creeping downstairs by snowlight

I am not a very good eater, in the sense in which people apply this phrase to babies and small children: I am not very good at consuming enough food every single day. And when I don't get quite enough for food, I find out about it later: instead of waking up moderately hungry at 6:30 the next morning, I wake up ravenous at 5:30. This is suboptimal.

Sometimes it's worth it, though. There is nothing like creeping downstairs in the dark to see the way the faint purple light falls in the front windows when it's snowing at night. Nothing. It's just wonderful, and something in me needs that that kind of light.

Also, I though to myself, ah, ah, it's warmed up enough to snow! And it has: it's only -4 F. (Not with wind chill. I'm sure some of you have counterexamples, but in my experience, if Minnesotans are reporting a temperature with wind chill, we will label it explicitly. My great-grandma was talking to me about the weather once, and she said, "Well, it just didn't feel as cold back then, because we didn't have wind chill." Um -- uh -- sigh. Okay.)

And then I thought of the beginning of The True Tale of Carter Hall as it stands now, which is that the Queen of Air and Darkness has made it unseasonably cold in September, and Carter Hall and Tam Lin are arguing about whether it's ever actually too cold to snow, though they don't know the Dark Lady's part in it until later. And maybe, when I'm done sweeping the hall by snowlight, I'll work on "Carter Hall Judges the Lines" a bit more. Or maybe I'll turn off the overhead light here in the office and wait for the sunlight to come over the trees in the back, even if the sun isn't visible because of the snow clouds.

Being here now: it is good.