Wow, the running conditions couldn't have been more different this year from last year--last year's post-run entry reveals that it was 37 degrees F, and rainy. This morning we awoke to a world glittering with hoarfrost-the side of the house was decorated with sparkles--and temperatures below 0 F. By the time I reached the race start point, it had warmed up to a balmy 16 F.

Here's a shot of everyone waiting to get started:



I knew I'd run much more slowly this year than last year. I've done way less running this year, first because of the jail job and then, IDK, dispiritedness maybe. And 2018 was slower than 2017, which was the year I trained for a 10 k. But you know, 2015 was only a few seconds slower than 2017, and 2015 I didn't train for a 10 k. I felt **comfortable** running this year--in spite of the cold (I was well bundled), and that's worth something.

Much more importantly, thanks to you all, I was able to raise $665.00, and the event overall raised $632,729, which will keep Safe Passage of Northampton running for another year. Thank you!

(Also thanks to you, I got a really race number--56. I like this number very much--and it's the age I turned late this year [ETA: in October, to clarify], so it meant I was running with my age on my chest.)

Later in the day I went for a walk with a friend who lives in Northampton. There was still some hoarfrost clinging to branches of trees by the river:



For my own record, some specific times--DON'T LAUGH

2019: 35:05
2018: 32:27
2017: 31:23
2016: (didn't run)
2015: 31:49

It is very satisfying to walk out into the deep cold well enough wrapped up to not be bothered by the chill.

I paid a visit to a frozen creek. I didn't pick the ice flowers.

( here abide frozen things )

Last year I resolved to write creatively at least two days a week, to work on Spanish every day (or to make up days I missed), and to record the things I notice each day. I failed at the first and third of those, but I did the second and am pleased to know significantly more this year than I did this time last year.

Two of my goals this year are related:

(1) Continue to work on Spanish in the same manner, but added to that: find a person or people to practice conversation with. The duolingo bots have their limits. I'm aiming for in-the-flesh rather than online, although with skyping, etc., I know online can be very good ... I should probably set a date by which I'll achieve this. How about the end of January...

(2) Write a bit every day. Maybe phrasing it that way will make it more achievable than saying "Write at least two days a week."

(3) This is the different goal: Read a bit every day (not counting social media). I can double-dip with this a little as I have a Spanish-language book to be working on.

I'll be looking at my friends' entries to see if they've got goals/resolutions, but if you haven't shared in an entry and want to share in comments, I'm all ears!

I had to walk back to the house along the highway this morning, after dropping the car (the remaining car...) off for scheduled maintenance.

It was so cold, penetratingly cold, killingly cold, and windy--but it was morning, and the sun was out.



This afternoon, walking that same route back to the mechanic's, it was a race between me and darkness. The clouds were rosy when I set out, and there was incandescent golden-orange brilliance behind the supermarket. But the light was dying and the wind was fierce, and I felt *very fragile* walking against the stream of homeward-bound cars. Almost no one walks that bit of road. Where there was briefly a sidewalk, I passed a woman walking her dog. Otherwise, I had my footprints from the morning for company. Somehow, my journey felt supernatural. When I was walking, step after step, through the crusty snow, pushing aside briars and the skeletons of mugwort or goldenrod on the safe side of a crash barrier, I felt that I wasn't in the same world as the people driving in cars. I was in some huge, howling, dark world, a world of coldness that would be happy to extinguish every living thing. When I made it to the mechanic's and opened the door into that warmth, I felt staggeringly relieved.

And then I drove home. And I myself was in that nice, ordinary world that I'd been on the outside of, walking on the roadside. But I could remember it.

I saw the blue jays' exhaled breath, rising from their nostrils, as they carried off the peanuts I put out for them. Their internal furnaces are hotter than humans', around 105F (40.5C)--more than 120 degrees hotter (in Fahrenheit) than the outside temperature, so it's no wonder it was visible in curling plumes in the cold air. Little dragons.

I blew some soap bubbles and watched them freeze. This one got caught on the snow mound, and its deflated back rose and fell and rose and fell in slight breeze, as if it, too, were breathing. A very thin-skinned, tiny being.



Now maybe you're wondering if I'll ever talk about something other than the weather. I do have other thoughts!

Press A if you would like my thoughts on Sleepy Hollow--better yet, tell me yours.
Press B if you would like some hazy realizations about writing--or share yours!
( and here is one of them, the one I've been mulling over most recently )

Press C if you would like a status update on my own writing--or tell me how yours is going (or your other pleasurable creative activity, if not writing).
( it's thoughts like the following that make me wonder if this project is doomed, or just different )

Here, I'll show you:



This morning it was cold, so I blew bubbles. Here's a bubble in a crowd of snowflakes



And here are more snowflakes



Time to do some things. Stay well, all.

Picture the grad student: she is a teaching assistant. She works late into the night. If you went into the teaching assistants' room, you might find her curled up and assume she'd fallen asleep over her grading, or over her reading, or in contemplation of her laptop. But then she'd raise her head in some confusion and embarrassment, because, you see, she'd been cradling the teakettle, which is so nice and warm. A stainless-steel hot-water bottle.

It's cold in the TAs' room: she's got her jacket on, and a scarf, and the old boots she just bought replacements for, but somehow has not yet stopped wearing--the boots with the big split on top that lets the snow come in direct contact with her sock (and then it's quick work to reach her foot).

"If anyone finds out I do this," she'll say, "they might not want to make tea from it anymore!" As if to embrace a teakettle is illicit--transgressive--deeply wrong. Please, reassure her--but not too effusively, or she will become suspicious.

I came across a boy leaning over the edge of a snowy chasm, his chin in the snow and a magnifying glass in his hand, looking at the leaves and feather flowers of hoarfrost and snow...



"They're a little like ferns or the notched needles of certain cypresses," he said, his speech clipped, as if he were very cold--and he ought to have been very cold, lying there in the snow. "They're like them, but much more beautiful. I could look at them forever."

I got down on my knees to look, but he pushed me away. "You're too warm!" he said. "You'll melt them with your breath, if you don't knock them with those clumsy mittens."

I saw his hands were blue and his fingertips practically black, and his thin, sharp nose and the lobes of his ears, too.

"It's not good for you to be so cold," I said.

"It's perfect for me to be so cold," he said. "Perfect. . ." And he moved his magnifying glass over to another fringe of hoarfrost, once again lost in contemplation.