I'm sitting at my desk watching snow fall. Earlier in the day I could see the tops of mountains north of us - probably in the area of Stannard Mountain - that were white from the frost covering trees. Even some of the Walden hilltops were frosty. The temperature is staying around the low to mid-30's, but there's a strong north wind and snow squalls are coming right down the valley at us. The ground is cold enough so some of the snow is sticking in pockets and branches are coated. Even when the sun breaks through occasionally, it isn't warm enough to melt all the snow, but the driveway and the dirt road don't have snow - they are just wet.

We've had a nice fire in the wood stove for the past several days, although there were a couple of days when we let it go out mid-morning through late afternoon. Our unusually nice weather is past, though, and seasonal weather is here.

I'm catching up clipping items of interest from back issues of the newspapers. Now that I can see well but am not supposed to lift anything heavy or bend over because of the cataract surgery, I'm delving into the stack of newspapers I'd put aside for just this time. I have stacks for JPA, Cabot Historical Society and a small one of clippings I will save in my personal files. I saved the one about middle son Bob and Jake Lavely taking over co-ownership of Wells Fargo Advisors Financial Network in St. Johnsbury. I think they refer to the business as "Wells Fargo FiNet." They are moving their office to 357 Western Avenue, which is the pinky-brown Victorian house-turned-office-building between the school and Fairbanks Motel. Then I clipped a couple of obits - a teacher, Dale Charron, who worked in the St. Johnsbury school system when I did; the piece about John Curran, the AP bureau chief who died recently; a short article I wrote for the Cabot Chronicle back in July. I now need to go through the copies of NorthStar Monthly to grab a couple of articles I've written for them recently.

First I think I'll go downstairs and finish stitching the last of the window quilts. I am anxious to thread the sewing machine needle using my new vision! That was most frustrating last week, every time I needed to change thread color, and I even had Fred do it for me one time. I thought he wouldn't be able to do it; after all, he wasn't even aware there was an "eye" in that needle, let alone that thread has to be pushed through that tiny hole. But he got it easily and I wondered why I hadn't called on him before. It would certainly have saved me a lot of headaches.

Someone asked recently how our cat, Woody, is adapting to the weather changes. All I can say is that he is adapting, but grudgingly. Last night he made several attempts at night hunting, but it was cold and raining off and on, so he came in to get warmed up and dried off several times before he gave up and stretched out in front of the fire. We aren't sure if he really needs to come in to warm up or if he has learned that whenever he comes in wet he gets a rub-down with a paper towel, which he dearly loves, so perhaps he's playing us and getting wet repeatedly for the attention. He's pretty smart and sometimes we don't give him enough credit - mainly because he can also be incredibly stupid, like climbing out on a tree limb that's way too small to support his 15-lb body. Or maybe getting unceremoniously dumped onto the ground when the limb breaks or bends so he can no longer hold on is his idea of fun and games. We'll never know, I guess.