Mad scientist works on his mother-machine.
(Must cook. Must wash. Must mend. Must clean.)
Must comfort a kid who is feeling distress.
Must make a baby in nine months or less.
When it was completed the thing couldn’t start.
(It was asked for a cookie containing some heart.)
Our barometer has fallen slightly to 29.41, but the temperature remains steady at 34. It seems it has been stuck there for over a day. The rain has ceased, but the little brook behind the house is roaring down over the ruins of the old tannery, loud in the windless night. I snoozed after dinner, despite the noise of two grandchildren, and now am up with my usual insomnia.
It is odd to think of how my wife and I wondered how we’d handle empty-nest-syndrome, considering how full our house has become. My middle son is out of college and applying for work while working the sort of grunt-jobs college is suppose to help you avoid, and both daughters are back, at least part of the time, due to boyfriend complexities it doesn’t pay to question too deeply about (though I confess curiosity.) .
It is amusing how they ease themselves in. It sort of starts as a visit, but gets longer. My wife is part of the conspiracy. I am like Beorn, and she is like Gandelf telling Beorn he is going to have 12 dwarfs and a hobbit for dinner, not by saying the total number of guests at first, but by slowly increasing the number during the course of conversation.
(My wife has the hat and stick, but not the beard.)
I am a bit like Beorn, frowning fiercely at my computer at maps of the weather, the economy, the political situation, and the spiritual situation. I am even a bit of a form-changer, for when I frown too much my wife plops my baby granddaughter in my lap, and all frowning must cease. However the racket does get loud in this small house, which may partly explain my recent insomnia. Insomnia is the only way I can get some peace, and concentrate. Tonight it was a bit strange, as I closed my eyes and dozed midst a racket, and awoke to total silence.
The midnight map shows storm #9 is stuck over us. The rain has ceased, but the gloom is likely to remain. The radar shows backlash snows to the west, and some of that likely will wheel our way before we see any sunshine.
(Click maps to clarify and enlarge.)
As I look west to try to see what sort of weather is coming our way, I see warmth flooding over the Canadian Rockies, and warm, above-freezing air right up into Alberta. It seems impossible we will get anything but a sunny thaw, but over and over I’ve been fooled, as innoculous looking high pressure comes sneaking down from Hudson Bay, and pumps itself up with just enough arctic cold to shock us for a day or so, before a resurgence of milder air comes up the coast. I am also suspicious because cross-polar-flow has built up a pool of murderously cold air up in the Canadian Arctic, and even though it seems in no mood to charge south as an arctic outbreak, it constantly leaks enough cold south to worry me. Lastly, the days are so short we don’t really need Siberian imports to come across the Pole, as the deep snow up over Canada, and the fact Hudson Bay is frozen over, can take cool air and make it cold. You can see some of that cold leaking south in the intial GFS temperature map (from Dr. Ryan Maue’s amazing collection of maps at Weatherbell.)
(click to enlarge.)
If I was an optimist I’d focus on the above-freezing air invading the Canadian prairies, but I’m prone to worry. The storms crashing into the California coast, and giving them needed rains, look likely to roll across the country one by one, and even if temperatures are above normal it will be cold enough to generate snow along the northern edge of each storm, and the way things have been going one of the storms will turn up the coast next week and we’ll have a repeat performance of either the Thanksgiving storm or the current storm.
It is hard to worry correctly about storms with so many children back in the nest. I keep being distracted by issues that remind me a little of living in a Hippy commune back in the 1970’s: Who shall cook; who shall do dishes; who gets what shelf in the refrigerator; who shall play what sort of music when. Of course, it is possible to brew up a whole new bunch of worries, especially when low pressure makes my bones ache. I have the sort of poetic temperament that can make a maudlin melody out of a sunny day, and when the weather gets dark and dismal I really ought be at my best, however my wife has a unique counter-attack which little can withstand: She steams up the kitchen baking cookies.
In defiance of the dreary, my wife
Bakes cookies. The purple mist presses close
To yellow windows; longing for the life
And laughter within, its blue nose is loath
To leave the view of the love it lacks.
It swirls and drips, dribbling down the panes
As outside early night dabs dark, and blacks
The cold stove of sunless skies. It remains
Glued to the glass, sniffing the strange power
Of cookies. Cookies, mere cookies, defeat
The dark. Fragrant piles of cookies tower
And then, to be made more warm and complete,
Are wrapped with red ribbons in green cellophane
For neighbors; warm candles in cold Christmas rain.
Sunrise's Swansong 