Fragile

Everything feels very fragile here.  The entire fabric of society is as thin as new ice, and liable to break down completely at the least incursion. 

Changes and more changes

When I get unhappy, or dissatisfied, or generally things are not feeling right, I have a tendency to tear into things and make changes until it feels better.  When I wake up in the morning and can't imagine how I'm going to get thru the day dealing with a certain person, that's a clue.  Been doing that lately, and got rid of a couple of my more agita-inducing clients.  I think it's better now.  We'll see.

Also trying to get outside more, but with the rain and snow and generally muddy conditions here lately, that's not working too well.  Pablo and I have found a park we like to go to, which, considering it's woods and no paved paths, amazes me. He usually doesn't care for woods type settings, he's more a pavement kind of dog.  But this park has deer, and skunks (we've smelled those but not seen any), and a little pond that, the first time we were there, had a great blue heron floating on it, who took off before I could get a picture because another dog barked at it.

Of course, when we get home, I spend the rest of the day cleaning the mud off shoes and paws and picking up park debris that tracks into the house no matter how hard I try to keep it out.  But that's mostly ok. 

I'm waiting to see if the pond really freezes solid.  So far, no, but we've been having these mild weeks in between the cold ones, so even if it's shallow (which is hard to tell, the water is mostly black-looking), it hasn't frozen solid yet.  Someone we met there told me the park used to be a Christmas tree farm, and the pond was built there so kids could ice skate.  The person who told me this is close to my age, I guess, and yes, when I was a kid, we used to have parks with ponds that froze solid enough in the winter to be skated on.  Pretty much doesn't happen around here anymore. 

I wanted to go to the park today, because it's warmish and I was off work, but last evening the rain came down by the truckload, so thinking mud, mud, mud, we pretty much stayed home.  Even my back yard is soggy.

So pictures are from a couple/few weeks ago, on a couple of dryish days. 

The trees are mostly younger than I would expect in the area, probably because it used to be a Christmas tree farm, rather than woods.  A lot of land around here was once orchards of various sorts.

Pond on a sunny day last month.  It's been more overcast the last few weeks.

 

Ice forming, I like the crackly texture.  And the water looks really black here.

 

Just this past weekend.  Solider ice in spots, but nowhere near frozen solid. 

So that's what we've been up to lately.  Nothing exciting, and still trying to organize the house and find stuff I haven't seen since before the move.  That's being a treasure hunt.  Keeps things interesting.