photo friday: license—to post as you wish

It has been bitterly cold here. Walking the children to their respective schools I've noticed how quickly the dog pee freezes in little puddles all along the sidewalk, an odd advantage of such weather when you have small children in a dense urban neighborhood teeming with dogs. Our lives have been mostly uneventful lately. We've had some illness (but luckily not the dreaded flu), a handful of tantrums, an unending supply of daily dramas arising from the running of our little school, the introduction of some new words (Lola and Ike built a "sex-slide" yesterday, and today one of Ike's made-up songs starred a "six-E laid-E"). Mostly I've been working, or trying to work, and cooking dinner, or at least attempting to. Charles discovered itunes and has stayed up late downloading classical albums and operas.

In the midst of this—the cold, the paid and unpaid work, the endless effort of raising two children—I found myself daydreaming about composting. A strange thing to daydream about, I concede. I recall as a child watching my father composting in our backyard, the steam rising from the black beds of soon-to-be-soil; he could stay out there for hours with the wheelbarrow and spade, processing his compost from one "station" to another. I remember walking back from high school, nearing home, and knowing absolutely that my Dad was out back, turning the decomposing matter. You could smell it a block away. We burned everything that could be burned in the wood stoves; took the plastic, metal and glass to the dump oursleves; and composted everything else.

And now here I am in Manhattan, daydreaming of taking the leftovers of our meals and making them into soil. With maybe a few chickens pecking around. And what's this, tears welling in my eyes? Oy Vey!