December Recap

December has been a good month, mostly snowy and cold.  Some things came to an end, like my nano novel and my online writing class.  Other projects have started or rather restarted, like my couch potato to marathon in three years project.  And as we head toward January with its resolutions, and new beginnings, it seems right to look back on this last month and revist some of my posts and your responses.

Thanks Amy for your congratulations on my big win and letting me know I'm always a winner in your heart.  Thanks to everyone for enduring my blabbing about my novel the entire month of November, and sorry that I probably won't let anyone see it ever.

Regarding having to sled on sand, yes, Doug, I am glad that I live where it feels like there is snow six months of the year.  However, I think the recent cold snap of 10 below zero is a little too much!

My stepdad shared a video about the LAD artery, where he had his heart attack and where his stent was put in.

It's called the widow maker's artery and when it is completely blocked, the doc says you've got less than five minutes to get to a hospital.   I'm sure glad that it was only 99% blocked and that his recovery is going very well.

My honey told me that a better title for my winter walking post (or at least this photograph) would have been the Michelin Woman.






Thanks Kristi for tipping me off about the 30-day challenges when I was sharing my attempts to "get fitter".  Expect to see an upcoming post about my experiences, successes, failures and modifications of those challenges!

While talking on the phone with someone about my post on my in-laws' romance, she confessed that she was curious about how much time had passed between the break-off of the relationship and the rapprochement.  My honey says that he thinks a little over a year went by before his father had squared everything away with his family and Robert felt that he could try to find Alice again.  And he really had to look, because by that time Alice was working at Coker College in South Carolina, far from where they had met in Chapel Hill.  How did he find her?  I'm still not sure, except that I know he didn't have Google to help him!

Finally, as always, thanks to everyone who reads these ramblings, whether you comment or not.  It's fun to write knowing I have an audience.  I hope that all of you had many wonderful moments in the month of December, just as I did.

The Perfect Post

"Last night I had the strangest dream . . . "

Ed McCurdy

OK, it was the night before last and there weren't any countries pledging to do away with war and maybe the dream wasn't so strange.  Still, it was a first for me.

On and off, for most of Saturday night, I dreamt about this blog.  Specifically, I dreamt about the perfect blog post for today.  It had a great title, at least four paragraphs and a kick-ass ending.  (I always sweat the endings!)

Unfortunately, I can't remember a single detail about the dream.  I know that it was perfect, but I don't remember the title, topic, ending, anything!  I know that I thought about it continually during the night, and my one memory is that I kept telling myself to write it down.  But I was sleeping or at least half asleep, so I didn't write down a word.

Maybe someday it will come to me, because it sits right outside my brain, teasing me with its perfection, like a lyric that I can't quite come up with.  But if I'm lucky, and I stop thinking about it for a little while, it may come back to me.  I'll let you know.

But until that time, I'm putting a notebook, pen and a headlamp at my bedside.  Just in case.

Addicted to solitaire

I'm a little tired and I really just want to go to bed, and I should be writing tomorrow's (today's) post, but what am I doing?  Playing solitaire instead.

I blame Ken Levine, whose sitcom writing seminar I attended in late October.  He recommended playing free cell, a somewhat complicated solitaire game that I had never heard of.  In order to win the game you have to think ahead several moves, just like when you're writing a sitcom.  So I started to play.  And I liked it.

But because I don't often have a long attention span, I started exploring the other links at the bottom of the free cell page.  Yatzhee, spades, crazy eights.  They were all good, but spider solitaire is what I love at the moment.

It's complicated, has just enough rules and an undo button.  Perfect for me! So anytime I say that I'm writing my blog, but my honey hears the click, click of the mousepad instead of the tippety-type of the keyboard?  He knows that I'm playing solitaire and avoiding writing this blog.

Sometimes I keep playing late into the night until I finally win a game.  It's good I can admit I have a problem.  Now I just have to work on solving it.

Vanilla Frosting

Puffy snow looks very much like white icing on top of a cake.  Or so says my honey.  And I agree with him.  We went out into the vanilla frosting yesterday afternoon and it was marvelous!  I'm not sure why I don't go cross country skiing or snowshoeing every day . . .

Somehow I'm going to be attaching these skis to my boots more often, because being outside in the woods, listening to the stillness and looking at the snow, makes me happy.

This is a rare snow mushroom, only found where more than a foot of snow has fallen.  It is very uncommon to see one so close to a ski trail.

The day was quite cloudy, which kept the temperature warm.  There had also been a few flurries in the morning so the trees had just a bit of snow captured in their branches.  Gorgeous!  Mother Nature does a lovely job showing off her finery and I will do my best to get out into it more this winter.

Licence to Ski

During a conversation yesterday I mentioned that I was going to go cross-country skiing and I needed to make sure I had my skiing license for this year.

The person I was talking to thought I was joking.  (She does not live in my north-midwestern, crazy-for-cross-country-skiing, state.)  I was not kidding. Here, everyone over the age of 16 that skis on public trails must have a license, also known as a pass.  There are one day passes ($6), one season passes ($20), and three season passes ($55).

Why?  The fee paid by the many enthusiastic skiers helps support the public trail system.  I'm talking a little through my hat here, but I think it pays for buying the machines that groom the trails, helps pay the actual costs of grooming the trails throughout the season, and maybe even defrays the cost of having warming huts for the freezing hordes.  If you are in charge of public lands and you want to create or maintain ski trails, you can apply for a grant from the state.

I don't know how many thousands of miles of ski trails are in the program, but I probably have over fifteen different places to ski within twenty miles of my house.  That includes parks of many kinds, county, regional, state, even some recreational areas.  At least two county parks have trails with lights, so people can ski after work.  Being willing to drive further adds many more skiing possibilities.

Seems like a good value to me.  I plan on getting some of my money's worth today!

Christmas Earrings

For someone who doesn't really celebrate Christmas, I realized that I have a lot of winter holiday themed earrings. . . and I love wearing them!  This confuses some of my friends and colleagues who hear me say "no gifts" and "bah, humbug", but then notice my head jingles when I walk.

What can I say?  I'm complicated.  Here is some of my beloved Christmas jewelry.  I don't know where my Santa earring is, because I haven't seen it since last year.

The candy cane is simple and fun, but the other two are awesome!  The small Christmas lights dangle nicely against each other, and although they don't light up, I think it was a really clever idea to put them on an earring.  But the jingle bells are my favorite.  They ring softly whenever I move my head, and although that could be really annoying, it isn't.  Instead, it is gentle and pleasant and it makes me smile.

In the future, I imagine that I'll continue my complex life and wear my Christmas-y earrings while not celebrating Christmas.  I like both of those decisions.

And for all of you?  I hope everyone had a lovely yesterday, however you chose to spend it.

Square One — Again!

My tailbone seems to have finally recovered from my trip down the stairs on my bottom so many weeks ago.  So it's back to the beginning of the couch potato to marathon in 52 weeks plan.

Yes, it's a return to Week One, Day One, where you jog for 30 seconds and walk for a minute until you manage to eke out 2 miles.  I started yesterday morning.  And it felt good.

Due to my lack of experience jogging outside in the ice and snow, I opted for going to the local YWCA and the treadmill.

This particular Y has TVs on the treadmills, so I got to watch various morning shows while I went the distance very slowly.  And then I walked a mile home, being pretty skillful at walking on ice and snow.

Quite frankly, I am unsure whether I will ever complete a marathon, however, even just doing week one, day one over and over again wouldn't be a bad idea for my health.

Of course, once spring comes and the sidewalks have melted, I'll have to take my walking/jogging/running show on the road.  Maybe by April, I will have managed to make it to Week Four . . .