Winter & Wise Guys

Wednesday I got the word.  Well, heard the word.  On the radio.

It's coming.  Winter is coming.

On the Thursday night commute home from work, Phlegm the Taurus and I heard it again.

It's coming.  Winter is coming.

It is now the wee hours of Friday morning and my mature body parts have me practicing French.  Intensely practicing.

"Oui, wee...oui, wee, bon ami...OUI, WEE !"

In the darkness I shoot the door and bounce off the hallway wall.

And have an epiphany.

So that's why they're called the "wee hours".

Huh.

Crisis averted, and now feeling somewhat adventurous in a semi-conscious state, I take the Great Circle Route back to bed, shuffling through the kitchen.

Huh.

Something's weird with the birdfeeder outside.  I flip on the outside light.

Winter be here.  And it's not pretty.

The wind is throwing the flakes horizontally.  Things aren't getting covered with snow.  They're getting plastered.  Not a pretty snowfall, this one.

Imagine a wife who's upset.  Now imagine that wife putting mashed potatoes on plates.

Yeah.

That fling and plop?  The muttering?  That's what Mother Nature is doing right now.  And Old Man Winter is trying to figure out how to get himself excused from the table.

Ready or not, winter is being served.

Between the house and the shed is a stack of logs.  A logging family let me buy just one logger's cord of wood.  Usually you gotta buy a truckload.  That's nine cord of wood.  And a logger's cord consists of eight-foot long logs stacked four feet high and four feet deep.  Nine of those would be kinduva tight fit in our yard.

So I'm pretty happy with the one logger's cord.  We can still use the kitchen door if we have to.

But the harsh reality is that the one logger's cord is only about 15% cut up into firewood lengths.  And only about 20% of that is split into firewood.  And only 0% of that is stacked.

So playing the percentages and the odds...yeah, we're not ready for winter.

I wander back to the kitchen, now disturbingly awake with the realities of seasonal living.  I open the cupboard door and my hand pauses.  I can either make a good pot of the Elixir of Knowledge using the beans and grinder or I can use the rarely touched pouch of ground coffee hidden back in the corner. Since it is the wee hours I opt for the ground and silent-type of coffee.  Because I want to live.

I'm sitting with the laptop at the dining room table.  The Elixir's aroma wafts the six feet  to my chair, kicking my mind into a psuedo-caffeinated mode.

And the thoughts begin to swirl.  They are swirling much slower than if the Elixir was being consumed, but there is minimal motion.  Just enough motion, it seems.

Whatever your hands find to do,,.

Well, okay.  That little chunk of verse is all that floated up to the window in my mind's 8-Ball and stuck.

Huh.

That verse.  Now where was that?  I immediately use the Layman's Secret Weapon.

Google.

Oh, yeah.  Solomon and his book "Trying to Stay Off of One-Way Streets".   Ecclesiastes,  chapter 9, verse 10.

Whatever you're gonna do, do it now, and do it 100% because things can change pretty quick.

Like Winter getting here and the firewood is nowhere near done.

Yeah.  We only get so long to do things.  And then we can't.

No second chance.  No time outs.  No do-overs.

Huh.

Sounds like the surprisingly wise utterance of that sleeveless, blue-collared prophet - "Larry the Cable Guy".

"Git 'er done!"

Obviously, Solomon must've been a big fan of plaid as well.

Jerusalem is in the South of Israel, right?