As much as I love fires in the fireplace, I think I’m ready for winter to be over. I don’t want to be in my office, with its cold blue walls, down in the cold basement.
Instead of standing on my anti-fatigue mat at my perfect height desk, or sitting in my perfectly adjusted desk chair, with all of my arm and shoulder and hip bends at exactly the right angles, I’ve been cross-legged on the couch, on the love seat, in the armchair by the window, where the room is warm and welcoming. I’ve been at the kitchen table. I took my laptop stand, portable keyboard, and portable trackpad into our son’s room, plugged in a lamp, and sat at his desk all last week, in the exact version of the chair I have down in my office, except that his desk is a different height and isn’t adjustable. But his room is cozy, and I’d rather be there than in my office.
At the end of last week, I had to lie down at lunch because I had a visual migraine. I’ve had these on occasion in the past, usually pain-free, mostly when I was going through menopause, but I hadn’t gotten one in a while. And this one came with pain. As did the one I got the next day, and the next, and the next. My husband rubbed my head for me one night to help relieve the pain, and as he worked his way up from my shoulders to my neck to my temples, I realized how much tension I had deep beneath my left shoulder blade (from reading or typing on the couch) and up the sides and back of my neck (from scrunching my shoulders at my son’s desk).
Reluctantly, I went back down to my office yesterday. I lit a candle and turned on the space heater, but that’s not enough to transform it to a snug space. The heat is stuffy and localized, and I’m over my office’s current vibe: it’s too electric and colorful. I want to tone it down. I’m going to have to repaint and redecorate to make it a place I want to be. Warmth and fresh air would be nice, too.
The older I get, the more I appreciate short stories. This weekend, I read “Bartleby, the Scrivener” for the first time. How did I miss out on this my whole life? In a neat little package of less than an hour of reading time, Herman Melville gifts us with a funny, rebellious, quietly absurd story that can be interpreted as many different ways as there are readers who read it. What a feat! I’m still thinking about Bartleby, and his flabbergasted boss, and his fellow scriveners Turkey and Nippers and Ginger Nut, and his unshakable, unmovable, “I would prefer not to.” Bartleby, the OG quiet quitter.
Over the past decade or so*, I’ve grown to crave a good short story. Novels are still my go-to — I want the immersiveness of a novel over a long period of reading time. But on the weekends, or sometimes in the evening, or on long walks at the beginning of the month, when the latest reading on the New Yorker Fiction podcast drops (like today!), I like to read a short story or two, similar to how people used to read the Sunday paper in the leisure time of the weekend.
After reading Bartleby, I started thinking about the short stories I’ve loved. Some I return to and read or listen to them again, like Elizabeth Taylor’s “The Letter Writers,” which is hilarious and sad and just as relevant in the time of texting and emailing as it was in the time it was published (1958), when people corresponded through paper letters sent in the mail. Some I remember scenes from that I will always remember for as long as I live, like the vampires in “Vampires in the Lemon Grove” sinking their teeth into lemons. Some I’ll remember the wonder they made me feel, or the horror, or the wow, this captures humanity in all our glory and terror.
Today is Sunday, and I have a new story next to me to read today. Weekends are the best.
*When I was about to publish this post, the “short-stories” tag autofilled when I started typing, and I thought, oh, I already have a tag for this? It looks like my conversion began in 2013.
So far, so good. The snow we thought would dump to our knees is only finger-deep. Sleet ticks against the window as I write. Nobody in the neighborhood has left their houses this morning, and the white outside is pristine. It stretches as far as I can see without tire tracks or footprints. Puffs of steam drift from rooftop ventpipes. Tiny homemade clouds.
The tree limbs are bare: no sodden snow sticks to them. No ice makes them sparkle. Sleet drops at a shallow angle: the wind is barely a breeze, nothing heavy whips in it. All of this is auspicious for us keeping power.
Even if we lose it later today, when the freezing rain sets in, I can sit by the window for light to read physical books. I’m currently making my way through Kafka’s complete stories. I have it in paperback so I can underline, and it’s going much better now that I’ve committed to pause and reflect after everything I read. I’d started these stories last year and other than The Metamorphosis, which really is a spectacular story, everything I read just left me like, huh? I had to text my son after each one: what the heck is going on here? Now that I stop and write, I’m getting a lot more out of the stories. They’re satisfying in that they make me think and question; nothing is tied up in a neat bow. Not a single thing.
In our storm prep, after charging our power banks, I charged my e-reader and my portable book light. So once the sun drops, I can still read a novel even if the power goes out. I downloaded two from the library. We’ve also started building up our bookshelves again, and I’ve got three on the shelf I’m eager to read.
The New Yorker did not arrive yesterday, alas. I had hoped to read it next to the window with my coffee on a snowy Sunday morning. It’s okay. I finished 33 Place Brugmann instead. At first I wasn’t sure about the book. I almost abandoned it, despite it seeming like something I’d really like: a WWII novel told by the residents of an apartment building in occupied Brussels. I had trouble keeping track of the characters at first. But given the leisure of the weekend, I stuck it out, and it paid off. It turned out to be a book about, among other things, the role of art and ideas in civilizations that last. Which I am into.
Now, I’ll read another Kafka story. Yesterday’s was “In the Penal Colony,” which is brutal, and eerily prescient. I would have thought it was written about Hitler and his regime, but it was not. The story predates WWII by 15 years. Today’s story is “The Village Schoolmaster.” There is no telling where this is going to go.
Daily writing prompt
What do you enjoy doing most in your leisure time?
Over the holidays, when I worked most days and my team encouraged me to take time off, I promised them and myself that I’d take a day off in January instead. Today is that day.
Today is also a day that an epic winter storm is bearing down on us, though you’d never know from the sunny sky. For my day off, I’d planned to swim at 7am instead of 5:30, and then to toodle around our tiny downtown. Get some coffee. Walk to the book store. Then go home and relax on the new love seat with a book, or maybe, if I’m lucky, thanks to our son who gave me a subscription for Christmas, with the latest issue of The New Yorker if it lands in our mailbox today. I hope I have it in hand when the weather arrives.
And I did all of those morning things. I just inserted a few other things as well. Like find all of our power banks and charge them. Dust off the camp stove, test if it still works, buy fuel. Stock up on cat food, bring in firewood, wash and dry clothes, grind coffee (I still need to do this one). Marvel at the line out the door at the hardware store for snow shovels, salt, and generators. Consider what’s sold out at the grocery store: water, tortilla chips, yogurt. Hope we have enough food and firewood if we lose power, and our whole region loses power, and we have to go several days with high temperatures in the teens and no heat or range or oven or hot water.
It’s strange knowing this storm is coming and then also just going about my regular day. It’s so pretty out! I added a couple of walking stops on my little morning jaunt from the coffee shop to the book store. Our CEO gave us homework this week to go to a museum. At first I thought, We don’t have a museum in town. How will I do this?
Then I remembered the performing arts center sometimes has exhibits, and there’s a historic house in town that’s been converted into a local history museum that sometimes has art.
After I drank my coffee with the paper — an actual newspaper! I pick them up sometimes now after reading Beth Macy’s Paper Girl — I bundled up and began my walk to the other side of town where the book store is. I stopped in the performing arts center, but it was between exhibits, so I just appreciated the architecture for a few minutes, and the airy space full of light.
Next I stopped at the Alexander Black House. I’ve passed this building at least a thousand times in the however many years we’ve lived here.
14. That’s how many years.
Anyway, this house is unusual for this town — the architecture is unlike anything else here — and at least half of those thousand times that I’ve passed it, I’ve thought, I wonder what it’s like in there? Well today I found out because I went in.
Alexander Black House
Inside, a local high school exhibited artwork — photographs, block prints, paintings — and I loved putting the pieces together of “They must have had an assignment about eyes” and seeing the different interpretations from these creative minds.
My favorite part of the museum was a room restored to look like it would have in the early 1900s when it was lived in. Look at the wallpaper! I just love it. Someone should bring wallpaper back.
Wallpaper, dado rail, and wainscoting
Now I’m back home with a blanket on my lap, a hot cup of orange tea, and the sun shining through the window. Our forecast has gone from a prediction of 2 feet of snow to now just 4-9 inches, but of snow, sleet, and ice. The latter will be heavy and treacherous. We don’t need to drive, thankfully, but the weight of ice is bad news for downed power lines.
I want to bring in just a little more firewood, then cover the woodpile with a tarp. I’m hoping all these preparations won’t been necessary. It’s really not fun to lose electricity in subarctic temperatures. My favorite part of every day in winter is climbing into our warm bed after turning on our heated mattress pad. It’s so luxurious to preheat the sheets! We can’t do that without power. We can pull camp mattresses and sleeping bags next to the fireplace though.
Daily writing prompt
Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.
My husband and I decided to pare back in 2026. Belongings can begin to feel burdensome after a while. They need to be maintained. They need to be dusted. They need to be moved out of the way when so many have accumulated that they pile up. The more you have, the more space you need to store them all in.
Last weekend, after both kids drove away to go back to college, we systematically went through the house to decide: pitch, keep, or store for a later decision? We started with our clothes. I made hard decisions to throw out clothes that were worn so hard they were threadbare. I made easy decisions to throw out clothes I’ve worn once or twice in the past year. We filled two or three garbage bags, some for donation, some for the dump.
Then we moved to linens. We had blankets and sheets, pillows and towels stored in multiple closets around the house. We dumped them all on the bedroom floor and sorted. We filled half a dozen more garbage bags.
We pulled all of our kitchen stuff out, which was also scattered around the house because our kitchen is small and we store infrequently used equipment downstairs. We went through the junk drawers and our hobby supplies. We filled bins for donation.
I wondered, on many occasions, why do we have this set up this way? The stick blender’s motor housing was in a drawer, while the cup and the blender arm were in a cupboard. The firewood is across the room from the fireplace instead of next to it.
We’ve cleared space, and our house feels like it’s breathing clean air. Like the corners have been scrubbed and sparkle. When I reach in the cupboard for a coffee cup, I can pull one out without without worrying about toppling a stack.
We moved art around, including a painting Santa brought me this year that Brian and the kids consulted him on. We moved a painting into the living room that had looked flat on its previous wall but has come to life in the changing light of its new place. We moved furniture around so that the dining room no longer encroaches on the living room.
I thought this paring back would take months, and I was not looking forward to it. But last weekend, we agreed that if we could get through the decluttering, then this weekend we could go shopping to refresh our living spaces. I am eager to replace the raggedy old towels we threw out. I have been dreaming of new furniture for our living room for a long time, of comfy places for more than one person to be able to lie down and read at the same time. When we agreed we could shop this weekend if we got through the decluttering last weekend, I was very motivated.
Now the work week is almost done. We’re going to a cello recital tonight, and then tomorrow, we shop! I cannot wait to put a love seat by the fireplace, move the bookshelves to open up the corners, and bring the firewood to its rightful place by the hearth.
One of my favorite things about winter, besides fires in the fireplace, is going into the sauna to dry off after my morning swim. Sometimes, that’s the reward that gets me out of bed at 5am, when it’s frigid out, to put on a swimsuit and go jump in a cold pool.
This morning, after my swim, I pulled the smooth wooden handle of the sauna door and, as it always does, warm air billowed out as I stepped in. The scent of the wood gets me every time. Every time. It’s warm and spicy as if it’s been baking in the sun. When I step in, everything falls away, and I just stand there and inhale, deeply, smelling the wood that grew in the earth and sun and rain, that scrubbed the air, that made its own food, that stood tall and reached for the sky while making shade and shelter for forest creatures, before I start moving again to towel off. The sauna is cozy, planked entirely with cedar boards — under my feet, above my head, walls, benches — like I’m in a toasty cabin while winter rages outside.
As I breathed the spiced air, as I felt the warmth seep into my skin, as I steeped in the visual pleasure of the wood boards and the cozy warm light, I remembered that wanted to set an intention this year to pay attention to my senses. I want to deepen my experience of being alive.
Butterfly Mind 