Day 360

Convergence.

A blizzard expected later in the day and only finishing up tomorrow evening, so she runs a long way, encountering the same difficulties with the snow, which gets into the backs of her sky-blue shoes at Refrigerator Corner, where the snow is deeper.  However, her feet are so warm that they don't notice.

Pine Siskins and Dark-eyed Juncos flit from their hiding places in the grasses again.  Under the little grass canopies, in the kingdom of the mice, they obviously feel safe from the red-tailed hawk she sees floating pewter in the snowy sky, but her stomping feet are obviously a greater threat, making them feel the need for the safety of the high branches.

During the 50 or so minutes she is running, it snows, then stops, the sky lightens, then darkens again, and small flakes are floating about again as she makes her way home. 

She runs 5.80 km, thinking, as she runs up Heartbreak Hill, how it has transformed over the year into Easy-as-Pie Slight Slope. 

Jogging past the beehives she is in a running reverie, when suddenly an animal charges silently towards her and as her eyes first perceive, her immediate reaction is a long scream, and then, in the next instant, as she recognises the creature as the neighbour's awful dog, she transforms into a screaming banshee and utilises several choice words her mother would have been shocked to hear issuing from her mouth, whereupon he leaps sideways in shock and begins barking at her in his irritating (to say the very least) way.  If she had a BB gun she would happily have shot him.

Her time is not terribly good, 8.37 minutes per km, but she attributes that to the snow. 

And now it is snowing like crazy, horizontally, as she dresses up so that just her eyes are showing, to brave the storm and take the dog out for her last pee.  They both run about bravely for a bit, caught up in the storm's mad rush, Molly lolloping into a snowdrift at one point, completely swallowed! 

And her boys have chosen to join their friends at another boy's house where they will all get snowed in together, and she had been looking forward to being isolated in the blizzard, the four of them, the little family, watching movies or reading in front of the woodstove beaming out its lovely heat, eating their meals together, playing board games if the power goes out.  Oh well, now it is just the two of them, a taste of things to come next winter when the boys will be off at college.  And it's fine, they are Darby and Joan, after all.

Merry Christmas Apple Pie.

Self-portrait as monolith with Molly