the way my house is hibernating this afternoon

How have you all been? What have you been doing? What did Santa bring you? We had a lovely winter break. The week after Christmas is my favorite week of the year, when Claire and I play with new toys and read new books and listen to new music and stay in our pajamas eating cookies and leftovers, and only go out when absolutely necessary.

But Claire is back to school today and the Christmas decorations are all down (All the complicated details / of the attiring and the disattiring / are completed! William Carlos Williams wrote about a deciduous tree asleep for the winter, but I think that about the Christmas tree every year when I pull it to the curb), and things are back to normal.

Sniff.

I had guests for coffee this morning, and am now eating a cheese and tomato sandwich for lunch and drinking a late, third cup of coffee (what is it about the heavenly combination of coffee and cheese-tomato sandwiches, which don't sound like they should go together at all, but do?) and contemplating how best to use these two free hours before I need to pick up Claire.

The pets never feel a compulsion to be productive or busy. I've heard tell of people who have animals that earn their keep -- cats who catch mice and spiders, or preternaturally predict earthquakes, and dogs who herd sheep or rescue you from snow drifts -- but we've none of those around here. Nope.

We don't have Winter Proper here in southern California (like in Updike's "January", where the days are short / the sun a spark / hung thin between / the dark and dark).  

It's more like Frank Asch's "Sunflakes":

If sunlight fell like snowflakes,

gleaming yellow and so bright,

we could build a sunman,

we could have a sunball fight,

we could watch the sunflakes

drifting in the sky.

We could go sleighing

in the middle of July

through sundrifts and sunbanks,

we could ride a sunmobile,

and we could touch sunflakes—

I wonder how they'd feel.

Or -- my personal favorite -- Phineas & Ferb's S'Winter:

It's ski and snowball fight time,
And also fly a kite time,
Cold and sunny,
Yes that's right,
I'm talking about S'Winter.
It's a S'Winter S'Wonderland,
Unusual and grand,
You can freeze while you get tan,
Because it's S'Winter,
Talkin' 'bout S'Winter!

But you wouldn't know that we don't have real winters around here -- no sharp shivers thro' the leafless bow'r or dim-dark'ning thro' the flaky show'r as in Robert Burns' "Winter Night" -- the way my house is hibernating this afternoon.