Waiting, technology works and no more hot water.

1. My mother comes to keep me company while I wait. We go up to town for a few bits of Christmas shopping, and then have lunch in Hoopers restaurant. "Your father and I did most of our courting here," she says.

2. I plug the new laptop into the printer for the first time and it prints a page off for me.

3. To get out of a bath that is becoming uncomfortably cool.

Baby tip, historic homes and what I liked.

1. A lovely comment from Julia on this post about my beautician's take on night feeding. I can't wait to tell her that her thought has touched someone else as well as me!

2. We watch a historical documentary, At Home With The Georgians, in which Professor Amanda Vickery describes the origins of good taste and home-making using diaries and letters. One of the voices was particularly touching: a gauche bachelor of 24, writing in code, who was worried that his nerves would make him unable to get his future wife (he didn't marry until he was 43) pregnant.

3. Last thing at night, as we are falling asleep, we talk about our day: "I liked helping you with the dusting." "I liked the mashed swede." "I liked your sausage casserole." "I liked..."

Thaw, cloud and frying pan.

1. Over night, warm rain comes and makes dark holes in the snow.

2. We make up the bed with white linen, shaking air into the pillows and duvet. I take my afternoon nap in a cloud.

3. Eggs and bacon for supper with sauté potatoes and savoy cabbage cook Jamie Oliver-style in Worcester sauce.

He got through, card and redwing.

This post at The Refrigerator Oracle -- Open Your Eyes! -- is a good one for all 3BTers.

1. Frost ferns covered the empty milk bottles huddled on our doorstep -- the snow has defeated our milkman since Monday. Today I wake to the dull clunk of Nick bringing two full bottles into the house.

2. The first Christmas card, hand delivered.

3. Over the wall in the neighbour's bird feeding tree, I spot what looks like a thrush -- but there's something slightly off about it. It lifts a wing and displays a russet patch -- oh, a redwing, of course. I hope it has spotted the pyracanthus berries over the road.                                    

Footprints, through the snow and feeding on fruit.

1. Lines of paddy paw prints over the snowy carpark clue me in on the night life.

2. The doorbell rings. The triumphant Abel and Cole man hands over our veggie box.

3. Each cluster of pale orange rowan berries is weighed down by snow. The high branches are weighed down by feasting wood pigeons.

Service, blackbird and ginger biscuits.

1. The sound of the man from the end house sweeping snow off our road.

2. Blackbird at the pyracanthus berries disturbs a spray of snow. Later, its chook-chook-chook alarm call disturbs the evening's dead silence.

3. A batch of ginger biscuits cooling in the kitchen. I love the way they come out of the oven soft and puffy, and then harden into crunchy, hard biscuits.

Snow day, feed the birds and first winter.

1. Waking up to a snow day. It's lovely to have Nick home, but I'm very jealous that he gets to work in the attic with its view right out of town.

2. I throw down some bird food and top up the pan of water. Before long, I count 13 sparrows picking up seed.

3. I like seeing my friends' Facebook updates about their babies seeing snow for the first time.