Twelve Days.

We hit fifty degrees today, friends and fans of weather, and I surely hope you enjoyed it—serious winter returns tomorrow and hangs on through the new year. Snow late week, maybe, and rain. Low forties will be as good as it gets. Makes a body happy to have hung glueless gutters off the front of the shed this afternoon. Oh, compression fittings. Oh, no minimum temperature for gutter glue to bind, to set up, to etcetera. Oh, brand-new vinyl gutters hung off brand-new PVC soffit boards. Those things will be here after the building to dust itself returns. I know, I know. My fault we raise our general temp degree by degree. My carbon footprint expanded by them selfsame vinyl gutters, them selfsame PVC soffits and eaves. But I say unto thee: mightn't there be some offset by the building not rotting, not needing replacement? By the tax-credit woodstove to be installed this week? By the bats and bats of insulation, coming soon to a shed near you? Is bats of insulation anything like a murder of crows? Tune in next week, when we'll hear our hero say...

...it rained at least an inch and half over Christmas, and the redone building did not leak. It is lying in a low spot in the yard, but it's now swaddled in Tyvek, so here's to progress. Here's to new doors, windows where there once were doors, flashing, and all else learned water-intrusion-wise in the last fifty or three hundred years. The building is dry, and the building is sound, so far, knock on oriented strand board. But that has got to be more than enough—for now, anyway—about my little slab-on-grade situation. Instead, let's say this: Cold dogwalk tonight after dark. Whatever front that brings the chilly weather back has come through, or is coming through. It's about to be January, and it feels like it. Happy bowl week. Happy St. Steven's Day. Happy what have you. It's that emptied-out season. It's the best part of Christmas. It's time, maybe, to go in the other room and sit by the tree. You haven't taken it down yet, have you? You're not one of those clean-up-right-after-it's-over types, are you? If you are, go out to the curb and get that thing and put it back up. Twelve days of Christmas, people. Twelve. At least. You have to block out time to play with your toys.