odds and ends

It snowed all day Friday- big fluffy flakes, and tiny threads of sleet, and most of it melted in the sun we got on Saturday. Sunday it snowed again, for a while, but didn't stick to the pavement. Today when I woke up it was snowing- sprinkling really, at first. It kept coming down, thicker and thicker, until I almost couldn't see our backyard fence through all the flakes. Now it's sunny again, and people's roofs are beginning to drip. In the late morning, after the kids were off to school and my neighbors had driven to work, the snow had filled in all the footprints. I loved the silence of it.

Today I didn't finish a book. I tried to finish the last 2 books I borrowed from the library, since we always go to the library on Tuesday, and I like to return everything at once. Otherwise I forget, and get charged outrageous late fees. Anyway, my point was that, for the second time in my memory, I chose *not* to finish a book. I've returned books without reading them before; I get home and they don't appeal to me like they did at the library. But reading this collection of short stories, I could feel depression setting in. And the author was quite talented, and it made me mad that because of her skill, I was drawn into this hopelessness that spreads through her stories. Ick. I finished almost half of them, and it felt like she [the author] didn't believe in God, or in goodness; not that her stories were depraved or perverted, but *nothing changed* in them. People didn't save things, or become stronger or better, and it was like a weird universe where nothing has meaning at all. The people in her stories didn't learn *anything.* How utterly bleak, to be so completely self-centered that NOTHING can break through! I feel like I just swam through oil- not the light olive oil I cook with, but the nasty sludge we drain from the oilpan of the car. So I'm off to read something that will clean off that sticky, slippery, gritty feeling.