Freezing Rain.

I somehow had forgotten—had it rained in the new year?—how pretty the neighborhood is in the rain, how good the steeple looks back there in the back yard lit up in the night, in the fog. That was what I was working on before I went to bed last night, as the rain thickened towards syrup, as the weather dropped yet one more delay upon the school system. Ice on the back deck this morning, and on the mower, the lawn chairs, what tree limbs I could see. A freezing rain rains twice: all morning long everything dripped down into the yard, down onto the driveway, as we warmed through forty degrees.

They want fifty degrees or better tomorrow. And sunshine. That should about finish off what last remaining holdouts of snow still dot the ground out there—in the shade of the trash cans, in the shade of the building, in the shade of the shade.

The sun's trailing through these kitchen windows as we work through afternoon and into evening, and the dog's making eye contact, which can mean only that she knows the sidewalks between here and the park must be mostly thawed, must be ready for even an arthritic aging coyote. It's colder out than it looks, friends and fans of weather, so be warned. Wear a hat. I got one strand of lights taken off the porch before I packed it in, came inside to think about outside. Still: Never too cold for a dogwalk. And now I've asked her what she thinks about that. And now we have to go.