Winter

There you have it.  Not only are we in the deep freeze, but we got enough snow to make the ground white, on top of the ice Mother Nature so kindly deposited Friday night and Saturday morning.  I'm very cautious of sidewalks and decks with this layer of ice, and for the most part walk only on grassy areas whenever possible.  I'm just hunkered down hoping to survive through it with no broken bones.  

Good things happen:  For instance, a friend was shopping at Orscheln in Higginsville and grabbed their annual tractor calendar, only to discover that Cliff and his Allis Chalmers are featured for the month of November.  One of our Tractor Tales friends in Indiana already picked his up after he heard about Cliff being on it.  

Another nice surprise:  In August I shared the contents of a letter I wrote a friend of ours on his birthday, a friend we hardly ever see these days even though he lives not far away.  Last weekend, out of the blue, we received an answer to my letter written last summer.  He wrote it on a notepad of some sort, which gave the whole message a quite unique appearance:

Our first reading of this letter took awhile, with both of us trying to decipher Tom's left-handed writing as well as his tiny, tiny lettering.  It was worth the effort and made our day.  So if you think of someone you haven't been in touch with, perhaps somebody to whom you need to say "thank you", don't put it off.  Good things might happen.  

This morning Cliff and I watched out the north window as a coyote hunted for moles, every once in awhile pouncing as if to catch one.  He was right among the four horses acting like he belonged with them.  Things like that are always fun to see.  As luck would have it I was reading "Call of the Wild" by Jack London this morning; a coyote hunting mice or moles fit right in with that theme.

A granddaughter and I are going to see "A Christmas Carol" this afternoon.  Wish us luck in these temperatures!