My Cabinet of Distractions

46/365

A heavy, swelled- but also compressed-feeling head and upper respiratory system have kept me in bed all day.  I'm very good at telling my advisees when they need to slow down--when their bodies will intervene to tell them that they're attempting too much--but I'm not so good at living it out myself.  ONe thing I am good at, though, is stopping myself short the moment I sense illness coming on, and somehow I suspect that stopping and dropping have, over the years, helped to keep me from getting even more sick, when sickness arrives.  I'm hoping that another nearly ten-hours' night sleep will kick this one; waking up after nearly ten hours and still feeling knocked down was one of my signs this morning that all was not right.

46/365

The signs are all around us here, despite the snow that has covered the ground for nearly a month.  Under that snow, the snowdrops and tiny yellow lawn flowers whose names I always forget must be getting ready to shoot.  The branches are lengthening out, reddening and greening and gathering into bud.  Suddenly the silhouettes of tree branches are fuzzy at their tips.

45/365

It can be made to hold peanut butter.  He loves it in an almost embarrassing way.  (I should make clear that that's "a way that almost embarrasses me," not at all "a way that embarrasses him.")

Eventually, he gets tired of my photographing him.

44/365

43/365

I caught this image several days ago and am just now getting it out in front of you.  Days when there's sun by and large have a better baseline, and a slightly wider range of pleasant surprises for one's walk home.