This morning marked my first real foggy day commute for the year, and it’s early by at least two weeks. Visibility wasn’t all that bad, really, but the fog brings out the morons. Cowboy would like me to commute on the highway on mornings like these, but I’d rather deal with the occasional tractor and cotton truck and less traffic overall. Those idiots out on the highway have a wreck a day even in good weather.

So I’m driving along looking for landmarks, and remembering worse days. There have been days when I’ve had to navigate by the fog lines on the right side of the road, and you have to figure out where you are by the texture and landmarks looming up at you all of a sudden. This wasn’t one of those days; I had plenty of notice to navigate the sharp turns and didn’t see anyone in the drainage ditches. I’m sure I will before winter’s over, but I won’t be one of them.

The fog is kind of mesmerizing, especially in the dark. You have to concentrate so hard on the road ahead that you don’t dare take your eyes off it, even for a second. And on the really bad days, you creep along with the windows rolled down to try to hear if morons without lights are rushing up at you in the dark. And there’s always a moron without his lights on.

This time of year is depressing—there’s not much sun to see, what with driving to and from work in the dark, but when it should be daylight, it’s a dull murky grey. Last year wasn’t bad, but if it’s started this early this year, I fully expect to go for weeks at a time without seeing the sun. Nothing dries out. There’s mud everywhere; although we’ve rocked the driveway and it’s much better, I still have to wade through the sticky clay to get to the cat’s dish. I may put a pallet down to reach it.

The house is always dirty. It can be spotless on Wednesday, but as soon as we come home, the mudroom is a disaster. That’s why it’s called a mudroom, and also why we don’t wear shoes in the house.

On the rare sunny day on a weekend, we’ll celebrate like we haven’t ever seen the sun before. Too bad the arena will probably be too wet to ride in; the horses are about to get fat. We don’t have a pasture to put them in this year either, so they’re all penned up, getting crabby and stinky feet.

So we’ll hole up like little hermits. Cowboy will work daylight to dark, but that’s only twelve hours now. There will be lots of cooking, and we’ll get as fat as the horses, but not as shaggy.

Welcome to the foggy day schedule.