Cranberry Sauce by the Fire

It's windy this morning, usually not a good thing. A little breeze is fine and velocities from 10-20 mph, even up to 30 now and then are okay, but lately there have been days when the speedometer has flirted with 50 and that's when my internal warning sirens go off. Unlike Colorado or Illinois, Maine is heavily forested as readers from New England well know, and it's the trees that generate my concern.

In Boulder, the wind comes swirling off the mountains, swooping down a long corridor paralleling the Flat Irons (photo), and slamming into town like a freight train out of control. We have trees, of course, but they're not nearly as dense as they are in my back yard or along the lane to the east. When power lines go down in Colorado, it's more often due to heavy, wet, early winter or late-spring snows.

The unpredictability or perhaps better, the predictability of losing power at some point is why I'm writing this post now, while I can. I'd love to get back to Pink Hats and a Mack Truck because, frankly, I'm just as eager as I hope you are to see how things turn out with Dr. Bob and the twins. Some writers work from an outline and have a story fleshed out in advance of its development. I take my clue from Stephen White who freely admits he has no idea how a novel is going to unfold until he gets to the end. I like that; it allows the unconscious to work and express itself spontaneously.

My plan, as of last night, was to have morning coffee with Dr. Bob and see what he's been up to -- until the vigorous sound of waves washing up on the beach drug me from a sound sleep and I noticed trees swaying precariously through the window. Two weeks ago, while I was basking in 60 degree weather on my Champaign patio, anxiously buried in cardiology or some other medical -ology or -ary, a white pine on my property split two stories up from the ground and sent wood flying into the power lines, blocking the road and inconveniently blacking out my neighbors across the creek. I hope that doesn't happen again but you never really know.

The upshot of all this is the cranberries and home-made rolls I want prepare for tomorrow's dinner with my best friend's family need to take precedence over pleasure, so I'd better get cracking. If we're lucky, the lights will stay on and the oven hot. If not, Thanksgiving dinner might turn out to be a can of soup warmed up in the fireplace. As disappointing as that sounds, it reminds me of wonderful evenings around the campfire with Boy Scouts and their fathers. At least the soup will be accompanied by fresh cranberry sauce and who can complain about that?


(Creative Commons image via Wikipedia)