The World Did Not End

Good morning. We are all still here, so obviously the prediction that the world would end because the Mayan calender did was wrong. Funny how that happens with predictions.

It's also funny how plans go awry. This time of the year is busy for everyone who celebrates winter holidays.  For me it is Christmas, and I had a carefully laid out plan for this week. In addition to preparing to celebrate with family, I am facing a January 15th deadline for a history book I am writing with a Winnsboro historian. As with all deadlines, this one creates a panic that I don't have everything in place yet. (I hope my editor is not reading this. I just promised her we would have the book done on schedule.)

Anyway, back to my plan to work diligently on the book every afternoon. It got skewered the other night when we had a horrific wind that blew through during a thunderstorm, and a number of trees come down in our back pasture. Of course, one had to fall on the fence. Luckily, my animals had not been hurt. The horse ran to the far corner where there are no trees, and the goat and sheep made it into the small barn, which was not hit.

Still, there was this breach in the fence that could not be ignored. So I was out in the middle of the night, in the middle of the storm, stringing wire to patch up the opening until I could get someone out to cut the tree and get it off the fence.

After that midnight adventure, I was not functioning at top speed yesterday, so I did not get much done on the book. In between arranging to get the downed trees taken care of and chasing the goat back into the pen several times- they do have a way of finding an escape route - I sat at my computer and promptly fell asleep.

So now that we have been spared annihilation, I will spend a good chunk of my day working with the folks who are coming out to clear. I was out early this morning getting some of the mess piled up and burned, and we will burn a lot more later.

While I was working, I glanced up at the sky and saw this neat cloud formation. I wonder what spot this X marks? Is there a treasure in the sky?

If you would like to see more pictures today, I encourage you to visit my friend Terry Odell's blog. She has a regular feature on Friday's called Field Trip Friday and always has beautiful photographs. Some she has taken herself and others are from members of her talented family or other professional photographers.