I slept terribly last night even though I was tired. All night I kept working in my dream, putting merchandise on shelves. I worked (in real life) until 10:15 PM and so by the time I did fall asleep, it was late and my adult son woke us at 8:00 AM asking my husband if he wanted eggs. Is there anything more aggravating than being awakened from a fitful sleep?

After that I couldn’t sleep again, not really. So I’ve been puttering around, doing laundry, cleaning the kitchen (!), and filling out paperwork. I’m telling you, it’s an exciting life.

I’m going into tonight’s shift a little fatigued and wondering how the roads will be when I am finished working at 10:00 PM. We are gearing up for inventory next week in addition to processing an enormous shipment of product so we’ll be busy even if customers stay home this afternoon and evening.

Well. I guess that’s all.

Farewell and godspeed.

They met in Brainerd, Minnesota sometime before 1926. He was thirty and she was twenty and it was true love. They were married in 1926 and stayed married for 61 years until he died. She lived without him for another twenty-one years until she died at age 102.

By the time I was a child, they lived in a single-wide “manufactured home” with some added-on rooms, porches and a deck. I was terribly impressed–to me, it was grandma and grandpa’s peaceful house with beautiful plants and Lladró pieces sitting on top of their upright piano. They no longer lived in Minnesota–they’d spent most of their adult lives in North Dakota and then migrated to the Pacific Northwest in the 1960s. That’s where they lived in that little green house with the gooseberry bush in the back yard and calla lilies along the garage wall. Huge Rhododendron bushes grew on each side of the back porch. Grandma also grew roses and hung laundry to dry in the back yard.

Grandpa was a preacher. He had semi-retired by the time I came along but was still on staff at a church as the “visitation” pastor. He and my grandma visited the elderly in nursing homes, occasionally bringing us along to stand up front and sing church songs to the old people.

Both of my grandparents have been gone now–grandpa died the week after I was married. Grandma died in 2008.

And yet, I feel an odd closeness to them because we have come full circle. We are now living about an hour from Brainerd. The people here feel like my people. The gray-haired ladies I cut fabric for at work could be my relatives and I am always mindful of that when I exercise patience and help them pick out colors or yarn or ask them what they are making.

My own parents met at college in the Twin Cities but fled from these northern states soon after they married, eager to trade in a snow shovel for an umbrella, but it’s weird, isn’t it, that I have somehow landed back in the place where my story started?

The longer you live, the more you get to see how things turn out, which is one of my favorite things about getting older. (This is the last month in which I will be closer to fifty than to sixty. Now THAT is weird.) What a story it’s been, this life.

It’s not exactly a night shift, but a closing shift. I work from 1 PM to 9 PM today, though my boss told me I could come in early but why would I do that? This morning I slept in, showered and dressed, moved the kitty accoutrements out of my office, Swiffered the floor, put away clean dishes and filled the dishwasher, dumped frozen meatballs in the CrockPot for dinner (though I won’t be here) and put all the Christmas lights into tubs. They’d been sitting on the floor, literally strewn all over the entryway and living room (which is all just a big rectangle) so they could dry . . . and today was the day that I tucked them all into bins.

Oh, why, you ask, were “kitty accoutrements” in my office? Well, the kitties were neutered Monday and kept confined to my office overnight. It was the only room in the house where they could be imprisoned. They are back to their normal selves. Pup, in fact, had an ear infection and so got antibiotics and he seems much better. He has been sickly since we picked him up from the farm where he was born. (“Barn cats,” as I’m learning, tend to be sickly.)

Anyway, now I am going to leave a little early so I can return a dress to Macy’s. I had hoped to do even more but as usual, I always think I can accomplish more than time allows.

In case you were wondering, the forecasted high temperature for today is 39 degrees. And tomorrow, there’s an 80% chance of snow.

The end.

Winter reveals the structure of the world and the paths of creatures that might have been hidden in another season. That’s what I thought while I was driving down the road the other day, admiring the bare trees. I’m kind of loving it, even though so many native Minnesotans seemed to doubt my sanity when I declared that I wasn’t afraid of winter.

(So, I am afraid of driving in a blizzard but that’s another thing entirely, am I right?)

Admittedly, it’s been a kinder and gentler winter here in central Minnesota, or so I’m told. We’ve had temperatures above freezing a few times and my husband tells me that next week it will get up to 39 degrees. I’m mean, that’s practically short sleeve weather around here.

Today I took my Christmas lights down outside and while I was doing so, a woman walked by and told me that she voted for my house in the neighborhood Christmas Lights contest. She said anyone could just put up inflatables, even though the house with a yard full of them won. I thanked her and wished I could have seen her more clearly but I couldn’t because I was wearing my up-close glasses.

I’m blaming my age for my vision dilemma. I can see to read without any correction at all. However, I need glasses to see a computer clearly or to read anything at an arm’s distance. But if I wear “distance” glasses, I can’t see those things well at all. So I constantly switch glasses. At work–because most of my work is up-close, I wear the up-close glasses so I can see three to six feet away.

I know. I know. I need new glasses. It’s on the agenda for this year. Bi-focals, I imagine. I used to wear contacts almost exclusively, but they stopped working when I couldn’t see close up or at arm’s length or at a distance all at once. Meanwhile, the world is blurry either here or there.

*

I just finished reading (in two days) Leave the World Behind. I even took my Kindle to work to read on my lunch break because I just Had To Know. (I love a disaster/dystopian novel.)

Now I’m reading The Hiding Place. I thought I read this when I was a kid but it seems entirely new to me, though I know the ultimate story (holocaust survival).

The fog leaves behind such beauty. I have to believe this is true metaphorically, too.

Today at work I was assigned the task of moving the remaining Christmas merchandise from the front of the store to the “clearance wall” in the back of the store. It’s now 90 percent off.

There was less than half a row of scattered, mostly broken items plus a lot of strange Christmas ornaments. This task took me the entire day. The whole day!

I had to hang shelves and hooks. Customers constantly needed me to help them find items or to cut fabric. I repeatedly pushed my cart back and forth to move the stuff.

I arranged everything and dusted and swept and finally finished when my shift ended. I was both proud and horrified by my final display. I did what I was told and arranged it as carefully and neatly as possible but it looks the the world’s saddest collection of misfit toys—elves without ears, ballerinas without legs, chipped mugs and cracked plates. All for 90% off!

Now I am very tired. I came home and made an easy dinner of ravioli and canned green beans.

Despite all that effort, I only walked 10,000 steps at work today.

And that’s how my day went.

I really don’t know how people balance work and the rest of their lives. I worked until 9:15 PM and thus, did not cook dinner. In fact, all I did when I got home was have a snack, take a bath and go to bed. (I did a little reading, too.)

Before work, I paid bills, washed a few dishes and ate lunch.

And that concludes my day’s achievements.

Now I must sleep so I can get back to work by 8:45 AM.

I guess I am unbalanced. Ha.

I drove my son to the airport today. It was a balmy 38 degrees.

While I was in “The Cities,” I stopped by IKEA, Trader Joe’s and a Goodwill. I probably won’t be back there for months.

By the time I got home, it was dark.

Tomorrow it’s back to work for me. It’s “truck day,” the day of the week the merchandise we ordered comes in and needs to be put away. It’s my favorite day because I like stocking my department with new items.

And that’s all the news that’s for to print.

Hey, some days are boring but here I am anyway.

Christmas is over in this house. I took down the Christmas tree yesterday and all the other decorations today. (Outside the house is a different story. I still have lights up. I should take them down tomorrow when it warms up to 35 degrees, but I will be driving my son to the airport instead.)

My office floor was the recipient of random stuff that doesn’t have a home yet, including too many books I picked up at thrift stores this weekend. It’s like the tide coming in and washing things shore. Every time my daughter comes, I have to clear out the office floor for an air mattress and the second she leaves, in comes the tide.

I have yet to get everything in here organized. It’s process. At least my books are shelved. That makes me so happy.

I accidentally read a 946 page book over the last few months. 1Q84, written by a Japanese author, is about two people who inhabit a parallel universe in Japan. That’s a lame summary but I started reading it because it was described as “dystopian” and at some point I downloaded it because is was on Kindle sale. I had no idea what I was embarking on when I began reading it. I’m not even sure I liked it but I stuck with it and finished it. Now I’m reading a book by Rainn Wilson (the actor who played Dwight Schrute on The Office.) It’s entertaining, plus he is almost my age and spent his school years in the Puget Sound, the same as me.

After I got Christmas tucked away in the garage, I started putting my regular decor back but that involved dusting and rearranging and when it got late, I gave up and stacked it randomly on a bookshelf. That will be a task for another day.

Then I set up my husband’s new iPhone. In addition to my riveting blog-writing, I am also my husband’s Tech Support. Is there no end to my talents and abilities?

No, but there is an end to this post.

Bye.

I always knew that the sun sets earlier in the winter in northern latitudes. The gloomy Pacific Northwest winter sun seemed to barely rise, inch around the horizon and with a sigh, sink back into the horizon. You’d leave your lights on all day because it was shadowy and dim. Don’t get me started on the fact that you might not see the blue of the sky for weeks on end back in the Seattle area. It makes for a dismal winter existence.

But what I didn’t fully understand was that the sun rises so much later at this latitude than in San Diego, where I spent nine years. (My current latitude is similar to Portland, Oregon’s latitude.)

When I’d describe going to school in the dark and coming home in the dark when I was a kid, I felt like I was exaggerating, but as it turns out, I really did go to school in the dark. The sun would rise at 8 AM but I’d have to be in my classroom seat by 7:17 AM (in high school). It wasn’t just dark because of the cloud cover; it was dark because the sun hadn’t risen yet.

*

I woke up late today, this the second day of four days off in a row. I went to another thrift store where I scored some more books and two vintage platters (“Temporama”) and then to TJ Maxx where I shopped the clearance racks. I washed my car and went to Costco for cheap gas and a few groceries.

But what caught my attention all day while I was out and about were the stunning bare trees which were coated with a sparkling, glistening coat of ice, thanks to the early morning fog. I wanted to be tromping around, photographing the trees but as of yet, I don’t know where to go for the perfect photo op, so I just took several shots around town with my trusty iPhone.

Why didn’t I know that bare trees would be so glorious in the winter?