It is winter. Cousin Jerry was lying in the snow making snow angels. Along came the snowplow. Now Cousin Jerry is making real angels. -Poet Red Green

Time to prepare for winter.

The signs of it are all around. Above is a picture out my front door back in September. First snow, but it didn't stay. As I write this, however, it's snowing outside, and the snow from earlier in the week never melted, so, unless Hillary Clinton and John McCain visit with a buttload of warm air, this is the last snow that will melt next year. It'll be on the bottom all winter.

So, everyone is getting ready for winter, and colder temperatures. Some signs of winter below:



This is a snowshoe rabbit changing color. If they were a superhero, that would pretty much be their power. In the middle of changing, though, it looks like all of the rabbits have gone to culinary school, and are all wandering around in the forest with Chef's hats on. Kinda like a secret government program to produce rabbit cooks.



This is a Toyota Tercel fully laden with wood. A Tercel filled with wood. Think about that for a moment. Must be like caterpillars that get fuzzier to show a longer winter is coming.



We tried to get a hunter to shoot our dog. No takers. But, somehow she got her tongue super-glued to her nose.

You can see in my previous post that I've been doing so for some time. We just moved into this house in January (memo to self: don't move in January in Fairbanks ever again) and given the tender love the house required, not to mention the hammering, cutting and sawing, it took until late June before we really felt caught up. I've still got some things to do outside, but, most of them are doable (a half an hour of chainsawing, some minor carpentry, changing regular tires for snow tires, building a two-story octagonal gazebo, etc.) even as temperatures start to drop.

There's a feeling of solitude, of silence, of peace that hits when I'm inside next to a roaring fire as the snow gently falls in straight vertical trails from the sky outside. But, that feeling mainly lasts half a second or less, since by then one or the other or both of the Wilder Boys wants something. Babies are soooooo rude. Feed me. Where's my bottle, where are my clothes, where are my keys, I'm going to be late for work - oh, wait, that's me. I guess both husbands and kids must be a big pain.

The changing levels of daylight have already begun to impact us a bit. In the summer, we tended to want to stay up pretty late along with the 24-hour day. Made you a bit tired, but you took a nap here or there. Now, as fall hits us, the darker days already make us tend to curl up in a warm, cozy bed a bit earlier. Nice.

The other change is it's now warmer in the house. Warmer, you say, how could that be? Winter is colder. Energy is expensive. I'm going to have to keep my house just this side of frostbite this winter just to avoid having to trade my kidney to the folks who sell me the stuff that heats my house. Is John stoned?

No. College is over.

Now we have a fire going. A nice, hot fire. Beyond that, we're using it to heat the entire house, all from one stove. So, the room that the stove in is hot. A delicious, decadent hot. And, it helps us not spend money on expensive type heat. Yay, wood! It allows us to dress up like trashy California celebutantes and frolic in our front room! In Alaska. In winter.