clay rabbit

Since I've lived here, there has been a shop on the corner of 26th and division called the clay rabbit. I guess it went out of business and they moved the whole house today. The whole house: a huge, two-story, shingled house. We walked down to the coffee shop to watch it go by, but it didn't. Here it sits in the middle of 26th, waiting for the power line crews to make way.



I was thinking what a bad idea to move it on a windy day, but worse is coming -- just ask the newsmakers.

It is so cold today. Bitter. Windy. The Channel 6 Storm Troopers are anxiously awaiting something, anything, to report. It IS cold. But they promise tragic proportion, bodies on the roadside, car trouble. As I look outside my window, clinton street is bathed in the cold white sun of winter, and but for the wind, it is a beautiful day. I may eat my words.

We put the tree up last night. I am so deeply compulsive about how to do this. K thinks it looks like the presidential tree, which is to say it looks nice. But then, he was accustomed to dragging something home from the corner the day before christmas and letting the girls have at it. Which is fine. And sweet. But I have been hauling my hand-picked ornaments around for a bzillion years, and really enjoy the process. I have one ornament that my mother purchased with her first paycheck when she was 14 years old and an usherette at the North Bend Theatre, which was likely child labor. So, if my math is correct, that thing is about 70 years old. I have the first ornament my son hung when he was a year old, a little wooden boy on a rocking horse and I have real blown glass ornaments from when, at a later age, he was making pipes. Ah, how they do grow up.... I have icicles by the box. It is a beautiful tree.

I was thinking, as we sat in the biting wind, holding sid for a hand warmer, about moving, and how I wouldn't have to pack if we just moved the whole house.

later same day.... the clay rabbit house is nearing the corner of 26th and Powell (Not 6 blocks since 8:00 this morning.) and the ice is falling from the sky. We left to go food shopping and didn't make it to Winko. We were stuck on 82nd, Christmas traffic and ice stalling the whole thing. We turned around, drove back roads home through the neighborhoods, happy to have all wheel drive, watching pickups slide around corners. We stopped by safeway for coffee and creamer and brie, and crept home. Safe and warm.