Getting Colder.

If I do get a woodstove into that building back there, it'll be just in time—a warmish (maybe fifty degrees?) rain is forecast for some point over the next forty hours, and then we set back into that highs-in-the-low-forties/lows-in-the-low-twenties kind of thing. We'll get a tinfoil sun to go with it, probably a little breeze, and it'll take until late morning to get fully light, and then we'll already be pushing evening by four o'clock. This is how it goes as we spin into the new year here on the Piedmont. This is January, leastways the seasonal version of it. Years past we've had sixties and seventies and dry and dry. But twenty inches over our average rainfall for the year and a serious December snow means this is not years past. This is this year, or the end of it, anyway. Auld Lang Syne and all that, OK? Tinsel? Champagne? Long sleeves and more long sleeves? Gird up, people. By February the light gets longer. By February one starts to sense some kind of grinding change. But January is a haul, pure and simple. January requires commitment. January is an acquired taste. This is to say nothing of late December. I love it, and you do, too, but I'm still trying to make sure we're all ready for it. It takes a lot to shut one year down and get another one underway. Let's us count up fingers and toes. Make sure we've got our mittens, our mufflers. Buy an extra bag of coffee means just in case. A can of soup or two. Batteries. A flashlight. Let's not let some brand-new year arrive and catch us unawares.