I just ate an entire bag of chocolate covered pretzels. No regrets.

There is no clock in my bedroom. In fact, I never even look at the time before I go to bed. I retire for the day when I become tired enough to go to sleep. I wake up after whatever amount of sleep I need in order to awaken naturally. Let me take that back. I pretty much wake up when my feline daughter, Marley, joins the dog and I in bed and fidgets so much that I can no longer fall asleep. It’s usually about 6 am by then.

The connection between the pretzels and the lack of a clock in my bedroom is by now rather obscure. Ha yes. I was going to segway from talking about how I ended the day (pretzels in hand) to how I started it.

The day began to the sound of a chainsaw. It has been raining freezing rain all weekend and fallen limbs a few houses away required management by the electric company crew. There is a crust of ice so pure on everything that it looks as though the entire landscape has been dipped in liquid pearls. Silvio took these fantastic photos earlier today.

I spent the weekend helping out at Brown & Jenkins. I normally handle the website maintenance and social media activity for this Cambridge, VT Coffee Roaster, but an employee who was on duty this weekend had an injured arm so I helped out with filling orders and moving heavy coffee bins from shelves to the packaging table. I also went in early to brew and set up the to-go coffees, since this would have been tricky for her to accomplish with only one arm.

It was a good weekend. We had a nice production line going between the two of us and it felt good to be of service to someone else. Funny how the simplest things can give us a sense of purpose, or usefulness.

The place was very busy, in spite of the icy conditions. This morning, many people did not have power. I lost power also, just moments after getting up, but drove over to the coffee shop anyway since I knew these outages can be quite localized. We debated whether we’d stay open, but after a while people began showing up at the door for a warm cup of coffee and a change of scenery from their cold homes.

And a funny thing happened. Often, we complain about the weather, even when it is only a bit windy or colder than expected. This weekend, however, no one complained. At least not at the coffee shop.

Is it possible for the setting to influence the tone of the conversation? Do people complain about the weather more naturally at the laundromat, but less so at a coffee shop? There was even a man who came in saying that a tree was likely going to fall on his house today, there was no avoiding it, but for now he wanted a good coffee and “Ho well. We’ll deal with it if it happens,” he announced calmly, with a smile. He was utterly serene. We create so much drama. It was nice to witness acceptance.

Three more pouches sit on my table, waiting to be sewn and assembled. That will be it for this year. I’ll sew until I feel tired.

Slàinte!