The best time to go for walks is just at dusk right after people have turned on their lights but before they have remembered to close the curtains. My mother taught me this. When we go on walks, we make a habit of casually glancing in the windows of any houses we may pass. We don’t stop and stare (if we did that, then we’d be just like that guy Greg who my dad found lurking around outside our West Virginia cabin back when I was a teenager—when my dad confronted him, Greg said he was out shootin’ groundhogs … uh-huh, and in the dark, too).

This genteel window peeking reminds me of two of my favorite literary heroes: Sara Crewe and Anne Shirley. In her loneliest time, Sara drew strength from looking in the windows at the rollicking family that lived across the road from Miss Minchin’s school—the children’s antics gave her some much-needed scope for the imagination (and that’s how Anne comes in).

We live out in the country and not many people walk by and peer in our windows (but some do, and I don’t mind one bit—well, except for some certain neighbors who are no longer neighbors who made a practice of leaning over their porch railing and staring fixedly into our living room—the first day we moved in I got so mad that I went around taping up newsprint over the roadside windows.) Drivers don’t even get a good gander at us because our house sits smack-dab on the road and there’s a curve up a head. People go flying by, their eyes fixed on the road, which is good because if they didn’t watch where they were going, they might end up in our living room, which would be taking gandering to new heights.

So for all of you who like to peer into windows at dusk, I’m going to do a little word-framing job and craft a few little windows for you to peer into. Don’t worry, you won’t see anything racy; we draw the curtains before we undress…usually. (For the literal-minded among us, the “windows” are purely figurative—they don’t all describe things that can actually be seen.)

Window #1: Yo-Yo and Miss Beccaboo just finished listening to Redwall on tape. They talked about the characters constantly, and Miss Beccaboo walked around with her tape player, plugging it in and turning it on every chance she got.

Here she is, lolling about on the hearth, her body with us but her mind far, far away in an exotic land. (I’ve never read the book myself, but I might need to now.)

Window #2: We got our Christmas tree a couple weeks ago. It’s the biggest one we’ve ever had.

I don’t really enjoy decorating the tree (one of those things that’s supposed to be so wonderful but is more a botheration and a headache then anything else), but once it’s up I kind of fall in love with it.

We placed it right in front of the four bay windows (the ones that gawking drivers would be most likely to smash through), and at night the lights reflect in the glass, doubling and tripling and quadrupling the sparkle charm.

Window #3: Yo-Yo pointed out that the combined ages of the boys and the combined ages of the girls both equal 13. That’s the same as having two teenagers in the house, and thus the reason home life has been a little rough.

I’m joking, really, about the teenager angst—I can joke all I want now, right? Since I’m not there yet.

But actually, I’m looking forward to the five months in 2019 when my children will be 13, 15, 17, and 19. We’ll have to plan some big event—a trip to Nicaragua, perhaps?—to mark the occasion.

Window #4: When Sunday church services were canceled due to the storm, the kids begged to watch a Ray Stevens video in place of church. Their question is not in any way indicative of our church; I just want to be clear about this. (And we said no, and made donuts instead.)

Window #5: It’s an abomination, but Mr. Handsome, a first-rate carpenter, has never had a shop. That, thanks to a generous, gracious, and unbelievably kind friend of ours who is giving us an interest-free loan, is about to change.

Mr. Handsome has already started building the new barn…inside the old one. It raises the concept of nesting dolls to a whole new level.

He’s poured the footers and set the posts and is ready to lay the floor. Once the new barn is far enough along, he’ll tear down the old, outer shell of a barn.

Window #6: A friend who has a big old snowplow thingamabob plowed out our driveway after the big snow.

He thoughtfully (or maybe unintentionally, but I’m giving him the benefit of the doubt) pushed a bunch of the snow into one huge pile.

The kids had a heyday.

Window #7: For several days this past month, I became obsessed with getting a photograph of myself. Because Mr. Handsome rarely picks up the camera there are almost no pictures of Yours Truly, and sometimes I get to wondering about what I look like (in a photograph—we do have mirrors). It’s hard to take a self-portrait. If I was a contortionist, it might be easier, but I’m not. I gave it my best shot (sorry!) though. (Using a mirror—oh, the ironies!)

And then when I got sick of that, I handed the camera to Yo-Yo.

And then I decided I didn’t really care about a self-portrait after all. My life immediately got simpler.

About One Year Ago: A recap of Christmas 2008, as well as some yummy photos of donuts.

The snow has been coming down for almost twenty-four hours and we still have power. I’m expecting it to go out any minute—our power goes off at the drop of the hat, it seems, and I can’t quite believe that it will stay on during the storm of the century. I’m hoping against hope that it stays on.

In case you can’t tell, I get really rattled when the power goes off. We are so enmeshed in the grid that I have no idea how to cope once we get booted off.

Mr. Handsome gets totally irritated at my royally worried uptightness about having power. “When we lived in Nicaragua, the power went off all the time!” he explodes. “Yes,” I say, equally exasperated, “but we were prepared for it then. There’s no back-up system here.” (I can’t believe I have to spell out this elementary stuff to him.)

Here’s what I lose when the power goes off: the stove (no coffee, baked creations, hot meals), water (dirty toilet, dirty dishes, dirty house, dirty hands, hair, faces, feet, etc), the vacuum, lights (pretty Christmas twinkly atmospheric lights, cozy bedside lamps), the ceiling fan (which circulates the heat from the wood stove throughout the house), the ability to open the refrigerator (there goes milk, butter, eggs, and cheese), my hair straightener (not like I’m going anywhere, but still), the computer, the internet, the phone, ability to recharge the camera or grind coffee beans (which I can’t use anyway because I can’t make coffee), the washing machine, the microwave, the mixer, the yogurt maker, the radio, and so on. My hands feel so tied by all I can’t do that I have to think twice—can I complete this task without electricity?—before I do simple stuff like put the laundry away.

To say it more plainly, I lose the ability to do the things I love—cook, write, and talk on the phone—plus the ability to take care of my family with my normal high-efficiency standards—clean house and well-fed kids—plus the ability to create ambiance—lights, even-keel warmth, good smells—plus the ability to do fun stuff like watch a movie or make popcorn.

It all conspires against me and I get very, very, very, veryveryveryveryveryvery grumpy.

Don’t even try to give me a lecture about counting my blessings and that it’s not so bad because I know you’re right and I really don’t care. It’s my party (i.e. power addiction) and I’ll cry if I want to (cry if I want to, cry if I want to…you’d cry too if it happened to you. Ooo-oo-oo-oo.)

That’s enough of my little sob story, especially considering that nothing has even happened so I have no reason to be sobbing just yet. It’s actually been quite idyllic: candles, cookies, Christmas music, The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, hot chocolate laced with Baileys at 9:30 in the morning, a stuffed turkey in the oven, gooey lemon bars, a blazing fire in the wood stove, scorched cashew brittle, the works.

The snow started at four o’clock Friday afternoon, exactly when accuweather predicted it would. Mr. Handsome came home with two brand-spanking-new, bright red, 32-gallon trash buckets that he carried down to the basement and then filled with water. He strung some bailing twine between the stair railings and a ceiling hook in anticipation of lots of sopping wet snow clothes. He brought in firewood and turned the van around so it faced the road. I vacuumed the floors, wiped down the stairs, and cooked a pot of red beans. After supper the kids got baths and hair washes and by seven o’clock they were in their pajamas and were doing their evening ritual of bouncing off the walls. (I hate that evening ritual, but it appears they were born with it hardwired into them.)

I assessed the situation and then did something totally uncharacteristic: I told them to put on their snow clothes, and—this is where I shocked everyone, myself included—I got dressed to go outside too. My plan was to walk the half mile to my brother’s house where my parents and other brother were visiting and pummel their door with snowballs. The kids were game. We went, attacked, sang “Happy Birthday” (to my mother) and “We Wish You A Merry Christmas,” and returned home. Of course it didn’t go as smoothly as I make it sound (bitter cold, sleeting snow, tired and grumpy kids), but it was about as close to perfect (familial togetherness in a silent snowy country wonderland) as we get around here.

This morning we were all up bright and early (make that “dark and early”), oohing and aahing at the mountains of snow that had magically transformed our world overnight. I told the Yo-Yo and Miss Beccaboo that the world was theirs to explore, including the roads. They were overjoyed. (I had to backtrack a bit when I saw they were preparing to run down the road by all the neighbors’ houses and it wasn’t even 7 o’clock yet.)

Now Mr. Handsome was another sort of problem all together. He had it in his head that he was going to butcher chickens today, no matter what, and, strangely enough, eighteen inches of snow were not a deterrent. But I am more powerful than any snow storm because I told him, in no uncertain terms, that he was mad to think he could butcher in a snowstorm and that furthermore, I couldn’t—and wouldn’t—support his wacko behavior. That did the trick; he stopped talking chickens and went out to work in his barn.

We had planned to celebrate my mother’s birthday with dinner at my brother’s house. I was in charge of the turkey, stuffing, gravy, and cookies.

That means that we had to get ourselves and the kids bundled up for the journey, and then carry the turkey, stuffing, gravy, and cookies the snowy (two feet of it, mind you!) half mile to my brother’s house. It was a logistical challenge, but nothing a man in coveralls with a tool belt ‘round the waist couldn’t fix. (Lest you become confused, in the following photo he doesn’t have the tool belt on just yet.)

We had just finished reading The Best Christmas Pageant Ever and the whole way there the phrase “bearing ham” kept running through my mind, though it was turkey we were bearing, not ham.

The Baby Nickel had trouble keeping up. See him back there by the fence posts?

So my Tiny-Little Brother got him to sit on the shovel scooper thing and gave him a zippy ride down the hill.

The dinner was delicious, the house was cozy, my mother tooted her horn…

…and then back into our snow clothes we stuffed our turkey-and-cookie-stuffed selves and out into the starry night. The storm was over.

And the power never flickered, not even once.

About One Year Ago: I was cramming to get ready for company, so I wasn’t writing anything. But here is a list of some of my favorite Christmas delicacies (as though you don’t have enough rich foods to make already)—Nana’s Anise Biscotti, Orange-Cranberry Biscotti, Butter Cookies, Cranberry-White Chocolate Cookies, Gingerbread Men, Raisin-Filled Cookies, Lemon Squares, Cashew Brittle, Lemon Cheesecake Tassies, Chocolate Pots de Creme, Caramel Popcorn, Donuts, Ginger Cream Scones, and White Chocolate and Dried Cherry Scones. There, that should keep you busy.