Omens

All the signs are telling me this is going to be "one of those days."  The stars were shining brightly this morning, and no cloud cover means a drop in temperature...yup, down to twenty-eight.  After the rains, this caused the doors on the truck to freeze shut, so the trash man has come and gone...without my trash.  It may be the cold or computer imps, but I have had to reboot twice today.  I'm not superstitious in the conventional sense of the word.  I will walk under ladders with impunity, and the only thing I worry about when a black cat crosses my path is that I don't drive over it.  Since my mother has been dead, lo, these many years, I can step on a crack without fear of damage to her back.  (Do parents still scare kids with that old bromide?  And how did it start, anyhow?)  I do know that if I hit three green lights in a row while driving (down in the city where there are streets with stop lights), it's going to be a good day.  One of the most eerie portents in my life came very shortly after we moved here.  Steve was not a man who could stand to be without television.  Antenna TV was out of the question, giving maybe two or three channels, although there is still an antenna high up on the topmost tip of a pine tree for a family across the road...it's an antiquated source of amusement.  There is no such thing as cable TV available.  All power and telephone lines are above ground.  He immediately connected with a satellite television company and had them out here within days of moving in.  This was in October 1997.  It doesn't rain in October, but it rained the day the couple came to install the lines in the house and the dish on the roof.  The sun came out just as they were finishing and, as I looked out the living room window, there was a brilliant pool of VIBGYOR (my mother's acronym for violet, indigo blue, green, yellow, orange, and red for the rainbow) right in our front pasture.  It was, in fact, the end of the rainbow in our yard!  That was the omen to end all omens that we belonged here.  We all just stood looking in awe.  The gold at the end of the rainbow isn't buried underground...it is the land itself. 

I shall not handle delicate objects today.  I will tread carefully on the frozen ground.  I will watch diligently that I do not burn the soup for Arden's dinner tonight.  I have been forewarned.