Little Blue

 Finally-- a blue sky morning.

.

I bought this pan during a deep inversion.  I love the color.  

Ironically, I haven't yet used the little treasure. I just like to look at it sit on the stove.  Or on the gate.  Or on the picnic table.

My Mr. thinks it looks "little old lady."  My older daughter thinks it's a bit retro.  

I like it.

Pedaling to Sleep

Sometimes to facilitate sleep, I visualize myself going places.  It's a memory exercise.  The process of mentally returning somewhere and traveling through that moment puts me in dream-mode.  I usually fall asleep before I arrive.  The more details I remember or imagine, the faster I fall asleep.  Last night, I went for a bike ride.  I started at our home in Brewerton, rolled down the driveway, turned left onto Steamship Manhattan, and rode out of the neighborhood.  I followed my long route around Oneida Lake and up Mud Mill toward home. I was asleep before I arrived.  Sometimes I just want to go home.

Right before we left New York, I noticed this home was bull-dozed.  At first I mourned the tree they cut down.  At the time, I didn't realize they would also level the house. I will probably never know the owner's plan for this land.  It doesn't really matter. Unless one of my daughters decides to marry someone from upstate New York, I will probably never return.  At the time, biking by this tree and house brought me hope and made me happy. New York is no longer home.

Sometimes it's difficult to find beauty in the present.  When that happens, it is even more difficult to imagine a beautiful future.  I want to find my beautiful place. I want to find a new home. Meanwhile, I'm thankful for memories.

Ladies and Gentleman

The sun came out today.  Perfect snowman-building weather.  Tiny snow people are so fun, quick, and easy to build.  Happy weekend to you!!!

Sometimes Rough

Two or  three years ago, I touched an elephant for the first time at a zoo in Syracuse, New York.  Its slightly hairy skin felt smoother than I expected, smoother than it looked.  It was definitely smoother than this tree trunk outside the home where we are living which today reminded me of an elephant's leg.

This tree's ridges are deeper than I remember seeing and feeling on any tree. That Penske truck really wounded the poor old thing.  Sadly, some wounds take a very long time to heal. Some never do.  I wonder how the tree will cope and how it will look in spring?

The sky was so murky grey today with the current inversion.  I was searching outside for something beautiful, hoping to be cheered up somehow.  The patterns in the trunk caught my attention and the look of it brought back a beautiful memory.

Winter Park

 He walked alone down a trodden path,

Into an empty park.

He sank onto the snowy bench cushion.

 Did he notice the sun reflecting off granite crystal specks and tiny ice mirrors?

Did the jagged melt line and cold white caterpillar fascinate him?

As he stood and climbed the path toward home, did he see the sun shining through the window of baby aspen and grand evergreens into the afternoon winter sky?

Winter Zoo

It was cloudy and cold and worth it.  The animals were active.  There were no crowds.   Indoor exhibits, outdoor space heaters, and lots of running and jumping kept us warm.  They sell hot chocolate, but we had some waiting for us at home.  It was a great way to spend a Saturday afternoon with three very energetic children.

Me Encanta Limas

I've been loving limes for the past week or two.  I watched some Hispanic-looking women fill produce bags full of them at the grocery store and decided to follow their example.  Since then, I've been squeezing lime juice on just about everything.  Yum!

There are a lot of Latinos where we live.  Some stores have signs in both Spanish and English.  I only know enough Spanish to get myself in trouble, but I had the opportunity to give directions to a Spanish-speaking woman the other day and it felt great.

Let Down and Up

Do you feel sad when a blogger you normally read goes on a blog vacation?  I do.  I realize I may have let a few people down by my blog vacations.  Maybe those people have quit wondering and looking to see if I'd ever blog again.  Which is fine.  I still occasionally wonder about a few bloggers that I used to read.  But I've lost some links and don't know where to find them.  Sad.

Confession time.  I have several blogs.  Some of them are more inactive than this one.  The only slightly more active one is a private family blog.  That's where I feel comfortable sharing more details, locations, and names.  A couple of her posts ago, my sister put a link on her blog to that private blog.  That link might be bit of a let down for anyone who clicks on it.  So, just to be nice, I'm going muster some confidence and give you an edited version of a recent post on that blog.

Here it is:

The word of the year idea is to choose one word instead of a string of New Years resolutions.  The one word can represent your intention and focus for the year.  The idea is to act as if that word is already part of your life, to let it motivate action.  Most people set goals and try to do things while hoping that once they achieve the goal they'll gain the feeling which is reflected by the word.  That often doesn't work.  They achieve the goal and still don't feel the feeling because it's external change rather than internal change.  You can repeat your word of the year to yourself frequently.  You can say to yourself, "What am I going to do right now, today, to feel or be that word."  Those external goals and your belief in your ability to achieve them can be part of it.

Last year, my word was Courage.  It took courage to get my ears pierced, to encourage my husband to find another job, to accept the new job, to put our house on the market, to leave our house, to drive across the country as the sole driver of our minivan, to live in a very small house with a fairly large family, and to do a hundred other smaller things.  It was a good year for courage.  I still need it.   

My word for this year is Confidence.  It is similar to Courage I suppose.  Trust, belief, and hope are part of it.