Something in the Air?

There must have been: something in the air, I mean. Dale had a rather bad day, as did one or two of his commenters and moi aussi (me too). I might contend that numerous little things conspired to put me in this gloomy mood, but the truth is that I was probably in that state anyway, and all of these little irritants (that I can't begin to enumerate) simply served to reinforce my dour disposition.

It didn't help, when, somewhat distractedly, I managed to jar the passenger mirror against the garage door as I was driving Harriet the Chariot into the tiny edifice that we call a garage. I exited my conveyance yelling my fool head off muttering numerous expletive deleteds to examine the damage and was somewhat mollified to note that the clever engineers had designed the mirror to give and not break when that happens — thank you Honda. I was able to easily snap the mirror back into place, which is rather splendid because I simply don't normally accomplish such mechanical tasks with anything resembling facility.

But wait! there's more.

I decided to invite the kids over for supper. I had been in the mood to cook my quite wonderful macaroni. It's a scrumptious dish that I have made many times; it's my standby really. But what an uphill battle that became. I would stare at this heretofore familiar recipe through dim, uncomprehending eyes. If I had been walking, I could liken the struggle to wading through a bog where I kept losing my boots in the muck which sucked at my legs with every step.

But wait ... !

There comes a point in the process where I remove the simmering milk (with flour etc) from the heat and add cheese and cottage cheese. Said cheese melts smoothly into the milk to make a most wondrous sauce. It always works ... but not yesterday. As I stirred the cheese in, I began to notice that it wasn't melting. That's right: it was curdling! I tried putting it back on the heat and prolonging the stirring. To no avail!

I have no idea what went wrong, except that there are days like that.

Perhaps it's just the end of January in Canada. I've enjoyed the winter, such as it is, so far, but, yesterday, I began to feel as though enough was enough. Unfortunately, we still have another month and a half to go — to say nothing of the several April storms which always eventuate.

I feel as though, I'd either like winter to be over or for it to get real. And since it won't be over anytime soon, I'd like it to snow and not rain afterward. I'd like to get to the country, reacquaint myself with my snowshoes, and get some good, old fashioned, dadblasted exercise in some dadblasted cold yet sunny weather. That's what I'd like.

So, what's that picture doing up top, you ask? You do ask, do you not? Well, I was making my way through some August photos last night (uh huh, I am quite behind with my photo album), and pictures from my garden looked so postively wonderful to me that I thought you might also appreciate a reminder. I don't know if it helped to drool over such pictures, but I do feel better in my spirit today.

I don't know what the heck was in the air yesterday ... and I'm not sure that I want to.