PineSiskin of Sleet

Yesterday started out pretty well, with a Zoom chat and meditation with Dragonfly, followed by a walk. But at some point in the afternoon, I fell down a bit of a hole. I dunno. I blame Kim Stanley Robinson. I was trying to read The Ministry for the Future because it was next up, and I was trying to Be Serious and read Important Science Fiction. It depressed the hell out of me. Partly for a valid reason, to wit that even if we get on top of COVID-19, we're still facing a future of unknown but potentially catastrophic doom. Partly because of some real serious problems I have with this book, but which it wouldn't be fair to go into at this point because I haven't even completely read it. Then I couldn't pull myself out of the hole again. I went back to reading Using Native Plants to Restore Community. It isn't the kind of book you can just read. You have to ponder and assimilate it, and probably make lists. But it has beautiful illustrations.

This morning snow had fallen, and I thought I'd have to go out and shovel. But before I got around to it, some kind neighbor had snowblowered our driveway and walk when I wasn't looking! Probably Irish next door. He is a nice guy. It snowed more throughout the day, but I'm not going to shovel again until tomorrow when the sun comes up. Not having to clear away the snow, I amused myself instead by fixing up a birthday card for Tron. My desire to embellish things often leads to them being late, but I hope my family forgives me for that. It's the price they pay for living with an artist. The faithful Sparrowhawk carried the precious missive off to the post office. Then I pulled up the story I wrote for the Diva earlier this year and started to review it with an eye to sending it somewhere. The Sparrowhawk said he would like to have tomato soup and toasted cheese for supper, so that's what we did.