Most times I am a quick study and learn easily. Yesterday I overdid and last night I woke up every hour or so in pain, and it’s still here this morning. I guess I keep trying to find the line between okay and ridiculous. Obviously I went over that line yesterday. I do have an addendum about yesterday and locked doors. My plowman was here when I left for an appointment. I told him the de-ice stuff for the steps was inside the house by the door as was his check. He was fine with that and I left. When I got home, I was locked out again. My plowman had noticed my storm door was ajar and he’s a good guy so he closed it. I called my friend Tony and told him he’d need a step ladder. I’m thinking of putting a stepladder permanently against the back porch. In the summer I’ll put plants on it so people will think it a gardening design. How pretty to see the morning glory vines climbing the ladder.

Today is a white day. The sky is white. The trees have a layer of white from the wet snow, and the ground is covered. The sun came out yesterday and melted some of the snow. Last night it froze. Ruts of ice are on the sides of the road and on the pathways. Going out makes for a strange sort of dance of stepping in one place then moving to the side then across and back all with tiny steps which remind me of the Mikado.

I seldom stayed home from school. We, my brother and sisters and I, were all pretty much a healthy bunch. We walked to school on the coldest or the wettest or the snowiest day of the year. It didn’t matter.

This time of year presented to every kid the greatest of all challenges: putting on and taking off boots. Back then they were rubber and they went over our shoes. In the morning, at home, my mother would hold the boots while we pushed and pushed until our shoes were all the way inside then she’d tuck our snow pants into the top of the boot. When we got to school, we’d sit on the floor to pull off our boots. Usually our shoes came with them, but that was just fine. We’d pull out our shoes, put them on and go into the classroom. All of that was the easy part. It was getting dressed to go home which presented the biggest challenge. If the boots were wet, the shoes just wouldn’t go inside all the way, and the bottom part of the boot would flop around. Pushing the shoes in with my hands sometimes worked, sometimes didn’t. Lots of days I’d walk home in my shoes, the boots in my school bag. My mother was never happy when I came home with wet shoes, wet socks and cold feet. Neither was I.