The wind is tremendous. The snow is heavy and wet. The bushes near the house are bent to the ground. The branches from the oak tree by the deck have bent so much under the weight of the snow the smallest branches at the ends tap the backdoor and sound like fingers scratching the glass. Every niow and then the dogs and I raise our heads and look. The dogs were out chasing each other in the snow. Nala comes inside with her nose and head covered in snow. Both are wet and exhausted and are lying asleep on the couch, one beside me, the other behind me. Running in snow takes energy. 

The snow started last night around 11. I don’t know exactly how much snow we have, but I’m guessing around 4 or 5 inches with much more yet to come as many as 18 inches here on the cape. Everything is ladened with snow. The wind gusts have been as high as 60 MPH. The snow is drifting. 

The internet is down for the third time, but the electricity stays on so the house is warm and cozy. I might have had a Globe but the snow, falling so quickly, a couple of inches an hour, probably covered it. Still, I do love my paper so I decided to go check. It was ugly out. The wind was howling. My face got whipped by the snowflakes blown sideways by the wind so I gave up and ran back inside the house. I figured I’d read the paper online. Nope, I’m not on-line quite yet, but I am hopeful. 

I miss Shelby Scott. She was the reporter from Channel 4 sent out in the worst weather to do live updates. She was famous for her snow reports while being blown and buffeted by the wind and weather. Storms like this need Shelby. 

The cow and the donkey are safely in the house. Both beasts are in the living room. I triaged the cow’s hanging leg. Last night I lit my Christmas lights. The snow seemed to demand it. The colored lights looked beautiful. I will light again in a while. 

The electricity flickers and sometimes goes off for a minute or two. The internet doesn’t easily recover. It had gone down went down for the fifth time. When the electricity comes back on, there are beeps from Hey Google. Tree branches, heavy with snow, scratch against the windows. It scares Henry. He starts to shake. I hold him for a while and Nala sits beside him. A biscuit make him feel better but then it happens again, the same sequence of events: electricity off, electricity on, cable and internet gone, Hey Google back on with beeps, branches scratching the window, the back window this time, Henry shaking and getting as close to me as he can, even to my lap. I tried a treat again, and it helped for a little while, but he is staying close. He is still nervous. 

The electricity has been blinking on and of. The internet is far away. I will post this when I am no longer chiseling on stone. 

The Internet is back, but the cable is not. I turned off the light. Henry is better.

Today is cloudy and damp. It rained a bit during the night so paw prints on the kitchen floor are back. It is warmish at 42˚. I went out on the deck while my coffee was perking. Pieces of different sized white paper, torn white paper, are strewn about the yard, the part of the yard I’ve already cleaned. The backyard is beginning to look like a vacant lot. I don’t know what the pieces used to be. I’ll find out when I clean the yard. (I just found out when Nala, of course, tried to steal more. She brought out and ate all the cat treats. I had not closed the gate well enough, my fault).

This morning has been almost perfect. I slept late. Everything is quiet, not a person or a car anywhere on the street. The coffee was delicious, both cups of it. Nala is now asleep, resting from her morning antics.

I took my time with the paper. It was filled with all sorts of news I just had to read. I noticed the overthrow of the president of Burkina Faso by the army. I used to go to Ougadougou, the capital, for the weekend. Back then the country was called Upper Volta. I loved Ougadougou. First, it had a great name. It also had a great market, below the street in the center of the city. I bought some unique metal pieces in that market. We always stayed at a nice hotel. With three of us splitting the cost of one room, we could. Breakfast was Yukka soda and small baguettes. We always ate dinner in a nice restaurant. A couple of times, it was the one in the center run by nuns. Ouga always felt small in a comfortable way.

I have no plans for today. Groceries are being delivered shortly. I can’t remember the last time I was in a supermarket. (Ring doesn’t count as a supermarket because it is many stores.) Mostly I ordered essentials, like cheese, and some odd things like chopped dates and chocolate croissants. I’m good for a while on supermarket stuff.

I think the most amazing experiences in Ghana are on market day, every third day in Bolga. When I lived there, I loved market day. It was a carnival without the rides. All the stalls were filled with sellers. The paths through the different offerings sometimes had so many people you had to walk sideways through the crowds. I bought my fruit and vegetables first. There were lots of fruits but few vegetables. I went to my favorite onion and tomato lady. She always dashed me some of each. Next came the eggs. I went to the same egg man all the time. He never gave me a bad egg. The beef came from the meat market which was disgusting, but only in the beginning. After a while I didn’t even notice. The meat came wrapped in leaves. The chickens were tied by one leg to a thick rope or string on the ground. There were rows of chickens. I’d look for the fattest and buy it. The chicken man tied the chicken’s legs together and handed the chicken to me to carry by those legs. It felt odd at first to be carrying a chicken. After a while, it felt day-to-day.

Any lifetime when carrying a live chicken by its legs is just part of the day is a life filled with the unexpected becoming the usual. It is living in Africa, in Ghana. My day-to-day didn’t even seem different after a while and neither did the chicken. I just slung it over the handlebar of my moto and drove home where it was destined to be dinner.