Not Ready For This

Believe it or not, we had light snow flurries starting Halloween night and lasting until about noon the next day. I don’t think it means that fall is over, but it definitely means that winter is around the corner.

I’m not real excited about the arrival of winter. There are aspects of cold weather that are fun. A few of the wintery things that I look forward to are hot soups, mulled wine, curling up on the couch on a blustery winter day with a good book or movie, and the sight of freshly fallen snow. On the other hand, winter also brings cold fingers, runny noses, frozen ears, slippery roads, ice on the windshield, and cold toilet seats. And then there is the always popular winter sport of trying to pee with cold hands. To me, winter is like going on a long cruise―it’s fun at first, but after a few days I feel confined and wish the damn trip was over.

Not surprisingly, we did not have any kids come to our door Halloween night. The wintery weather had nothing to do about it. We live so far out of the way that we would have to give away college scholarships to make it worth the trek to come to our house for trick or treat. If someone had knocked on our door, I probably would have thought it was Michael Myers or Freddie Krueger and opened the door with a loaded shotgun in my hands.

I did not mind the absence of trick or treaters coming to the door. We had our fair share when we lived in Florida, and some of the kids who came to the door were cute and innocent in their little costumes. But there were also a lot of teenagers with cigarette packs rolled up in their sleeves and five second costumes who were just trying to make a killing on candy. Punks. (Any resemblance between me and Clint Eastwood in Gran Torino is purely incidental.)

What I do miss, however, is not having leftover candy bars to eat for the month after Halloween. With our new, healthy, back-to-the-farm lifestyle, it’s slim pickings around here when I’m looking for a snack around midnight. Right now I could really go for an Almond Joy or a Butterfinger, but my munching choices are limited to red pepper hummus and peta chips. That’s great if you’re Abdul the used camel salesmen, but it’s not even close to what I crave when I go on the midnight snack raid.

Meredith and Mike truly enjoy Halloween. Even though we are way off the beaten path, the two of them went to a lot of effort to make a Halloween display at our front gate. It’s a full sized scarecrow with a pumpkin head sitting on a bale of hay. When I first saw it I looked around for the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion. We’re so far off the beaten path that exactly seven people have seen it since they put it up two weeks ago, and three of them were the UPS guy, the Fed Ex guy, and some lady who got lost and drove down our road by mistake.

I kind of like the scarecrow at the front gate. Most of the time the scarecrow puts me in a festive Halloween mood when I drive back on to the property. A few times I have forgotten it’s there, and it startles the hell out of me because it looks like there’s a weird orange-headed guy sitting at our front gate. With his flannel shirt and orange face he looks like a Canadian tourist who’s had too much sun while on spring break at Clearwater Beach.

With winter coming on, I’ve given some thought to how I’m going to occupy myself during the cold months. I’m going to work on my cheese making. There are a lot of planes, saws and chisels that need sharpening. I’ll probably do a few woodworking projects in the workshop when the weather is not too cold. The way I figure it, you can’t have too many useless wooden things.

I’m going to spend some time this winter planning my spring garden and ordering seeds. Last year I only planted half my garden. This year I’m planting all 5,000 square feet. I learned a lot about gardening in this area last summer, and I think I’ll plant a lot wiser this coming year. I’ve already decided that I’m going to plant pumpkins and winter squash and a whole lot more sweet potatoes.

I plan on doing a lot of writing this winter. Who knows, I may start on that novel that I’ve always dreamed about.

As I mentioned in a past post, I’m learning to play some Christmas songs on my bass guitar so I can play with some guys at my church’s annual Christmas bazaar. I’m enjoying playing music again, and I’m hoping they will continue to get together and play after the bazaar is over. Hell, if I get a bug up my butt, I may see if there is an old farts’ garage band around here that’s looking for a bassist.

Before I retired I never gave any thought to what I was going to do for the next few months because I didn’t have any time to do anything but work. To some, it may sound like I’m trying to find things to occupy my time now that I’m retired, but that’s far from the case. The problem in retirement for me is that there are so many things that I want to do that I have to plan when the best time is to do them. I guess that’s one of the benefits of winter. The cold weather curtails certain activities thereby making opportunities for other activities.

Wow, I haven’t lost it. Like any good trial lawyer, I’ve just come up with a good defense for winter. On that note I will conclude my case and this post.