Don was up at six without his alarm even going off as it should have, and Barney was tired because he couldn’t get to sleep last night and didn’t want to go to school anyway. But my alarm went at six. I didn’t bolt up as I ought if I don’t want to drift off back to sleep, but laid there listening to the CBC radio news for 15 minutes.

The stove needed its morning stoke, and when that was done I came up here and started the coffee, then got the email in and started frying Don’s eggs and toasting his bread for breakfast.

Loverboy slept till about 7:30. He’s been unwell for the past week or so, with some recurring respiratory ailment. He felt terrible yesterday and laid about moaning and groaning pathetically for the best part of it, but still managed to crack open and drink a cold brew. When I saw that, any sympathy I felt or urge to look after him disappeared. Sick people don’t drink beer, and if they do, they deserve to feel like crap.

I managed to get one sinkful of dishes washed, dried and put away while the kids were washing up, and at 8 o’clock threw on ski pants, boots, gloves, and a red plaid lumberjacket and went outside while the boys prepared to catch the bus. Barney was by the shed, feeding the cats -- only seven of them this morning -- and Don was dragging his walker (he's got cerebral palsy and this is safer on icy surfaces) down the driveway when I plugged in the extension cord and lit up the Christmas lights strung along the trees.

We wanted to create a festive air for when they returned back home after their holiday. Don recently told me he was afraid while waiting in the dark for the schoolbus in the morning, so these lights will stay -- probably year round, because L’s five-year-old nephew is afraid to walk back over to his house after dark, too, and Barney as well gets spooked by the lack of light between the two houses at night.

Surely I made a dozen trips between the porch and the van, carrying cardboard boxes, plastic milk jugs, tin cans, refundable empties, paper and such for taking to the recycling depot later today. Then I made another dozen trips (alright, I’m exaggerating; but it felt like a million) back and forth between the woodpile and the house, filling the wood rack downstairs half full.

This is an old watertower in a town we stopped in on our way to the city on Friday. It is no longer in use and the town’s residents have fought long and hard to keep it as a landmark.