The calendar says spring and although the weather is mild, I am suspicious. We’ve gotten some of our most punishing weather in March. The worst, probably, came a few years ago, when we had a windstorm that uprooted the neighbor’s massive pine and left me without power for three days – three days in which the temperatures plummeted to the single digits.
The spring holidays are my least favorite. They seem gaudy and false. There is a deep aura of melancholy to them. Even more since my father passed away in March, celebrations in the spring feel hollow when the world is working so hard to bloom again. In comparison, the autumnal holidays Halloween and Thanksgiving feel so much more festive. They come as a welcome relief, the end of another year. We celebrate the going of the light, put our masks on to scare death, we harvest and we gather with loved ones in the comfort of our homes to eat and give thanks. It’s always been easier for me to celebrate the culmination of a hard effort than the commencement of one. And spring always feels like a hard beginning, much harder than the dwindling season into winter.
On Friday, the promised snow began around 2pm and went on thickly until about 9pm, when it switched over to a sodden freezing drip. The winds picked up and the power flickered a few times, but stayed on; we had a full woodbox, lots of books, a Blue Apron to cook, and a bottle of Chianti. We watched ‘Barbie’ (we both enjoyed it) and headed out around 10 for a walk around the neighborhood to check out the storm damage.
It was a wet heavy snow that was difficult to clear on Saturday, but the sun came out a bit and the exercise felt good. Shoveling and snowblowing that kind of snow is a uniquely taxing experience – you’re cold outside of your clothes but overheated and sweating inside them. My latest merino wool purchase – a lightweight henley – came in handy. We have a tiny and not very rugged snowblower, and I had to use the ‘single woman’ method that I learned before Brandon moved in – you clear the areas that will get you sued. Focus on the walkways and sidewalks and leave the driveway alone. Our 4WD and AWD vehicles will mash the rest of it down so don’t waste your energy or salt or battery life. We gathered up branches, made sure the birds and the squirrels had full feeders and water in the heated birdbath and that the local Coopers Hawk was nowhere to be seen. After that, I was very happy to come in and have a hot soapy shower and use some of my new favorite skincare.
I think I mentioned that this year I splurged on a Beekman 1802 Advent calendar and to say I am obsessed with their rich, whipped goat milk skin and bodycare is an understatement. Every product has been fantastic. (I have no affiliate links – these are just my personal recommendations based on my own experience and purchase.) My especial favorites are the milk drops, the Honeyed Grapefruit body lotion, and the Sunshine Lemon handcream. The Honeyed Grapefruit body lotion scent layers really nicely with my newest deodorant. I’ve tried to switch to an aluminum-free deodorant on many occasions with disappointing results. I tried Schmidts, which was like sandpaper and ripped up my underarms (terrible), Toms of Maine (slimy) and Peach. Peach was the best of that bunch but I found the metal packaging to be fiddly and weird, and I couldn’t wear it on office days because it just didn’t hold up to my workday stresses. I finally decided to pay for Native (it’s not cheap for deodorant) but it’s the best and I haven’t had to go back to my regular Dove once, even on stressful workdays. We’ll see how it holds up in the summertime but so far so good.
I spent the rest of the weekend with books and vlogs and knitting. My 2024 reading started off strong – I read ‘Ninth House’ by Leah Bardugo and quickly dove into the sequel, ‘Hell Bent’. While ‘Ninth House’ took awhile to rev up, once it did I was hooked and found both books to be very enjoyable reading experiences. Unfortunately, once they were over, I started ‘We Ate the Dark’ by Mallory Pearson and this is proving to be a much less entertaining read. It was a free Amazon Prime monthly selection. I’m usually a little wary of those, but this one started out okay and I thought it would be a quick interlude until I could get to the library again. I’m about 40% done and on the fence about whether to finish it. I hate to waste time with a book I’m not enjoying but somehow I can’t quite put it down yet either. It started off interestingly enough but quickly gave me strong ‘what the fuck is going on’ vibes and now it is really veering off into those waters.
Hope you all had a calm and peaceful weekend and are enjoying your small pleasures!
I believe there is a Scandinavian saying about “no bad weather, only bad clothes!” and I thought about that when I woke up to 39 degrees this morning. Cold weather and life changes have come to my part of Michigan but I have warm clothes and a positive mindset.
Brandon has commenced a work project out of state and will be away periodically for quite some time. He’ll be coming home most weekends and for a longer time over the holidays, but I have to make up my mind that my extra alone time will be healthy and productive. Today at lunch I went out for a run to enjoy the brisk fresh air and if I feel sad this evening after work, I’ll take my iPad to the gym and spend some time on the elliptical instead of lying on the couch with snacks and reruns. I’m a true introvert so I don’t mind alone time. I do, however, want to focus the extra time on productive and positive things – doing extra work, spending extra time with my beautiful daughter, my knitting, and my feline companions. It’s good to have plans, now to put them into practice.
I have a couple of recipes from WW buddies that I want to explore. I actually do not enjoy cooking, but when Brandon and the kiddo are both home, I cook almost every night. Left to my own devices I’d probably eat frozen pizza and salads every night so my plan is to batch cook a couple of times a week. This week I’ll be trying this white chicken chili recipe – I love a dish where I can just throw a bunch of stuff into a crockpot and be done.
In other news, we hosted our first party for teenagers on Saturday night. We got lucky with the last evening of comparatively mild temperatures for autumn – later that night and into the morning hours, the cold would really begin to set in – so we set up an outdoor projector and big screen and the kiddo had 9-10 of her marching band friends over. We ordered pizzas and set out a cooler of sodas, some bowls of Halloween candy, cider and donuts, they had a bonfire and watched ‘Scream’ and ‘Blair Witch Project’ bundled up in blankets. I kept creeping around to the back of the house to eavesdrop and enjoy their snarky comments and laughter. I told Brandon that we are officially in the period of life where we do the hard labor and bear the expense for her parties and then don’t get to enjoy the fun! I was gratified that the kids that she invited are all great young people who seemed to really enjoy themselves and even though it was a little stressful for me to plan a party for teenagers, and I had moments of regretting the offer – I am tentatively sure it was a reasonable success and I would do it again to make the kiddo happy.
Every day, every week is an opportunity to try new things and extend myself beyond my comfort zone, and I just keep telling myself – there’s no bad weather.
I am happy to report that at long last, I feel mostly recovered from my dust-up with Covid. I’m trying to get rid of the lingering fatigue and miasma in my lungs and head but have my smell and taste back, am back to running (slow, snotty, and wheezy), and I am feeling about a thousand percent better. It was no joke, though, and took me down for longer than any illness I’ve had in the last few years, so again, I highly recommend boosting and taking it seriously.
Otherwise, we’ve been chugging along with marching band season, which hasn’t been as all-consuming this year due to fewer home games. Between that and Covid, I’ve only been to one tailgate and I”ll miss the first marching competition next Saturday because we have tickets to ‘Funny Girl’ at the Fisher Theater in Detroit (purchased before the competition schedule was released). The kiddo has a date to Homecoming in early October (!!) so we had to go dress shopping. The last one she tried on was the winner and is quite an elegant little number, black lace over a nude silk sheath, with little off-the-shoulder straps. She’s going to look like a million bucks, very Old Hollywood, but as a mom it is still gobsmacking to see how SMALL all the dresses are. I told a friend on Facebook that I think they could make 3 of today’s dresses out of 1 of ours from the 1980’s / early 90’s.
We booked our Spring Break – yes, it seems early but after forcing the kid to go to Colonial Williamsburg last year, I’d promised her a trip somewhere warm for next spring. We are going to the Bahamas! For 5 nights and 4 days which already stresses me out a little bit (thinking about being away from home that long) but which I’m sure will be an amazing trip.
The weather in Michigan has been very warm and summery, sunny days with highs in the upper 70’s and cool nights, lather rinse repeat. It shows no signs of cooling off anytime in the next 10 days which is nice, but I really am craving some crisp weather, frost on the pumpkins, and some storms to usher in the cozy season. There’s nothing worse than traipsing around a cider mill or pumpkin patch when it’s 80 degrees and you are sweating and there are bees in your cider.
Labor Day weekend has been very hot and sunny in SE Michigan. As always, I look forward to the cooler days of fall, and am ready to put the summer behind me. I love Michigan summers and they have to be valued and spent wisely, but Labor Day feels like the real New Year. I’m prepared for shorter, darker days with a more rigid routine of school for the kid and work for me, with more office days per week.
The kiddo and I hit the outlets for some shopping on Friday, and having some new clothes made me conscious of the stagnant energy in my closets. So after a day of pounding the outlet pavements, I came home and filled six bags of donation clothes, shoes, bedding and linens. Goodbye dusty ankle boots that in pre-pandemic days, I wore to work with trousers that are now too small. Goodbye too-tight sweaters and summer tops that don’t spark joy. It made me super happy to hang up some nice new things in my closet and see the empty shelf space.
Brandon & I met up with his cousin for drinks at the brewery downtown. We went to the nursery where we bought a gorgeous new azure blue pottery planter for the patio, half off, and fall plants for the containers on the porch. We ordered a couple of full size skeletons to sit on the porch for Halloween and I pulled my basil plants and dried the leaves & flowers. I spent time on the porch reading until it just got too hot and we watched the Vuelta de Espana (one of the professional cycling grand tours). We talked about fall bucket lists that include trips to the orchard and the Renaissance Festival.
It’s going to be record breaking hot today. The porch and patio are scorching hot and the hummingbird feeder is attracting all of the angry bees who, unlike me, aren’t looking forward to the change of seasons. I don’t want to go to the crowded pool for the last day festivities and instead, am planning a day on the couch in pajamas, napping and reading, and getting ready for the week (and the fall) ahead.
It’s March and 2023 already feels pretty action packed. Our power grid in suburban Elysia is always a matter of heated local commentary and it’s been tested severely over the past couple of weeks. An ice storm knocked out about 500,000 households two weeks ago, and just as the vast majority of those folks were coming back online, we got hit with an unusually intense snowfall on Friday night that delivered another wallop. The snow started showering down at about 3:30 Friday afternoon – it was heavy and wet, and came down so fast that it took more trees, branches, and power lines with it. We made it all the way through our Friday night movie selection (“The ‘Burbs” which Brandon had never seen) and within seconds of the end credits, we heard the familiar sound of blowing transformers and the lights went out. I’ve lived in Michigan almost all my life and I’ve never experienced thunder snow and lightning before. It was amazing and terrifying. Luckily, I had the foresight to blow up our air mattress so we could sleep downstairs near the woodstove, so we were fairly comfortable, but still. It’s a matter of convenience. The rest of the weekend felt like a wash – power going off and on until Sunday mid-afternoon. When it was finally restored, we could start laundry, meal plan for the week ahead, restock the fridge, etc. Pretty much everyone in the neighborhood is just pissed and done with the fact that our power goes out whenever someone sneezes. There will be a long line of generator customers (including us) once tax refund checks are delivered.
Anyway – it’s March and I have some goals!
Firstly – health and self-image – I am getting my teeth fixed. I resisted for a long time but my dentist told me before the holidays that my bite has become so bad that my teeth are actually loose on top and chipping on the bottom. I had braces as a kid, but I didn’t wear my retainers so….cautionary tale. I went in for an ortho consult last week and unfortunately, Invisalign is not an option…I need an extraction to relieve overcrowding and then it’s good old-fashioned brackets and bands for me. Starting soon.
Also in the health and self-image category – I’m back on Weight Watchers. While I’m all about body positivity, and embracing that my peri-menopausal body at 49 and 8 months is never going to look like it did before (and that’s okay) – I would really like to feel a bit better in my clothes than I do currently. I am short, and I gain weight around my belly and as a result I can just look barrel-shaped which makes finding pants that fit almost impossible. So another March goal is tracking and doing better with my food choices and getting back into some of my work pants. It’s also somewhat true that once I do one positive thing for my overall health and well-being (see ortho above) then I feel inspired to do other things. I spontaneously re-upped Weight Watchers a few hours after my ortho consult.
Professional goals – Although Widget Central has been fairly lax about hybrid schedule and working from home, I’m conscious that these things are much about perception, too, so in March I will try to be more faithful to 2-3 days a week in the physical office building. I’ve been averaging about 1 office day a week since January. I like work from home, but I also don’t mind time in the office, so this shouldn’t be a major problem for me – the biggest thing is just planning to pack my lunch and snacks (which should also be good because – see above with weight issues).
Miscellaneous goals include keeping up with my 2023 reading challenge, running at least 20 miles, blogging once a week and finishing at least 1 knitting project. I’ll check in on these things at the beginning of April, hopefully in a bit more organized format.
Not really a goal here, but at the end of the month, for the kiddo’s Spring Break, we’ll be taking a trip to Williamsburg, VA – she’s going to be 15 this summer so she has probably already aged out of the ‘educational trip with parents’ bracket, but I still think it will be cool for her to see Williamsburg and Jamestown, the weather should be mild and pleasant, the hotel has an indoor pool and we’ll eat some nice meals. I’m currently trying to decide whether to drive our Subaru Outback (the inexpensive route) or rent a more comfy minivan for the 20ish hour (round trip) drive.
And of course there are the usual tasks of getting taxes done (tomorrow), running the kiddo around to theater rehearsals (Hello, Dolly! in May! she plays the judge!) and marching band and music lessons and scheduling her summer music camp and driver’s education class in June (!!).
And that’s our March.
The title of my post is from William C. Bryant: “The stormy March has come at last, With winds and clouds and changing skies; I hear the rushing of the blast That through the snowy valley flies.”
Daily Tarot card pulls and this Queen has come up for me twice in two weeks.
Obligatory cute cat pic starring Emmett.
My work pants are perilously close to not fitting me; thinking about these “Dream Pants” but afraid I’ll look like a chimney sweep in them.
Windy, warm, and wet for Michigan February.
Finished the Road Trippin’ hat in time for my bestie’s 50th birthday celebration this weekend – we have an AirBnB, champagne, facial and dinner reservations, and an itinerary of vintage and antique stores to explore.
It’s just a quick Friday hello from the depths of the Michigan February refrigerator. We’ve entered the time of the winter season that’s the hardest for me. The cold has turned dry and grinding (several three-cat nights and single-digit mornings). Running outside is dangerous because of the slick conditions so the exercise I get is indoors and unsatisfactory. In summary I am bloated, tired, pale and pimply.
Every morning on the school run, though, the sunrise is more vivid, streaks of blue and pink and gold, over the steeple of the Catholic church on the hill. We are moving back towards the light. I made it into the office twice this week and my biggest battle has been the high school after-school pickup line. It’s always an exercise in kamikaze driving, cutting each other off and angling for a spot, minivans on two wheels and SUV’s making questionable judgments. But if that’s the worst of my week, then I know my week is going pretty well.
We’re getting long stretches of mild and uninspiring weather here in SE Michigan – no snow, no sun, not much except a cool grey damp. Is this climate change in action? Winters of my childhood seemed much different, with snow so deep we could dig igloos and tunnels in it, elementary school lockers crowded with wet-smelling coats and mittens, clumping home in moon boots that leaked and had to be lined with bread bags. Regardless, it makes running outside feasible so I’m hoping my January running will be much better than the last 2 years (I don’t think I did more than 10 total miles in January in 2021 and 2022).
A few good things this week: The Elvis birthday movie on Saturday night was everything we hoped it would be – a true Elvis / Colonel Tom Parker stinker called ‘Spinout’. No real plot to speak of, disjointed and ill-timed music numbers (one of which was called ‘Smorgasbord’, which referred to all of the women that Elvis’s character liked to enjoy being a single swinger). We chatted with the theater owner for awhile after the show and recommended ‘Clambake’ for next year’s offering.
My boss and I were finally in the office at the same time this week and she gave me a Christmas present – the Five Minute Journal. My boss is pretty amazing and always thinks of me around the holidays, usually with a nice bottle of champagne. But for a journal geek like me, this gift was perfect. I’m really looking forward to spending some time with it. This will be the 3rd journal / planner I keep – I have a Hobonichi Techo for my personal / family life, a five year journal that I’m 3 years into, and now this.
Other likes: ‘Pale Blue Eye’ on Netflix, which we’re about halfway through – massive shout out that Edgar Allan Poe is played by Dudley of Harry Potter film fame which is an almost unbelievable transformation. My work pants still fit (barely). I’ve been watching a lot of homesteading channels on YouTube (recently just found Little Spanish Farmstead and Hannah Lee Duggan).
two weeks in a row of painting my nails! I don’t even know who I am anymore!
Dislikes this week: I picked up “Livid”, the new Patricia Cornwell, off my library reserve list and so far it is a dud. I’m going to keep going with it but this is a disappointment, since I really enjoyed the last one. MTC on this but so far this is just an ‘everyone is part of a massive conspiracy out to get Scarpetta’ and those are so tiring. I have to go for an ortho consult on Monday because my bite is so bad that my teeth are loose and some are chipping and my dentist can’t do Invisalign out of his office, he has to outsource me due to the complications.
The weekend will be quiet with the kiddo preparing for final exams and Brandon still on a six day work schedule. I hope everyone is able to recharge and enjoy!
Six Ten 