Somebody froze the birdbath and I forgot my skates.
From Alfred at Christmas, one of 296 sayings written by John Sarris over thirty years.
From Alfred’s journal
The cold came in overnight and the birdbath behind the yellow house went solid, which it does every year and which I never expect. I stood on it a while because there was nothing else to do with it. Years I thought the trouble with winter was the scarcity, the bare branches, the seed gone under snow, and I wrote a good deal about going without. But the thing that stopped me yesterday was not hunger, it was that the water had become a floor and I had no idea what to do with a floor. Somebody froze the birdbath and I forgot my skates. Switch came down the maple and skidded clear across it on his belly, so at least one of us had come prepared, and he did not look like he had planned that either.
He reads what you tell him and writes a page of his journal back, with a few of these chosen for you. It costs nothing and asks for nothing.
