A cheap set of shelves... gotta like it.

Between the nasty winter weather and spending time working on installing a new fireplace, I haven’t had a great deal of time to do anything else around the house.

But, I did manage to complete one small project this past week, new shelves beside the fireplace. (I’ll write about the fireplace when it’s totally completed.)

There’s an odd spot along the wall in this house where the pipes and duct work for the upstairs bathroom run down to the basement. It’s roughly three-foot long and essentially was floor-to-ceiling box run down the middle of the wall.

When we installed the new fireplace, we closed in one side of it, but the rest of it was still there. Looking at it, I decided it would be a good place for a set of shelves.

Fortunately, when I moved last July, I got rid of an old metal storage unit but kept the plate glass shelves. I at the time I didn’t know what I was going to do with the glass, but it seemed like just too good of a thing to get rid of.

It was easy work to purchase shelving brackets at Lowe’s and install the shelving you see here. The brackets were $7 a piece, the screws were a couple of bucks, so for $75 and a little work I have what I think is a nice set of shelves.

I’ve put my stereo on the first two shelves, now if I can just figure out what in the heck to put on the rest. That’s one problem with shelves… they need to have something on them.

Snow Princess

For my daughter, from a dream that came to me one September night.

Who knows how these things begin? They just do.

It was mid-September; the sun smiled down from on high as puffy white clouds floated lazily across a beautiful blue sky.

Folks were in their yards, hurriedly finishing those outside projects that had been left undone all summer long. Children raced by on their bicycles. With school now underway they were doing their best to pack a week’s worth of fun into a single weekend.

A few weeks of summer green was left in the grass and the leaves had not yet exploded into the beautiful auburn colors of fall.

As these stories tend to go, though, nothing is as it appears. So why should this one be any different?

The strangest, most wonderful, most marvelous thing began to happen. Snow.

Now, I’m not a fan of snow. In my home it's generally considered an unutterable four letter word. But this was something different. So very different.

It began ever so slowly. So slowly in fact, people thought it was nothing more than an unusual sprinkle of rain, just a bit of mist. But it soon became apparent that those bits of rain were tiny, little snowflakes. Snowflakes that grew and grew and grew until they transformed into big, magnificent, fluffy flakes. And even though the sun still shone brightly, and the air was warm, those huge wonderful, fluffy flakes continued to fall.

They fell so fast that everything rapidly turned white – the lawn, the shrubs, the cars parked in the street, even my coal black dog who had made the mistake of dozing off on the back deck.

It was magical.

It snowed and snowed. For more than an hour it floated down and swirled around us. It snowed higher than our toes, higher than those knobby things on our ankles. It snowed nearly halfway to our knees, and then it ended. Just as quickly as it had begun, it ended.

When it was done, a beautiful even blanket of sparkling white snow gently covered my lawn.

Well, with all of that warm, wet snow around me, I was really left with only one thing to do… and no, it’s not shoveling. It’s build a snowman of course, silly. Only, I tend to do things a bit differently, so I built a snowgirl with a purple hat and pink scarf, rescued from the back room of the house.

By then others had begun to venture out, exploring for themselves what had occurred on this most unusual day.

As they passed my home, they admired the marvelous snowgirl standing so beautifully on the front lawn.

“What a lovely snowgirl you have.”

“Why, thank you.”

“She looks so real.”

“Do you really think so?”

“She’s the best snowgirl I’ve ever seen.”

“Well, I am quite proud of her.”

My chest stuck out further and further with each complimentary remark. My grin grew from ear to ear.

But no one realized just how magical a day it truly was until “it” happened.

The little snowgirl began to move. She was coming to life.

Well, it isn’t every day a snowgirl comes to life in your own front yard. So I did what came naturally, I stood there, frozen in my tracks, my jaw falling to rest on my chest and my eyes as wide as baby moon hubcaps.

She gingerly moved about the yard, delicately testing her newfound life. Soon she was dancing, a magical figure floating across the snow.

Time stood still as I watched the snow princess’s graceful movements.

She danced and twirled until she stood right in from me.

“Dance with me.” And we danced, and danced, and when we were done we let ourselves drop into the snow, and made snow angels and threw snowballs and did all of those things that children do on cold, snowy winter days.

But this was not a cold, snowy winter day. It was a warm, sunny September day. And as you may have already have guessed, the snow was melting, and so was my beautiful snow princess.

She could no longer dance, or throw snowballs or make snow angels.

As her dance slowed to a stop, fear grabbed at my chest. I was losing my snow princess. I had to do something. I couldn’t let go of her, not this miracle of mine.

A glance into her eyes told me she knew what I was thinking, what was tearing at me inside, just how afraid I was of losing her.

“Hold me, let me sit on your lap."

“But you’ll melt away.”

“I know, but I’ll be back again. I’ll always come back.”

And so I sat on the steps, with her in my lap, and she slowly melted away.

Don’t be sad for my beautiful snow princess, or for me. Just as the snow returns every winter, so does my princess… and we dance.