Wednesday, March 25, 2009

More of the Same

I'm trying to think of things to write about, but this blog is supposed to be about my life and my life is really pretty small right now. This weekend was crappy. To fight a sudden assault of overwhelming sadness I went for a rather miserable hike in the mud and the rain. Oddly enough, it worked and I felt significantly better. Monday was gorgeous and I walked down to the river and took tea on a really comfy rock while I watched the cars coming and going from the hot springs and the occasional hawk riding the thermals. In spite of diligent sunscreen application my nose got a little red. I've made a couple of necklaces and a bunch of earrings and they're all packaged up to ship to my mom for (hopefully) sale at the gallery she manages. It's snowing right this minute. I'm wearing flip flops in the house in spite of the resulting purple toes because I'm just THAT READY for warm weather. But I'm willing to settle for cold weather with sunshine. I just need to be outside and it's so much nicer when it's not spitting sleet/snow/rain in your face and the road isn't all greasy mud and patches of ice. Even one day a week where I can risk a little sunburn is enough to keep me from wanting to take a long walk on a short pier into an icy lake.

Saturday, March 21, 2009

Spring. Ew.

Yesterday was the first day of spring and it was completely gorge. The sun, the little birdies, the temp, it was perfect. I worked. Today? The day I don't work? The sky is grey, the wind is howling, the temp is back in the 30s, and there are even MORE bugs outside. (Speaking of: I am alone in this invasion. Pauletta doesn't have these bugs. No one has these bugs. I don't want to talk about it.)

I've gotten back into making jewelry this past week. I'm really enjoying it even as it destroys my fingernails and aggravates my old wrist injury. But it's a little creative outlet I really enjoy and might bring in a few dollars here and there so I'm hoping the inspiration lasts for awhile. So today, with spring doing it's worst to irritate me and make me miserable, I'm going to enjoy the fire, try not to kill the cats as they literally climb the curtains with excess energy, and work on another necklace. It is a small life, but it is my own. And summer will show up eventually. Yesterday was a promise.

Tuesday, March 17, 2009

The Horror!

My neighbor Pauletta dropped by to see if I wanted to walk down to our other neighbor's currently empty house with her to check on a flooding situation. I didn't have anything better to do, so I went. And when we got back . . . it's like I'm living in a horror movie. We couldn't help but notice that the snow around the porch, that had been white when we left 20 minutes ago, was now grey. Looking closer . . . the snow was covered in millions of tiny black insects. And they are completely surrounding my house! They seem to be coming from the foundation maybe? Pauletta, who's lived around here for years, has never seen anything like it. I'm completely and totally freaked out. She said she'd call when she got home if there weren't any around her house. She hasn't called, so I guess that's good?? That I'm not alone in this mysterious and nauseatingly horrifying infestation? I'm afraid to go back outside in case I accidentally bring the invasion inside with me. EW!

Saturday, March 14, 2009

A little morning whining

You know what I've really gotten sick of? I mean, yes, I'm really damn tired of winter in general and all its accouterments, but the thing that REALLY makes me want to throw a tantrum is starting fires. The last week or so has been clear and gorgeous. Nothing to complain about there, right? Wrong.

The beautiful sunny days mean the house gets very warm during the day thanks to the glories of passive solar. Warm enough that I can just let the fire go out. But also thanks to this lack of clouds it gets positively frigid at night, zero or a little below, so if I don't want to wake up to home temps in the low forties (or worse) I have to start a fire again before I go to bed. And I'm sick of it. Sick of getting my hands covered in newspaper schmutz. Sick of using the bellows and coddling the little flames and breathing in the fine ash the bellows stir up and staying up late enough to make sure the fire is really going before I close the damper. I'm tired (literally) of setting my alarm for 2:45 am so I can get up and add another couple of logs. This wood stove nonsense has altogether lost its novelty and charm. So last night I just didn't do it. And while I was perfectly comfortable all night thanks to the mountains of down that compose my bed, this morning was very cold. I woke up at my usual time and started the damn fire and then went back to bed until it was warm enough to move around. (I don't think the cats appreciated my laziness. Sugar would crawl under the covers once an hour or so to warm up and then disappear again to wherever it is she normally sleeps. This is why I need 10 hours of sleep, Sugar wakes me up many many times every night. I'm chronically sleep deprived.)

Thanks to almost two years of experience and obsessive monitoring of my home's interior temperature, I now know the numbers that mean relative comfort. At the lower end of the spectrum, 48 is the magic number. Any colder than that and I need to stay in bed, but as long as the thermometer reads 48 or above I can wear enough layers to be comfortable anywhere in the cabin. At the upper end, my number is 84. During the day I don't mind at all if the cabin gets warmer than that; I love the heat, but 84 is the upper temperature at which I can fall asleep and not wake up 30 minutes later a sodden mess. In the summer there's just no point in going to bed until the temperature in the loft drops to 84 or below and some nights that doesn't happen until quite late.

And, I'm rambling. But I want to remember these little details, and I will forget if I don't write them down. Weather.com predicts the sun will not make an appearance for a few days so chances are I won't have to start a fire again for awhile because I won't be able to let the one I started this morning go out. We might get up to 10 inches of new snow this weekend. Winter is NEVER GOING TO END.

Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Hello Again

Today I finally started feeling healthy after whining for days about what turned out to be a pretty minor cold. To celebrate my new health I broke out the snow shoes I haven't used all winter and went for a little winter hike. Um. You guys? Snow shoeing is HARD. My mom has been trying to convince me to make arrangements to retrieve my cross country skis all winter, and I kept saying "Oh no! I don't need to no stinking skis! I have my snow shoes!" But dude. Snow shoes are not skis. Skiing is relatively easy. Pretty much as soon as I got out of the car and clambered over the bank and into the powder I was ready to turn around. But I persevered. I sweated and and I pushed myself forward and managed to make it as far as my favorite summer perch above the river where I divested myself of a LOT of clothing and sat on a warm dry rock and had some tea. And it was glorious! Today is just stunningly beautiful. Not a cloud in the sky, fluffy white snow everywhere, high of about 24 degrees. And it makes me feel like a complete IDIOT for not spending every sunny day this winter doing exactly this. Somehow I had forgotten that in the sun, with the proper clothing, after a little exertion, one can sit outside with a cup of tea poured from a thermos in perfect comfort. What is WRONG with me that I forget these things? I think I need to re-commit to my blog if only to remind myself that actually doing things is good.

What is also good is answering my phone when it rings. Winter is depressing. I've been depressed. There, I said it. And when I'm depressed I don't have the energy to deal with people. Or do anything really but bake and make tea. But this weekend my friend L and her husband came into town to empty out the townhouse they own at the local bankrupt resort before it goes into foreclosure and they change the locks. And so on Saturday night a group of spa people got together for dinner to catch up with her and it was so much fun! It was fabulous! And as I was getting ready to go out my phone rang and on a whim I actually answered it and it was a friend I hadn't talked to since October, and while we didn't have a lot of time, it was fun to catch up. And I decided that I would answer the phone whenever it rang for a whole week and just see what happened. And you know what happened? I've talked to two other good friends I haven't talked to in ages. And I talked to my grandmother without feeling guilty for dodging her calls for three days before finally calling her back. Good things all!

There are a lot of exclamation points in this post, and I apologize, but I'm feeling downright peppy. Blame it on a really wonderful combination of sunshine, renewed good health, and the early arrival of DST. Hope the four of you who still check this sadly neglected blog are equally cheery.