First and Last Day

The morning was very cold, with lots of new snow and beautiful frost patterns on the porch windows.


It was my first bookstore day of 2010 and also my last bookstore day of the winter season, a day to take down the Christmas tree, pack up the Christmas books, put away my ornaments and return Chris’s, get the plants over to Sally’s shop for the winter, and all kinds of miscellaneous little jobs. I tackled the undecorating job first, and it went so fast I rewarded myself with a little reading time before friends and customers came in to visit, racing through the first two engrossing chapters of Laila Lalami’s Secret Son.

Here's the low-down on Northport: Stubb's Sweetwater Grill is open Tuesdays through Saturdays for lunch and dinner. The cafe at the newly remodeled Willowbrook is open Thursdays through Sundays. Brew North is open every day, since Northport Fitness is open 7 days a week. Dolls and More is open every day but Sunday. I'm not sure about the Pennington Collection: it was open on the Sunday after Christmas, but I don't know if Sunday is a regular business day for them or not. Library is closed Sunday and Monday and doesn't open on Wednesday until 3 p.m. Now you know, so plan accordingly.

A lot of snow fell overnight, and more came down during the day. “Down” is more or less accurate, I guess, although at times “sideways” was the more apparent movement. We drove to Omena at the end of the day, past stark black-and-white winter orchard scenes.


The black-and-white images, so simple in themselves, also lend themselves to alteration.


But this arrow by the bay in Omena—is it pointing south? Is it a sign? Well, yes, it’s a sign, obviously, but we won’t really be going south, not South, that is, for a few days yet. Too much to do first. And then it will be another week before we actually arrive at our Gulfside refuge, where, I might add (for those feeling twinges of envy), the temperature last night was a balmy thirty degrees! So don't hold your breath for pictures of palm trees. It will be a while yet....