You know how we’ve all been complaining about the s*** and how brutal this winter was? Well I agree, it was brutal…but tonight I was looking through some old pictures for another project and I came across these:
Which were taken April 6, 2009.
So I’m thinking that sometimes we just forget that winter is winter and probably one is like the other and maybe, since we’re not in the middle of a blizzard right now, we should just be happy.
So I am.
There’s another (perhaps the last?) cold front coming through now. Katie and I watched the weather on the news this morning and decided we would try to squeeze in a small adventure before the storm hit.
We just made it.
It was cold. And windy.
And the park people had recently done a controlled burn of acres and acres of fields.
It smelled pretty bad to me, probably worse to Katie.
But we had fun anyway, and made it home just as the first spits of sleet hit the windshield. I’d tell you what it’s doing now but I promised not to talk about s*&! anymore.
From this morning:
From last night: (recipe courtesy of the Kitchen Witch)
Pretty sunrise, leftover cake. Gonna be a good day.
No, not the one on your laptop and not even those you get at restaurants. I’m talking the daily grind menu; the one you have to come up with every day to feed your family. Every single day. Endlessly.
I realize I have it easy. We don’t have kids to feed which would complicate the issue. It’s just us two adults. But we still have to eat. For most of my marriage we worked on opposite shifts and when I got home from work in the evenings husband was already at work. If I didn’t feel like cooking, and I rarely did, I’d eat something from the fridge, usually standing up. I’d cook on the weekends and that was it. Heaven.
Now we’re home together in the evenings and the pressure is on. I recognize it’s a pressure of my own making, that I could probably insist that he get his own meals. And he would. But somehow I feel it’s my responsibility to make dinner for us. If I’m terribly organized I will have made a couple of things over the weekend that we can eat all week. If I’m not that together I struggle with getting something on the table before 8 at night. Either way somewhere deep in my inner self I resent the necessity of it all.
The suggestion has been made that we put together a schedule of meals. A sort of preplanned dining map, one that can be repeated on into the future, with attached grocery lists which will make it easier for the husband to buy the groceries that will be required. Something totally opposite my usual process which is to go to the grocery store listless, wander around checking out what “looks good” and creating meals spontaneously. Which I acknowledge hasn’t always worked out that well.
So.
As I sit here in the predawn darkness with my cookbooks surrounding me, trying to plan a month of meals I wonder. How do other people handle this menu thing? How do they feed their families day after day, week after week, into the forever future?
Or do you all just resort to those restaurant menus?
Yesterday at work during my ‘lunch’ break I went for a walk. It’s the first walk I’ve done at work since winter set in. I don’t know how far I went – it doesn’t matter. What matters is that I got out of my beige cube, away from my dual computer screens and into the fresh air.
I talked to myself the entire walk, past the condos full of retired people, the elementary school with children running and squealing on the playground, the bigger homes quiet with everyone away at work and school. Past the bits of wooded areas, filled with frolicking squirrels and a flock of robins bob bob bobbing along. I reminded myself that I actually have it pretty good. That none of the things that are bothering me are anything major and really, compared to many, I have absolutely nothing to complain about. I reminded myself that you’re supposed to be able to choose to be happy and I just needed to get to getting with that.
“Happy happy happy” I repeated in my mind, in time to my steps. That’s right…I’m just happy happy happy. Darn. My knee starts to hurt. And my shoes are old and not as comfy as they should be. Wait a minute…I’m happy happy happy.
And I was, as long as I was walking AWAY from the office! Just like Katie when it came time for me to turn around and head back I was less than thrilled. If someone had me on a leash and was urging me to get back in the car to go home, I’d have sat down and refused. But I had to be the responsible adult. So I went back to the office.
Still, the little walk made the day brighter. But this morning taking Katie out I felt a little twinge in the knee. Wait a minute..I forgot.
I’m happy happy happy.
Here it’s only Tuesday and I’m already overwhelmed. I had an hour between work and community band rehearsal tonight and I sat in the car and watched people coming and going from the grocery store wishing I just had grocery shopping to do. Sometimes getting to rehearsal seems so hard, but once I’m there I’m usually glad I went. But not tonight. Tonight we got all new music for our last concert which is in 6 weeks. I didn’t like any of it, and it all looks like a lot of work. And I’m too tired to think about it.
Last night Katie and I went to school. The instructor is getting more accepting of us, and occasionally we get a “good job with the Sheltie.” But we also still get “the Sheltie is lagging!” Which of course she is. I think it has more to do with where my shoulder is than a problem with Katie. It’s hardly ever the dog’s fault you know. She did great on her sits and downs this week; last week she kept lying down on the sits. But her recalls were really horrible. She’d come when I called, but she’d run past me and hide behind my legs. She was worried about the shadows from the overhead lights, though they are the same as they’ve always been. She didn’t like the conformation class in the next ring because one of the little hairless something or others kept squealing. I didn’t like that noise either. The highlight of my whole week so far is that Katie allowed the instructor to touch her on the stand for exam! 🙂
So that’s my week in a nutshell so far…on day two. Tomorrow night I have book club and I haven’t finished the book yet. Guess that’s not going to happen. But dinner and conversation that doesn’t revolve around work or the dog will be good!
Hope everyone else is having a great week! I’m with Carol…no more talk about snow!
Did you know that’s a word? Mashup. I had to get a graduate degree in information to find that out. And I’m still only vaguely sure what it means. So for the purposes of today’s post, class, we will define it as a bunch of unrelated topics mashed into one post.
First up are technological problems. There was the blog issue where it suddenly one evening stopped behaving in the way I’ve become accustomed. Even with the graduate degree in information I have a phobia about technology. And when things don’t work the same way they’ve worked before I get a little weirded out.
I’m trying to be better. I really am. And braver about clicking away at different things in an attempt to fix stuff without making other stuff worse. But it’s still uncomfortable for me to do that. And during the past two weeks we’ve been having cable issues here at the house as well. Intermittent outages, little blackouts, for a few seconds, or hours. So the odds of having internet work when I needed it were low. The combination of blog problems, work problems and internet connection problems was, at times, overwhelming.
So I did what any good person does when technology lets her down. I made soup.
I haven’t made this recipe before. It’s the Weight Watcher version of potato soup. I make another potato soup full of Velvetta cheese and bacon that is purely heaven but hardly healthy. This one is full of onions and leeks, and though I’ve only tasted a bit of it as I cleaned up the pan, I think it just might be a different version of heaven.
And after the soup was made and put away Katie and I went for our weekly adventure. I’ve been wanting to take her on longer car rides. I’m hoping to get her used to trips of greater and greater lengths so that we can explore further afield on weekends this summer.
So with high hopes, and virtually no planning, I loaded her up and off we went. I got approximately 1/2 a mile down the road when she started complaining. Loudly. Seems I forgot to do the potty break prior to the loading of the sheltie.
So we stopped at her favorite local park. I figured she’d do her thing like she always does, as soon as she’s out of the car, then we’d continue on our way. But no. We had to EXPLORE first. Did I tell you it was cold yesterday? We had blue skies and sunshine, but the temperature was in the high teens.
Yes it was very very cold.
Eventually she got her jobs done and I started back to the car. She was like “WHAT?! We haven’t done much of anything and this is MY FAVORITE PARK MOM!!!!”
But we headed off to MY favorite park, about 40 minutes away anyway. Because I had the car keys and she doesn’t even have her learners permit to drive yet.
Once at my favorite park we headed out to the end of a point of land that extends into a big inland lake. It’s a picnic area when times are warmer, but during winter it’s just a part of the park with no cars going by and no runners and nobody on bikes. And it’s down a long hill so it’s sort of out of the wind. Did I mention it was COLD out?
There are some big old hickory trees out there with the most beautiful bark.
There are lots of beautiful places to look at the lake and enjoy the sunshine. It was almost totally frozen over with a smooth sheet of ice that reflected the blue sky.
We saw a pair of swans who were doing synchronized swimming just for us.
We had fun walking around and pretending it was summer. Which it clearly wasn’t.
Then I had to go to the bathroom, so I loaded up the sheltie again and off we drove in search of an open restroom. Once I got to one I debated leaving Katie in the car. But I never do that..so she and I walked across a playground to the bathroom building. Katie didn’t want to go in the big scary building. But she did. And she certainly didn’t want to go into the stall, even though I used the handicapped stall so she’s have more space to freak out in. But she did. And she was not OK with the fact that the toilet paper holder thingy squeaked. A lot. But she held her own and only tried to get under the wall to the other stall once. But the flushing thing? In a big empty concrete building with all it’s echos? Oh boy. That’s why she was on a leash. Picture it, crazed sheltie, all four feet going, head down, pulling wildly on the leash and Mama just trying to get her coat back on. Good thing we were alone.
So after the bathroom adventure we came home. She was pretty quiet on the 40 minute trip home. I guess she figured if she stayed quiet she wouldn’t have to go into any more scary places.
And for our third and final mashed up topic, husband and I went to see “The King’s Speech” last night because the TV and internet were down again, and we’d read all the hard copy magazines and newspapers we had in the house. Technology let us down, so we had an old fashioned date night. Not such a bad thing. The movie is wonderful and deserves all the praise and awards that it has received.
When I got home the internet was back up, so I looked up more information about King George VI, his brother, Lionel his speech therapist and Wallace Simpson. I guess I have a love/hate relationship with the internet.
Class dismissed.
I was thinking that having a blog that wouldn’t upload pictures might be, in a strange way, a good thing. That it would force me to concentrate on words rather than relying on photos to tell my story. And I even had a couple of thoughts I wanted to write about.
But another busy day at work has me whipped. So I’m falling back on the photos to tell you all about it.
It started with the usual commute into the sun. But it’s always good to have sunshine so I didn’t mind. After a crazy 9 hours I left work to find it was snowing!
What’s with that? Is this not the end of March? Didn’t that Groundhog Phil guy predict that this year we were NOT going to have 6 more weeks of winter? Wasn’t that sometime at the beginning of February? I just don’t get it.
Once home we were sitting around eating some homemade Tuscan soup when Katie alerted us to events outside.
“There are deer out in my yard Mama! Come see! Come see!”
We’ve had four or five deer hanging around for a couple of weeks. Tonight there were at least a dozen.
And most of them were eating bird seed under our bird feeder and drinking out of the birdbath.
These aren’t great photos because they’re taken from inside through the window with all sorts of reflections…but you get the idea.
It’s been an exciting evening here at the old King homestead. We’re all still on guard, no rest for the Sheltie!
I’m desperately in need of a chuckle. Work has been difficult lately…to put it nicely. And my Wordless Wednesday was going to be pictures of Katie frolicking in our sleet and snow. (Yes we got sleet and snow last night and today. I know. It’s the end of March. It’s not fair. But it is what it is.) I couldn’t do my Wordless Wednesday because my blog has suddenly decided it doesn’t want to allow photos to be uploaded. And a Wordless Wednesday without photos is just a big blank. Tonight I’m too tired to try to figure out what changed. Plus it’s just annoying and I have way too much annoying stuff going on already.
So anyway. You probably don’t know how excited I’ve been this winter to be able to put my car in the garage. Many of the past winters I’ve had to scrape snow off the car every morning before work because we’ve had construction stuff in the garage during our multi-year remodel projects. So this year, as part of my agreement to go back to work I negotiated that I’d get a spot in the garage for my car! It’s been wonderful.
It started snowing and sleeting and raining ice last night and apparently continued most of the day though I was too busy to notice. As I was leaving work this evening I heard the noise of people scraping the ice off their car windows. I smiled and actually said to myself…”I’m so glad I don’t have to do that because I have a garage.”
And then the smile faded as I realized that while I was at work the car hadn’t been in the garage…and yes indeed I did too have to scrape ice off my windshield. And just as the disgusting truth sunk in I began to laugh.
Cause if you can’t laugh while you’re standing in a puddle of ice water scraping your windshield in March what can you do?
Change Is Hard 