather at Outdoor Science and we’d ask him the weather forecast all the time but the only thing he’d ever say, with one finger in the air and a mysterious voice, was: “I’ll tell you this, the weather is always changing.” He’s the only weatherman I’ve ever trusted.
That’s DeKalb tonight, again. I feel like our trip home was bookended by beautiful sunsets. One of our last nights in California looked like this:
This was a really crazy cloud formation that apparently was the talk of the valley. It made the news here and people posted facebook pictures here. Supposedly it was formed by moisture and wind, the weatherman said, which doesn’t make me any more impressed with weathermen than I was before because I could have told you that. That reminds, there were some other cool clouds a month or so ago near DeKalb that I took a picture of. They had all these crazy holes in them, like someone had poked their finger up into them.
Okay, so the truth is that I finally figured out how to get pictures off my phone and onto my computer, which is where all these came from. I’m just so excited to share them, I’m going to keep on going. This is a picture of our groundhog friend back in spring. Right in the middle of the picture there is a hole in the grass, to the left of the tip of the concrete slab. That is her head sticking out. I think it’s a her because once I saw it outside of its hole and it was missing a lot of fur off its sides, and I like to think they’re like rabbit does that pull their fur to keep their babies warm. We job by here every time we go the gym and saw her often. We couldn’t get over how HUGE groundhogs are!
This is a mommy duck and her babies. They were trying to cross the street for no apparent reason other than to go to the liquor store. It was quite the ordeal, because cars are quite a bit bigger than ducks, and create enough wind to send baby ducks toppling over. So I stood as close as I could to them and tried to keep cars away. You’ll be happy to know they all made it across safely, but there were a few topples.
Well, I’m sure you want to hear about Christmas, but seeing how I’ve taken up enough room with my camera pictures, I’ll leave that for next time! In parting, I wish you all a Belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
