I know that Disney is a painted face, a glitter of fake rhinestones and paste, but it imitates a life that people want. It is sunny here and my happy meter has climbed with the periodic absorption of vitamin D in natural light that I can absorb in snatches between seminar topics.
I ran this evening along the Boardwalk in the faded light and had a lone dinner at a bar, reading on my Kindle and feeling as happy as it is possible to be in solitude.

I shopped for Miss L and missed her badly and felt that no one should be at Disney without their little person.
So I had a glass of wine at a quiet tucked away corner of the resort, a pseudo 1940s lounge, and I read again while lounging in a cracked leather wing chair. My heels were loud on the board floors and someone was wearing cologne that reminded me of someone else. I listened to a faux wireless replay old radio programmes; eavesdropping casually and disinterestedly on my fellow drinkers.
Someone said to someone else, ‘of all the gin joints…’ Somebody else said, ‘everyone I want to talk to is right here.’ And it sounded perfectly fitting.

Maybe someday when I am old and my responsibilities are discharged, I will move to Disney and be a bartender or a concierge, and take a part in this happy facade.

So, it’s not as bad as last year. Really. By comparison, this is just a normal January. There are some nasty commutes, and it’s tough to get enough vitamin D during the short dark days. But the light is creeping back, slowly but surely, and our little household is doing pretty well now.

I did well with my workouts this week. I ran only three times, still favoring my left shin, which has a tendency towards tenderness if I ramp up too quickly on miles. I’m wondering if it’s time to bite the bullet and go see a doctor about this left shin. But I did some good cross-training and today I hope to get in a good Pilates session with one of my DVD’s. I’m incentivizing myself with Serial on podcast during my workouts. I’m one of the Luddites who has just discovered podcasts and I love them for working out, because it keeps my mind engaged during an otherwise boring intellectual time. Podcasts made me realize, though, that I need a good pair of wireless headphones, since my iPhone 6 is fussy about what type of headphones it will accept, and my ears are as well.

So overall I’m feeling pretty fit this week, despite Sarge’s reluctance to part with my workout bag in the morning…

January is a big birthday month in my family, so yesterday Miss L & I drove to my brother & sister-in-law’s house to meet up for a collective celebration. My SIL loves entertaining, and we love being entertained, so there was slow cooked pork tenderloin, two kinds of birthday cake, ice cream, and sledding.

My mom got new hiking boots, and we reminisced about hiking the Old Indian Trail in the Sleeping Bear over Christmas. It made me homesick. When I got home that night, there was a post from the Sleeping Bear on FB about the Trail Trekker Challenge which seemed like a sign that I need to get back up north soon to start filling in my logbook. Not soon, though, as I am headed off next week to sunnier climes. It’s for a somewhat draining and dull-sounding business seminar, but I am excited to be able to sit outside for some time each day and get some proper natural light. Sometimes my goals are modest indeed.

In the meantime, here is what Sunday looks like in command central (i.e. my bed) – two girls, a cat, a laptop, and a Furby.

Hope yours is as relaxing.

Some days there are just a lot of reasons not to run. The house needs cleaning. Don’t I deserve a break? I haven’t eaten / I’ve eaten too much. My watch isn’t charged. It’s cold / wet / rainy. I JUST DONT FEEL LIKE IT.
(Insert gratuitous lazy cat pic here – wait, I just happen to have one.)

Many days I let those thoughts win.
Other days, though, I find my shoes.

And I go out into the slippery, wet, cold grey-brown January morning.

And I listen to the wind sweep over the hills, and feel the damp in my face. I take deep breaths of pine-needle scented air. I don’t worry how fast or how far I go. There are tracks on the path to follow; I watch where I set my feet down. There are birds in the brush. I am happy to be in my body and in my head and on that path. I can feel energy flow through me with every cold inhalation, blowing away cobwebs and turning weakness to strength, reluctance to determination, lethargy to joy, in a strange alchemy.

And this is how I feel, some days.

finally feeling better.

simmering thieves’ oil.

finding the energy to put fresh seed & suet out for the birds on a day so cold that my hands were numb after just a few minutes outside; the air was bright with sun and full of shimmering crystal pinpoints of snow. Deep breaths of cold clean air.

washing sheets and towels in hot water.

dry brushing my skin and detoxing in an epsom salt and coconut oil bath.

seeing Miss L. feel well enough to eat a great dinner and be happy about returning to school.

finally turning the heel on my first knitted sock in years.

spending a quiet suspended night of illness watching robert redford and natalie wood in ‘this property is condemned’.

resolving that next summer i will grow every variety of sage i can find; i have been wishing for bunches of it this winter to simmer and burn and hang in the fusty corners of a closed-up winter house.

It looks peaceful around here, but that is only because we have been horribly ill with norovirus and have no strength left to move.

Miss L got it first, and then handed it off to me.

I thought January had reached its nadir until I found myself sitting in my car on 8 Mile, sweating and with black spots floating across my vision, throwing my laptop and work heels out of my tote bag so I COULD VOMIT IN IT.

I’m hoping my next post is more optimistic and upbeat but until then I will be sprawled in a crumpled heap of nauseous, headachey misery wishing desperately for February.

Because when it’s one of the last sunny, mild days before predicted snow later in the week, and you have an hour before your next meeting, you just have to slip out to a Coney Island, sit at the counter, enjoy a great salad, and listen to the chatter around you.

Great Salt Lake and snow-capped mountains, not a bad view during my morning commute.

Plus, the upside of traveling across the country in one day is that I had plenty of time to catch up on my reading – and I chose my books wisely. I finished Divergent, plowed through Goose Girl by Shannon Hale, which was amazing, and will hopefully finish the second Chrestomanci by Dianne Wynne Jones on my way home. Great books all, and combined with the view, made a long day relatively painless.

So I laughed when the Weather Channel starting talking about a polar vortex, and I laughed when panicked shoppers deluged the grocery stores and picked the aisles clean. Come on. We live in Michigan. Expect this weather. You don’t need to buy out Meijer’s and line up at gas stations and ram each other’s cars and carts for a three-day snowfall.

But winter  storm Ion pretty much sucked. Schools cancelled, subzero Fahrenheit temps. Swapping child care duties for a cabin feverish five year old who actually surprised us by keeping herself (and two wild teenage cats) pretty constructively occupied for several days.

We were very lucky, all things considered. We live in town, so we had some degree of plowing out every day. We had plenty of food and we were able to manage Snoop’s off days by balancing our schedules and working together as a team. We didn’t have any damage to our roof or property, we kept power, and our pipes stayed intact. We also stayed safe and healthy and managed to keep out of the ditches while we were driving.

However, the resulting annoyance and inconvenience factor for my commute to Ann Arbor was considerable. The roads were icy and visibility impaired, lots of snow, spinouts, accidents. One morning I spent two hours and twenty minutes trying to get to work; I had a meeting, checked in with people, took care of some tasks, and turned around to drive back, so I could work from home for the afternoon shift with Snoop.

Back roads were no time saver, but as my fellow agitated commuters and I crept along country roads in a long traffic line, going about twenty five mph, I did see some lovely snowy landscapes, which is something, I guess. I started a photography series on Instagram titled, “Images from a Horrible Commute, In Which the Hapless Photographer Unwisely Took the Back Roads.” I’m sure I will have several other additions for this series by the time spring rolls around.

And once I actually reached the office, there were occasionally some nice glimpses out of my office window of the sun coming up through icy trees. Which is also something, I guess.

By the end of the week, we were all pretty worn out and ready for a Friday night spent in bed, under heaps of blankets, with Elizabeth Taylor and Rock Hudson.

My garden; heirloom tomatoes & 3 kinds of basil.
Coffee with real cream.
The Goodreads app & the security of always having a good book on tap or on order.
Grey cats and Shiloh shepherds.
Tide laundry detergent.
Acure products; sooooo wonderful, food for my skin & hair.
Real Housewives.
Hummingbirds.
Antidepressants.

The endless blue summer sky & the promise of what is to come.

michigan spring is on / off; one day it is snowing and the next day it is uncomfortably warm. we haven’t been outside as much as we’d like because we are all sneezing in a cloud of pollination. still, though, there have been a few good runs in the sunshine, red tulips in the yard, and a meditative afternoon spent trimming the hydrangeas, which felt oddly like an exercise in bonsai.

i look out my office window and notice the swallows have suddenly appeared, making their rapid graceful loops over the green lawn. the red-winged blackbirds sway on the reeds in the ditches by the side of the road. the sky is more blue.

lilacs can’t be far behind.