Winter has settled in with a vengeance and the solstice isn’t even until tomorrow (at 1.30pm, to be exact). The storms began well before Thanksgiving and there have been at least three or four of them since then. The temps have been getting steadily chillier and chillier, and the snow on the ground, since it’s never completely melting, is semi-deliquescing and then re-solidifying into unfriendly slates of sometimes invisible gray snow-and-ice. The ice that forms on the back steps makes it hard for the dog to go out and do his routine.

There have been nights when I’ve walked home from the bus stop and heard absolutely nothing in the air except the sound of my own feet crunching in the snow on the pavement — one night in particular, it was so eerily silent that I could hear the whoosh of the wind pushing mini-drifts off the surface of the snow that was already on the ground. There’s something to be said for that kind of stillness — you can almost feel the earth turning beneath your feet.