Heavy Fog.

Let's say it's 400 yards to the church steeple from where I'm sitting here at the kitchen table. Maybe it's only 300 yards. I'm not sure. There's another house, a street, and a gym between here and there. I've never been inside the gym, but it's pretty clear what kind it is: bleachers that roll out or accordion back into themselves along the walls, hoops that crank down from the ceiling. Metal supports for the roof just low enough to interfere with/make compelling a game of paddleball. Paddleball: a small canoe paddle sawed off and taped at the sawed-off handle, flat rubber bases about where baseball bases should go. Tennis ball. House rules, a la, if the ball hits the ceiling supports, it's either a ground-rule double or a live ball, depending. But I digress.

Low forties. Rain and drizzle all night. Fog so heavy still, at eleven o'clock in the morning, that I cannot quite make out the entirety of the steeple. New ways to think about the word muffled, too, when the clock in that thing chimes the hour. They say warmer weather tomorrow. A day like today makes it hard to believe it will ever be anything other than the way it is right now.