Time
and tide
making marks
indelible —
etching on my face,
stone carvings under ice
made thicker from passing storms,
thunderstruck and glowing vibrant,
molten and forging new weapons with
resolution that this world will not fail

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I don’t know if I have too much to say today. I’m getting ready to start a 4-week cycle of night shifts, and so this is when things can get a bit dicey. Spending my days attempting to sleep on an opposite schedule. Spending my nights off trying to stay busy, get things done, not go crazy. Last night I made it until about 4 am, working on a new batch of mead for February, I called it “Nova’s Cherry Pie”. I’m hoping it works out. I used a pound of malt in the hopes that it will infuse a sorty of pie-crusty flavor into the mix. This is also my first braggot, a fusion between mead and beer.

Anyway, having fallen asleep much earlier than I would have preferred, I am now awake much earlier than I would have preferred and I will have to make it through the night at work. The first Monday / Tuesday of nights are usually the worst. So I’m going to cross my fingers and look forward to sleep in the morning.

I pushed through this three-day weekend looking to get some things done, and I did. I didn’t get everything done. I bottled three gallons of mead. I started a new batch that is now sitting in my fermentation cabinet with a 5-gallon batch of Joe’s Ancient Orange and January’s “Persephobee” Pomegranate mead. I meant to design labels, I need to make a slide-out shelf for our cabinet and we’re going to put a vertical pot and pan rack on that. Despite the misses, it was a good weekend overall.

So now it’s time to tighten up the reins.