I am getting older and it is taking longer to rebound. My coccyx is sore. Some movements and sometimes the way I sit intensifies it. I've still been keeping up with my chores; hauling in the wood for my wood burner, hauling out the ashes, shoveling snow. It just takes longer. I like to read and write. These activities, I hope, will allow me to heal more rapidly. I started to write this last night and finished this morning.

I hear waves in their steady rush
As they roll against the shore.
Evening settles in a hush.
Winter's night descends crisp and pure.
The shining stars fill the dark sky'
Sparkling with a bright twinkling light.
Geese in their "V" formation fly,
Honking above in the inked sky.
Snow starts to fall with swishing sound.
It drops faster and things once bare
Are now standing and white snow crowned.
I write these thoughts so I can share.
Everything I feel, touch. or hear.
No one shares this beauty but me.
I am alone with no one near
Storing them in my memory.

It may be cabin fever, but I am feeling weary this morning. I'm not actually tired, but perhaps only tired of the snow. It falls and I shovel and I fall too. I was thinking of how comical I must have looked to someone watching me fall.
When I fell, I didn't have time to think and react to keep myself from harm, but did try my best to save my daughter's chocolate cake. I tried to recreate in rhyme that scenario. I hope you enjoy it more than I did the fall.

Did you ever fall and feel like a fool,
Whether at home, at work, or at school?
My walk was covered with fluffy snow.
I was treading so careful and slow
When one foot slipped out from under me.
That I'd be hurt wasn't a worry,
It happened so fast, for goodness sake.
I was holding a chocolate cake.
I fell on my fanny, that's for sure,
Into that snow, new-fallen and pure.
I jammed my arm and rolled to my side,
"Must save the cake!" I silently cried.
In slow motion, it slipped from my hand.
It slid along as if I had planned.
I am thinking , "It's going to tumble
Leaving only a chocolate crumble!"
It's now beyond my control to save,
When like a surf board riding a wave,
The plate scooted along in one piece.
It stayed upright, pretty as you please.
All that's left of my jarring event
Are aches and pains of a bruised old gent.

I have been thinking (I know that is a scary thought) about this winter's wild temperature changes. It has been unusual and frustrating at times. It seems different than other winters than I can recall.
It has NOT been enough to make me swallow the Kool Aid of Al Gore and other alarmists about climate change. I am not gullible enough to think that puny men can change the climate. That is in God's hands alone. I think this "carbon tax and carbon credits" is just another way for the many governments of the world to take the taxpayers' money and to have more control over our lives.
Going green has some admirable qualities, but more and more, green energy is failing and more and more "fossil fuels" are being discovered and generated.
It seems the government of the United States is trying to strangle its people by limiting the mining, drilling, and even by halting new nuclear capabilities to produce energy and starve us economically with higher prices, more taxes, and inferior quality of health care.
Enough of my soapbox stance.

This winter's weather has been like a roller coaster ride,
Coldness interspersed with warmth; the variables are wide.
The snow blows in, the sun comes out and melts the snow away,
Yet it seems the snow comes fiercely back the very next day.

Or is it like a carousel; its cycles turn and turn.
Brief intervals of sun appear, but for the Spring I yearn.
I would trade the ups and downs of the sunshine and the freeze
For the extended periods of rain, sunlight, and breeze.

Yesterday my bumbling ways continued. I was helping my daughter by carrying a cake that she had baked out to her car. She had made it to serve to her Sunday school class. I had done a sweep of the walk and the driveway earlier, but the snow had continued to fall . There was a light skiff of snow covering the walk.
I came to an area of the path that sloped downward slightly and.... my feet are not as sure footed as a mountain goat and my one foot slipped.
The first part of the fall moved in rapidity. One foot and leg kicked up high enough to impress a New York Rockette. I felt myself falling and my buttocks were the first to hit the snow covered grass beside the stone walkway. The fall jammed my elbow and scraped it.
Now my fall goes into slow motion as the reality sets in. "The cake!" In my mind's eye, I can see this chocolate cake tumbling, crumbled and dark mingling with the white snow.
I do my best to hold onto the cake plate and the aluminum dome that covered it. I rolled over toward the cake hand side trying maintain control of my daughter's precious burden. I watch horrified, as it slips from my fingers.
My hand is already in the snow and the plate becomes a toboggan. It slides across the snow. The one edge begins to form a wake of snow. It slows the cake and partially buries the aluminum cover. I am thinking, "The cake is going to slide off the plate!" or "The cake will overturn!" I think the fact that saved the cake was my hand was in the snow and it slid out supported by the snow and didn't actually fall.
Neither happened. I retrieved the cake and placed it in my daughter's vehicle.
Brushing the snow off of myself, I headed back into the house to get warm. I didn't go to church. I stayed at home nursing my bruised ego and my bruised fanny.
The fall scraped and jammed my elbow, bruised my tail bone, jammed my shoulder, and jarred my arthritic neck. I am sore today and my tailbone reminds me to wear ribbed boots when I go outside even for a few seconds.
Now I can't go to the hospital for at least a year. One of the questions they will ask, "Have you fallen in the past year?" If I answer "Yes." they will put me on a fall watch. I would have to wear those red slippers and an extra wrist band that will make me a marked man. I don't want to lie, but I may be forced to do so should I be admitted.
No rhymes today, only the story of "The Fall of Kind Man."

I've been thinking on the more simple pleasures in life. The facts that family, home, and friends mean so much and yet I often take it all for granted, just like God in my life. That thinking put me onto the tracks that pulled my mind to the "Plain Folk," the Amish.

The Amish are folk who call themselves plain.
Hard working and the proud things they disdain..
Black buggies drawn by chestnut horse.
Reins tightly held to steer a true course.
Men wear yellow straw and black felt hats,
Girls in their bonnets, hair in long plaits.
Breakfast comes early, the chores need done.
Out to work before the rising sun.
They use hands and pails to milk their cows,
Working the fields with their horse drawn plows.
They gather their crops to fill the barns
While women make quilts and knit with yarns.
Horse drawn wagon piled high with fresh hay.
Out in the yard children laugh and play.
Men folk gather when dinner bell rings.
Sip cold lemonade on the backyard swings.
From the smokehouse comes hams sliced thick.
Bread from the oven, the grace's said quick.
Vegetables from the cold cellar's store;
Jams, jellies, and relishes galore.
Egg noodles, gravy, chickens baked brown;
Cold buttermilk to wash it all down.
Desserts are served; cookies, cakes, and pies.
Men leaning back with satisfied sighs.
Back to work until the skies grow dark
Then off to sleep in rooms plain and stark.

A remarkable day yesterday. I woke with leg and feet pain, but thought I would tackle the postponed job of replacing the shelf under the bathroom vanity. I knew it would be a tack, but morphed into a bigger job.
Taking the old shelf out was a task because of the material from which it was made. Then when I was replacing the shelf, I bumped the J trap and because it had corroded over the years, the pipe split. I am glad it happened then or I would have had to do it after my new shef was in place. The pipe was so corroded, it didn't want to come out and had to be puld into pieces with a pair of pliers.
During my repair marathon, I felt shakey and my blood sugar was 73. I don't tolerate under 100 very well. I popped in 2 pieces of candy and rested for a few minutes.
Later my daughter called me down stairs. I looked out the window and saww billowing smoke and soot in the air. I found that my chimney was on fire. She called 911 and I dischrged a small fire extinguisher into an access hole of the chimney. The extinguisher helped. The firemen came and finished the job.
I want to thank the volunteer fire companies of Bulskin township and the Saltlick township for their quick response and their help,
There was no damage to the house, but I am not sure about the chimney. All in all I am thankful for the blessings of God tucked in amid the problems. Things could have been so much worse. Instead I still have a warm, dry house.

Time.

There is a time to every purpose and a time for everything.
So says the book of Ecclesiastes, in words of the "preacher's" writing.
God made everything and everything's beautiful in its own time.
Whatsoever He doeth, it shall be forever, a thought so sublime.
There is a time that is right to laugh and there is a time for us to weep.
There is a time for tongues to speak and a time for tongues their silence to keep.
There is a time appointed to die and there's also a time to be born.
There is a time that is proper to dance. There is a time fitting to mourn.
There is a time when we must go to war and a time for us to make peace.
There is a time it is right to hate and a time for love, when hate will cease.
There is a time to for us to get and there will come a time for us to lose.
There is a time to cast things away and there is a time to keep and choose.
There is a time when things are broken down and a time to build up and mend.
There is a time for people to sew and there is a time when they should rend.
There is a time to bund wounds and heal and there is a time proper to slay.
There is time to gather stones together and a time to cast them away.

Ecclesiastes has said it all. I just made it rhyme.