It’s cold where I am. Not freezing, if this was last February, I’d be rhapsodizing about how warm it is. But I’m used to my balmy summer (which was lovely) so now that it’s down in the fifties and sometimes forties (gasp), it’s cold. Thank god I have dachshunds and a poodle who thinks she’s one: Dachshund burrow. Trained to go down badger holes (they’re really badger hounds), they will burrow into damn near anything, but mostly into blankets. Which means I have little hot water bottles curled up on each side of me while I type. Of course if they hear a sound they object to, their frantic lust to get out and chase it makes it look like the bed is boiling while I yell, “Give me a minute to get the blanket off, you dumbass,” but still . . . toasty.
How did happiness keep you warm this week?
Yesterday I cozied up with Let It Snow by Nancy Thayer and read it in the afternoon. Still far enough away from Christmas without getting anxious about the holiday. A good read. Characters are well done from a grumpy miserly granpa to his charming granddaughter Wink. The four shopkeepers working together on the wharf to get grumpy new landlord granpa to not raise the rent. A bit of romance with son of granpa and shopkeeper. The island of Nantucket charming as always. Can you tell I liked it? I would have saved this review for Good Book Thursday but I’m moving back into crime fiction and I’ll be focused on that.
In the meantime husband is outside stowing the lawnmower and bringing forward the snowblower and generator getting them ready for winter.
Happy will be if son brings the grandkids and dog today. Grands are older so if they have nothing planned they will be down. Dog is another story, she loves it, she’ll bound out of the car and do a dance and run around the yard, I think checking her spots.
We have snow. No, I am not happy about it. I don’t get my snow tires on for three more weeks. (It was the first appointment I could get.)
I was reading about how mediation can help your concentration so I decided to try again. I’ve never been able to meditate – at least not the method my mother taught me by clearing my mind. Hah. It’s like a 200-year-old attic up there. Not able to be cleared.
So I’m trying an app. It’s made me anxious. My brother, who I may have mentioned is a Doctor of Chinese Medicine, agreed that it’s my brain fighting back and he taught me about tapping. So now I go around tapping all the time, or if at work, remembering what tapping feels like and doing it mentally so my co-workers don’t think I’m nuts. (Not that they don’t anyway.)
I’m also teaching myself ASL, so they might not know the difference.
I’m cooling my house down to fifty degrees today – trying to kill the bloody fruit flies. I hate those suckers. The dogs are confused. Pippin told me in no uncertain terms that I was out of my mind.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B4sOVHIAgiu/
Cool re ASL.
I’m a fidgeter. So kinhin (sp?) – a zen walking meditation is good for me.
And there was a thing in Tamora Pierce’s Circle Opens books where Daja gets these twin students and one can’t do the sitting meditation so she teachers her staff work. I basically learned it from there. Two-handed drip on a staff held parallel to the ground hit at three points – high, medium, low. An old broom handle serves as a staff stand-in. I highly recommend. (Note to self, ask cousin where’s the old staff.)
For the fruit flies try putting out a little bowl of apple cider vinegar with a drop of dish soap, covered by Saran Wrap with holes punched in it ( for example using a fork). I think the soap breaks the surface tension so they drown.
I like the kind of meditating where you just sit and try to listen to closest sound you hear and forget away sound, and then try to hold them in your mind at the same time, and then slowly add in all the other senses. It’s harder for my mind to wander off and it usually feels very peaceful.
After I flunked a 8 week mindfulness course; I was told by a psychologist that people with ADD can’t meditate; it is almost diagnostic. I could feel my pulse go faster every time I tried. No nirvana for me.
I so regret having missed that October 23rd “National Slap Your Annoying Coworker Day,” and I don’t even know this coworker. I may be stretching the definition of coworker, because his “footprint” is the alias left in the audit software that tells me he is the one changing setpoints in the Building Automation System.
But on the happiness front, I’ve completed my Christmas shopping for the dotter and kids. I just have the son and his kids to go. Plus I need a new tree, but that can wait until dinner with the dotter. I’ll take the old tree to work and put prezzies under it.
I had a half workday, yesterday. FTR government-employed teachers here don’t get overtime. I took some children for a cricket playing/coaching event. It was too rainy for outdoors so they went indoors and learned a LOT.
I had a lot of fun just being with them and hanging out even though I got wet in the rain. I thrive on light and warmth so it wasn’t the best situation for me. But officials listened to problems and sought solutions so I actually felt happy.
We have just the right amount of nip in the air lately. Enough to enjoy hot chocolate and tea and sweaters, cookie baking and my heated mattress pad (which is my favorite gift I’ve ever received and is crucial to my happiness from November to March). I also have very fuzzy footy pjs. They’re too hot for me to honestly sleep in, but they’re perfect for lounging and watching TV or reading.
My sister-in-law and I ran a race this morning and I felt pretty good about it (aka didn’t feel like I was going to die at any point). Good week for happiness overall.
Happy to have finished my compost bin, and to have had a couple of hours in the garden this afternoon, doing the autumn clear-up. There’s been some wonderful, low sun shining through gold and copper beech leaves. And I’ve had a pretty sociable week: coffee with colleagues twice, a drink at the pub with fellow artists, and an Indian with a new friend on Friday.
I’m happily counting down the days to my first surgery follow up. Only another week. I’ve been working on projects and feeling accomplished.
In the big, anticlimactic move, I’ve lost my dachshunds to my mother. Her house is on the other side of the garden from mine, so they’re not completely lost. I really, really miss Gretchen burrowing in and planting her warm little self against my shoulder blades. I’ve retained my daughter’s schipperke but she’s most definitely an on-top-of-the-covers dog.
Happiness is a late spring garden. Birdsong, bee hum, frogs. We are still getting frosts quite regularly and had snow two nights ago, bloody rude for November. Not going to miss the evening ritual of covering the tomatoes and all the ‘hail Mary’ plants I’ve stuck in just in case we get one of those marvellous summers.
Jenny, I just checked my email and saw a promotion for one of your books in SBTBs, Charlie All Night along with a link to reviews of most of your others. The reviews go back to 2005.
Thought you would like to know.
11/10/2019 @ 11:30 PM. Smart Bitches Trashy Books, Jennifer Crusie, Historical Romance, & More 🙂
If nothing else, you launched me on a four-hour SBTB Binge, one that started with all of the reviews of Jenny’s books and expanded from there. It’s been a while since I visited there regularly. Now it’s bookmarked again. Thank you.
Huh. Another publisher bought HQ so they must be running that. Nobody tells me nothing.
Thanks for the head’s up!
Thanks for this, Mary! I owned two copies years ago but they disappeared. Loved it because it was my first Crusie. I adore Charlie. Got a copy for the kindle and started it last night. Such a treat.
It’s in the 20’s and 30’s here, and I’m Not Ready. On the other hand, I found a tick on one of my cats (they don’t go outside, so it must have come inside with me) after having found 3 on myself in the last 3 weeks. So I’m kind of ready for it to get cold enough to drive them all into hiding, if not actually kill the little bastards.
I have cats who snuggle sometimes, and that always makes me happy.
LOL at ‘the bed is boiling’
Happiness is having finally gotten a small amount of long-overdue yard work done. Unsatisfactory dwarf date palm has been evicted from the front yard. Three potted bougainvillea have been moved from back to front. In my own sweet time, those three will be installed in open-bottom raised planters (I do not dig in our hideous jet-fuel-saturated clay if I can possibly avoid it, and in this case I can).
Maybe next weekend I will spend another two hours out there liberating penstemon from an incursion of Wretched Grass.
I hate Wretched Grass in the flower beds. I have just had my third weeding this years (I thought I had it eliminated LAST year), to pry it out of my phlox and lilies. On the up side, I now have very loose, friable soil in that bed.
What’s Wretched Grass? I’ve known a few grasses over the years that’d fit that name. Barley grass and twitch are top contenders. I hates them both.
Sounds like couch to me – creeping, with sharp growing points. Comes in small (often in lawns and not much of a problem) and large, which is a challenge. But maybe it’s something exotic and American.
Generally at my place it’s couch grass but there are a bunch of ones that spread underground or by runners such as some creeping fescues which are used in lawn seed mixes. The fescue is very fine but I still get it in everything since I have to reseed spots almost annually.
Dinner with 2 cousins and a friend today; always interesting.
And then to the Cider Painters of America exhibit opening. They do minitures. Lovely and astonishing pictures, all very small-3″x5″ and under. There’s a basket of magnifying glasses available.
And finally, home to the dogs. Tantaka just wants her ball bounced and Jazzy went out, received a pet. and is now taking another nap. Will be standing guard for feeding time soon!
Happiness was sleeping in late because we decided to start a jigsaw puzzle after dinner and light a fire in the fireplace and stayed up until after midnight. And when I woke up the first thing I saw sleeping on the bed upside down and all cattywampus was my snoring Siamese. You have to laugh.
I’m planning a tea party. Intimidated by making the food, but looking forward to it.
I dog sat for a friend’s dachshund once. Every night she’d burrow under the covers and clamp onto my right thigh and sleep like that all night long.
If I rolled over, she’d move too, and then grab back on to my leg. It was so silly. I worried she’d be unable to breathe, but my friend said not to worry.
Got my Halloween decorations put away, and a pile of miscellaneous clean rags/cloths etc that had somehow taken up residence on my bureau. Enjoyed a lazy day with nice food treats. We are threatened with 4 inches of snow, and my snow tire appointment is next week, so I am right there with you, Kate! At least I have snow tires, which is a plus.
Drove to Bellingham today. Got some stocking stuffers, a Wellie Wisher doll for one granddaughter and wait for it…three pairs of Pjs and a dressing gown (housecoat) for $101.00 at Macy’s. Woohoo. One for the cruise in February. Very happy.
Weather is low 50s. It’s cold and damp on the wet coast.
Rebuilt VCR and new stereo amplifier & speakers arrived. Using Facetime, my daughter helped me set up the VCR, only to discover that I can barely see the images on our new big fancy TV. Another gadget should arrive on Tuesday that might help — it fits between the VCR and the TV.
The amplifier & speakers are great — I’ve been playing records all day.
It is wonderful to listen to Fairport Convention and Joan Baez and my old faves again.
We celebrated our 6th wedding anniversary this week. It was nice to spend time together, just the two of us. A nice dinner followed by chocolate ice cream for me and pistachio ice cream for him.
My daughter heard a crash and went to the kitchen. Our new dog had pulled the bottom rack, (with dirty dishes), out of the dishwasher across the kitchen. Wow, had not seen that coming. I have a new appreciation for burrowing dachshunds. I think we are going to have to clean up more.
I spent Saturday night and Sunday out of town at a friend’s party. Had a great time talking to her and a bunch of her interesting friends. And then dropped into another friend’s place on the way home. Great weekend.
I just moved to the mountains 3 months ago and I am loving it here. But this weekend, I drove down the mountain and returned to Durham where I participating in a storytelling event (FUN!) and saw old friends (FUN!) and went to Costco (on a Sunday, so…crowded…but still FUN because there is no Costco in Boone and I needed the good dog treats and the bulk vegetarian sausages and the HUGE containers of zucchini and tomatoes and mushrooms).
And then, in the middle of Costco, I saw the Cutco man, and I thought, “Those are the knives Jenny Crusie blogged about!” And even though I NEVER talk to salespeople, I stopped and looked at the knives. And then 3 other Costco shoppers stopped to tell me that they own Cutco knives and they love them and even though I felt like I was being sucked into the Bougie Vortex of White Privilege and Doom…I tried the knives. And now I have 3 REAL GROWN-UP KNIVES (at a good price – I mean, still $300, but online they cost even more).
And this morning I woke up early and used my awesome new knives to chop zucchini and mushrooms and tomatoes and made a stir fry and poached eggs in it and brewed fresh coffee and as soon as I post this I’m gonna go to the boarder and pick up the beagle, who will be freshly washed (and probably full of sausage because they give him sausage which is why he loves them and allows them to bathe him) and then we will spend today cuddling while I write lesson plans and grade and probably chop more stuff with my awesome new knives.
And that is why I am happy right now.
And now I’m happy, too, just reading this. Nothing but good times . . .
Anf good knives, which make SUCH a difference.
I have a Cutco meat cookbook that was my mother’s, though I don’t have her knives.
Happiness is getting together with a long-time friend I don’t often see and enjoying brunch at a local historic inn after church. Also: getting good news from the optometrist and a good haircut earlier in the week.
I spent three hours Sunday playing with art and still feel warmed, despite three inches and counting of snow.
I must do that.
I’m back again, way past time, but just wanted to say that reading everyone’s comments has left me feeling warm, even though it is snowing outside and I’m going to have to crawl to work tomorrow.
I didn’t have to work today and had a nap in the chair in front of the woodstove with the dogs on my lap.
this is the good life.
I am a little late posting here too. I am still in recovery mode (somewhat, I still have to replace the washer/dryer, dehumidifier, and the electric roaster that were destroyed in the flood) but I have heat, electricity, and hot water, which is fantastic.
I spent part of my weekend running errands and doing laundry but did manage to watch some figure skating and listen to a few episodes of The Prancing Pony Podcasts. Two guys dissect the works of JRR Tolkien, starting with (I believe, I am listening to their episodes of The Hobbit) The Silmarillion. I have been picking up on things I never noticed even with multiple readings over the years.
After reading this post, I miss my cat more than ever. Dachshunds may help keep you warm, but do they purr at the same time? When I took off the heavy blanket in the spring time, there was always a circle of gray and white cat hair where Quaker slept between my feet at night. Since the temperature is taking a nosedive tonight, I miss him a lot. And he was a lot more agile than a dog.
Dealing with drywall at daughter’s construction site, then this weekend upstairs guy had a pipe burst and wood floors in my bathroom seeped water. Thank goodness I was at home to report it.
They cut a hole in my wall, put in new copper pipe, took three hours, and today I’m dealing with drywall and paint here, another two hours of work. So weird.
Makes me wonder what’s going on. An old psychic once told me when weird things are happening in your life look at the bigger picture. She said things would be messy globally. How true. My family in Australia are dealing with wildfires. One brother, one sister evacuated twice. The rest are okay for now. Then we have impeachment hearings tomorrow. Very messy.