First Day.

Dropped the Toad off at the big church in the back yard: day care 9-1, MWF, on the cheap, with nice church ladies there to smile at him and call him cutiepie and say they sure hoped I wouldn't mind if they spoiled him and etcetera. Feels like a crazy luxury: writing time, bought and paid for. And I'm sorry for the 'ladies' -- if there had been church boys there, too, or churchmen, or what have you, or who, then the forecast would have had that here duly and fully noted. But there were not. There were kind ladies there to take the Toad into their sacred trust. And now the Toad is there, and we are here, staring at each other, not sure what to do. Snipe at each other some. Do the play-by-play of last night's midnight Toad meltdown. Pace the rooms. Write. Watch the clock. Wait for that big bell back there to sing its song, play its one chime.

A little weather advisory for your January Friday: maybe an inch or two of wet snow this evening and overnight, mainly along a line north of Highway Whatever. I never know what highways they mean unless it's the interstate, and it never is. It's always something like Highway 64, and then I always think Highway 64 runs north-south, and I end up spending time trying to figure out what a line north of a north-south line would look like, and by then it's already snowing, so who cares. What the suits and fancies around these parts tend to mean, I've learned, when they say 'along and north of a line...' is that we're likely to see snow here, but down in maybe Pleasant Garden or High Point or whatever else is down there -- Uwharrie? -- they'll get cold rain and some slickening of bridges. So: Along and north of a line marked by the handful of limited-access highway exits of your choosing, look for snow. If you are local to the 2740X WeatherCast, look for snow. If you are not, crack your own windows and lick your own flagpoles. Choose the divining rods that work best for you. Take a guess. Find a highway. Stand north of it. See what happens.