Kage Baker would have been sent into a contented coma by the weather today.  She was prone to hibernation; she hated being cold and would cocoon as soon as the temperature dropped below 60 degrees. This was one of the few times she’d actually stop writing – unless she had a deadline to meet. Grey wet winter weather was for drowsing in front of the fire and watching one of our many versions of A Christmas Carol – or maybe all of them.

Dickens Fair is done, Christmas is pending and under control, even the dinner shopping is finished and stocked in pantry and refrigerator. And it’s cold enough to wrap up in a lap robe and a sleepy parrot and just vegetate.

Last night – on the Winter Solstice, appropriately – it started raining here in Los Angeles. It’s been raining most of the time since then – steady and soft and musical, the perfect sort of rain. It’s not hard enough to flood much, nor to bring the hillsides slithering down; it’s not cold enough to freeze between the glass towers downtown. But up in the mountains, I have it on good authority that snow is piling up just where it needs to be.

This doesn’t end the drought, by any means. But it helps. The parks will survive, and the gardens (increasingly going to domestic fruit and vegetables around here) will be renewed. The snow pack in the Sierras will exist at all, and the ski resorts will actually make some money this winter. And in the meantime, all the Christmas lights are reflected in the wet-shiny streets and cars; every sidewalk is a path into a nebula, and the passing vehicles sport moving waves of running lights.

This is all deliciously conducive to a comfortable somnolence. The dog and cats have been furry lumps all day – except when the Corgi goes to the back door and sighs in deep discontent that it still opens on a wet backyard. That’s especially difficult to a guy who’s no more than 4 inches off the ground, and he simply does not understand why we won’t open the Door Into Summer. (The cats are resigned to our being idiots about it, and no longer hope.) Harry, being equipped by nature with a downy snowsuit under his feathers, has been doing his world-famous avocado imitation all day.

I’ve been asleep, mostly. Slept late, moved slowly, napped … I meant to go out and finish the stocking stuffers, but I decided that I didn’t really want to go out in the rain in a peep-toed orthopedic boot. I have to go out tomorrow to see my orthopedist anyway, to find out how long I have to wear Das Boot – I’ll do my shopping on my way home. Plenty of time left. If anybody gets in my way, I’ll limp loudly and hit ’em with my cane.

So, all things considered, Dear Readers, there is no ambition  in me today. Nor do I expect any until at least New Year’s Day.  It’s the dark end of the year, when the most energy surge I expect to summon is making Yorkshire pudding. Time to be quiet and close, time to be reflective if my brain kicks in at all. I think all I can manage to reflect today is the Christmas lights, like the rain-polished sidewalks outside.

Not a bad effort, really, for the first day of Winter.