During the night it poured rain. This morning the rain turned to sleet, snapping sharply against the darkened windows. Then it switched to snow, for more variety. Now it’s just flurries, but with the sun shining warmly on the whole soppy mess.

Like the weather, I’m off-kilter. Not sad or blue or irritable, but not settled and contented, either. I feel itchy in my skin. I want to write but it requires too much focus. I blame my lack of focus on the children and housework, but that’s not exactly fair. I make time for what’s important. I could have gotten up at five to write if I really wanted to.

This afternoon I was sitting at my desk when the phone rang. It was a girlfriend calling the Jennifer Knows Everything About Parenting Teenagers (Ha-Ha) Hotline. We talked about wily, overconfident boys and their astounding ability to foist responsibility on anyone but themselves, and I passed her a virtual needle and said, Burst his damn bubble (but not in those exact words), and then I said, “Hey, I gotta go for a minute—can I call you right back?” because the melting snow was sparkling and the snow was falling and I just had to take some pictures.

The deck furniture is scattered all over the porch. Every time I look out the window, I feel like I’m seeing an echo of my mind. Haphazard. Cluttered. Idle.

There won’t be a quotidian today. Supper will be soup and crackers, and it will be at bedtime instead of a decent hour because of my daughter’s choir rehearsal. I’ll probably knit when I should be taking notes for my next post, or maybe I’ll read a magazine instead of the book that I already started. I’ll let the fire go out and then shiver because it’s cold. I’ll stress about the busy weekend and wish for things I can’t have and make chocolate cookies even though a grapefruit is all the snack I need.

Is it possible to be traumatized by the weather?

This was the thought that crossed my mind the other day. I think the answer might be yes. I enjoy winter, but only up to a point. After that point (January 31, perhaps?) the bitter temps, the snow and ice, the mud, and the short days start to feel less like sweet love pats and more like harassment. I am worn down and battered. One more soggy mitten and I’ll scream.

Our neighbors’ sheep are starting to lamb. Lambs. Now there’s a cheerful thought. Lambs mean Easter and daffodils, yellow-green grass and seedlings, asparagus and chocolate peanut butter eggs, and bare feet and warm dirt.

Not just yet, I know, but soon.

‘Tis lambing season. We’re going to make it.

Starting a few months back, my camera’s shutter button began refusing to respond. It was annoying but so rare that I could get away with pretending it was a fluke. Until last Friday when it quit all together.

After a phone conversation with a camera guru, a call to Canon, a wild and crazy search on the internet, some email exchanges the aforementioned guru, and a couple brief calls to my husband who was blowing insulation into a house and not in the mood to talk cameras, I bought a new one.

Just.

Like.

That.

Of course, my old camera immediately commenced to working. Which confused me. But then it quit again, thus affirming my brash purchase and making me happy. And then I kinda forgot about the whole deal, only remembering that there was a camera coming my way whenever I picked up the shutter-buttonless camera. It did take pictures, occasionally. But most of them look like this…

…because I had just dealt it a vigorous smack.

And then yesterday, my new camera arrived. It’s pretty much like my old one, but better. (Plus, it only cost me 320 bucks, so yay.) Suddenly, I’m bordering on giddy.

I’m reading the manual page by page and learning all sorts of new things that are only new to me because I’m self-taught, clumsy, and slow. For example, I just figured out that by pressing the shutter button down halfway and focusing and keeping it down, I can reposition the focused-on object anywhere I want in the frame and then click the picture. I suppose I should find my blatant ineptitude dismayingly embarrassing and keep all hush-hush about it to protect my Image but I’m much too excited by my discovery to even care.

My reaction reminds me of my son when he learned to do subtraction by borrowing. The problem was 70 – 23, or some such number. He puzzled over the 0 – 3, writing down first 3 and then 0. When I could see that he was completely stymied, I said, “Look, it’s easy. We just steal from the 7, make it a six and put the one that we stole in front of the 0 so that now we have 10.”

My son’s laughter was immediate, loud, and continuous. Huge, incredulous, delighted guffaws. It was like I had just pulled a live rabbit out of my ear. Subtraction is the best magic trick ever.

As are basic photography skills.

My pictures with this new camera are much sharper. It’s tempting to contemplate what a really good camera might do. But only briefly. I value my mental health, state of contentment, and marriage more than a fancy clicker. (I think.)

Sunday night, our water went out. We had no idea why. We got up from our evening movie, washed the dishes, cleaned up the kitchen, and then no more water. I had to drain the pipes in order to get enough water to brush my teeth.

We managed to make it through the next day. We’d turn the well pump on for a half hour (because, somehow—why?—we could get enough water to for short bursts of time). It was just enough to flush the toilets, refresh the soapy bowl of hot water, and fill a jar with drinking water before the water would trickle down to nothing. Had the well run dry? Was the pump broken? How much would the repairs cost? How long would they take? Would we be without water for days? Weeks?

I sat through my daughter’s choir rehearsal, pondering my future life without water. We would bathe at my brother’s house. We would fill buckets from the neighbors’ house and heat water on the stove. There was plenty of snow outside—how much would we need to melt in order to get enough to wash the dishes?

And then my husband called. One of the pipes had frozen—not the pipe from well to house, but the pipe from outside pump to outside pump. My older daughter had been at home that afternoon and had forgotten to turn off the well after getting the water she needed for washing the dishes and scrubbing the floor (because she is my maid servant). When my husband got home from work, he could see the water burbling up through the ground in the driveway.

“Didn’t you notice how soggy the driveway was when you left?” he asked.

“Well, yes. My boots sunk way down in and I thought it was odd. But the snow was melting…”

For now, the fix is quick. My husband sealed off that pipe and now we have water coming into the house instead of the yard. Nothing is broken (besides that pipe that we don’t really need anyway) and there are no costs.

Which is good, because I just spent all our money on that camera…

P.S. To get the shutter button fixed, it’s a flat rate of 190 dollars. But how much does the part actually cost? Because what if the piece is only five bucks but they charge a high enough flat rate that most people just go and buy another camera thus making more money for Canon? Smart business move, right? Then again, maybe it really is a tricky-pricey fix. But…what if it’s not? Could we order the piece and fix it ourselves? (There’s actually no “ourselves” about it. My husband would do it.)

I have three dollars in the grocery envelope. I thought I did really good with not spending much money on groceries this month. I thought I’d have a lot leftover to put into the grocery savings envelope (for things like bushels of peaches and apples or a pizza-ordering splurge). But I guess I thought wrong. Last time I went to the store, I had only 13 dollars to spend. I got lactose milk for my husband, one gallon of milk for us, and a bag of rolled oats and now I have three dollars left.

Actually, it’s kinda fun not having money to spend. The simplicity is liberating. My choices are pared down, streamlined, straightforward. The end is in sight—happy last day of January, world!—so the scarcity has felt manageable. Plus, I have the basic perishables, like eggs, butter, and cheese. (Without these, I would feel panicked.)

I’m shopping my pantry and freezers, discovering treasures like a random bag of chicken wings. I thought it was a whole chicken (from our last butchering two years back?), but then I thawed it and realized it was wings. That night we feasted. And then the neighbors gifted us sausage and Pon Haus from their pig butchering, yay! And then they gave us two and a half gallons of raw milk, so now we’re flush with cream and yogurt, cue the Hallelujah chorus. (I’m making them sweet rolls in exchange… that is, once February comes and I can get to the store for some potatoes for the dough.)

Using up food makes me happy.

Look at me go! I’ll gloat to my husband. That meal took five pounds of potatoes and a container of chili I found in the freezer and the tail end of that block cheese, yes! Or, That monster crisp made a HUGE dent in the apple supply! Or, No more tortillas and beans—time to make bread! Or, Great! The strawberries are all gone. Moving on to the blueberries…

My enthusiasm miffs my husband.

“What’s so great about finishing stuff off? It just means we have to buy more.”

“But it’s better to use up what we already have than to buy more when we don’t have to. Do I really need to explain this to you?”

“But using up the strawberries is not good news. Stop being so happy about it.”

“But it is good news We grew it or bought it and then ate it—that’s the point. By the time summer’s here, we’ll be desperate for all the food we’ve run out of, so we’ll be all excited about planting a garden. There’s nothing better than an empty freezer to light the fire under our butts.”

So, in the spirit of shopping my shelves:

There was a sack of lemons languishing in the fridge. I had all the fresh cream from our neighbor’s cow, plus two pints of whipping cream from the store. The cream situation was reaching crisis levels (just kidding—too much cream is never a problem), so I made lemon creams.

I found the recipe on Julie’s blog. Boil cream and sugar, add lemon juice, and get a pudding? I was intrigued. So I did it and she was right—it is magic.

Lemon Creams
Adapted from Dinner With Julie.

These are called possets, officially. It’s a English dessert, but since I am not English, I can’t say the word “posset” without feeling like an imposter. So Lemon Creams it is.

Julie calls for a mix of lemon and lime juice which would be lovely, I’m sure. But I only had lemons, so lemons it is.

2 1/4 cups heavy whipping cream
3/4 cup sugar
5 tablespoons fresh lemon juice

Put the cream and sugar in a roomy kettle and bring to a boil over high heat, whisking every minute or so. The mixture will bubble rather vigorously, so once it’s come to a boil, stay close, stirring steadily and lifting the kettle off the heat should the cream threaten to tumble over the edge. Boil for 3 minutes.

Remove the kettle from the heat, whisk in the lemon juice, and divide the mixture between six ramekins. Cool to room temperature, cover with plastic, and chill in the fridge overnight. (Julie said you could eat them after a couple hours, so we did, but they were still soupy in the middle. They were much firmer after a night of chilly repose.)