Cats Don't Like to Dance

No one's perfect--not even cats.  We have snow again.  The sky is filled with small, spiteful frozen bits.  While I am sympathetic that their life tumbling through the troposphere and back again has been difficult, nonetheless my sympathies lie with the hard working ewes and the folks who tend them.  It is not as bad here as down south where buildings have collapsed from the snow with more than 700 pregnant ewes inside or the harrowing sights of farmers digging the sheep out of the snow drifts.  A hard working dog found her.

Smoor is how the folks here describe an awkward snow that will not let you alone--in your eyes, and your ears no matter which way you turn your head.   If you are someone whose career does not allow for snow days, then you work with smoors and lost lambs and count on your equally hard working dogs to be a smooring, too.

I have the luxury of staying inside and waxing lyrical about those at the lambing.  I am writing.  It may not seem like it.  I have a CD of music from far away in both senses filling the house with warm sound as if to melt the snow--or at least put two fingers up to the smoor.

The music is from Colombia by way of Java City--an oasis in my former workplace.  And so I am writing by dancing and remembering.  My cats look at me oddly but with the familiarity of long acquaintance.  If asked to dance along, they may oblige briefly out of courtesy, but soon they seek the watching shelter of some of their favourite places.  They, too, appreciate the luxury of watching the snow from the inside.

Looking for the Antidote for Collywobbles

Collywobbles is a word that in my visual dictionary lives next to hobble skirt. Maybe because wobble and hobble rhyme, but more likely because of the way the words conspire to make me feel.  Having collywobbles--vague anxieties or fretfulness--is like trying to walk in a hobble skirt.

I have been tripping over myself lately--forgetting things and spending whole days at home when I should be elsewhere and just not getting much done at all--not even figuring out the source of the collywobbles.

Fortunately my limited attention span means I get bored enough with the collywobbles to move on.  Near colly wobbles and hobble skirt is hobbleldy ho --part of a song sung with babies on knees.  Enough of a call to action for me--so put the kettle on, put on  a wooly vest, and find a rhythm in the splatter of rain against the window.

Hobbledy ho.