glimpses of winter

[kittenscribble]

The first snow of the season is falling outside. It started out as wet clumps of snow mixed with rain, and now it's all snow, sticking to the grass and tree branches. It's not the first snow I've seen this season -- our trip to Denver last month took care of that -- but it's the first snow I'm seeing from my living room window, so it feels like winter has finally come.

I love this time of year. I love wearing hats and scarves, drinking mulled cider or hot chocolate, wearing big fuzzy socks against the chill. Cooking in winter is the best, too: hearty soups that fill the house with savory smells, or roasts that take hours in the oven, warming the kitchen.

And of course there's the time with family. We had both sets of parents and siblings over for Thanksgiving, and crammed twelve people into our living/dining room area; K's deep-fried turkey was met with praise, and my turducken roulade was admired too, though people ended up mostly asking for the duck. I'm looking forward to the Christmas holiday, and seeing relatives over the break.

We sang our holiday set at a local retirement home yesterday night, and I remembered again how wonderful it was to do such things. The seniors sat patiently through our long Latin pieces, and mouthed along with the old Christmas standbys; they all sang along with "Auld Lang Syne" and "Silent Night" at the end, and their faces looked so happy.

Some of us stayed for a bit afterward, to shake their hands and wish them happy holidays, and they thanked us for coming. One woman gripped my hand and told me that our singing absolutely made her day, and that I should keep my hair out of my face in the future. Another lady (my favorite by far) asked when we were coming back; I told her that we would certainly be back next winter. "Oh, you should come back sooner than that," she said, taking my hand in both of hers; "you never know!"

I think my laugh was more startled than anything else, but she seemed happy, so I smiled at her, and said I'd see what we could do.

The last man to leave wanted to shake all our hands. He told us that he had been hoping to hear the Boars Head Carol, but loved our show even though we hadn't sung it. So clearly there was nothing to do but sing it for him anyway, a highly unbalanced mix of the six of us that remained in the room, while our audience leaned on his walker and looked delighted.

We've got another gig tonight; hopefully the roads will be okay in the snow. And then our holiday concert next Thursday.

All right, now to try to extricate another squirrel from the fireplace. This one's patient; we've opened a gap for him but he hangs back, unwilling to make a break for it. We've shut him up again and maybe he'll be more desperate to escape next time.

Comments

[bkleber.livejournal.com]

Any thoughts to making a tunnel a la ferret playground stuff from the fireplace escape hatch to the deck door? scrap cardboard, somethign like that? It'd smell much more inviting (fresh air from outside) than inside-a-human-house-complete-with-feline-predator probably does...

[kittenscribble.livejournal.com]

That's similar to what we did. The gap we made was a "corridor" composed of a folded cardboard box and the curtains by the double sliding door (we've learned from experience that, without a tunnel to guide them, squirrels will counterintuitively flee into the living room as opposed to making for the sliding glass doors). We even put peanuts in the corridor. The squirrel didn't take the bait immediately, so we left the "tunnel" in place while the heat leaked out of the house. We closed it back up again after a couple of hours. Hopefully he's gone. Haven't heard a peep so far.

[p-sunshine.livejournal.com]

Not sure what to say - but this post made me smile. Yay snow!