February (and part of January) in pictures

Yeah, so February (and part of January). I guess it's been kind of busy though I can't think what I've been doing apart from reading A Song of Ice and Fire (yes, STILL, though I'm nearly done with book 5 now, huzzah!), school stuff, helping H with her theater costume(s), cooking all the things, eating all the things, drinking sazeracs, occasionally sleeping in my office because it's snoring season, loving the sunny-and-70s weather, loathing the rainy-and-30s weather (we have had nothing whatsoever between those two extremes), and wearing leggings as pants but only around the house because I'm not a savage.

If you've been socked in with mounds and mounds of snow, I wish you sunshine and green grass. If you've been broiling in the Southern Hemisphere, I wish you cool breezes and gentle rains.

I do NOT wish rainy-and-30s on ANYONE.

And I am very ready for spring. Now, please.

*Cupcake recipe here. Sazerac recipe here. Everything else is just crappe I threw together and crammed in my pie hole.

The bleak mid-winter

Hello, I have decided that winter sucks. Or at least THIS winter does, with its unrelenting gloom and damp. I know there are much colder temperatures and snow and whatnot elsewhere, but for reals y'all, I can only take so many days of grey skies and temps barely above freezing and cold cold cold rain/drizzle/mist before I start to go all Jack Torrance on your collective asses. I guess we had ONE sunny day this month because I took a photo of it but apart from that it's been SAD city up in here, and also ALLERGIES. Bleh.

I am combating the cabin fever with books, specifically the series known as A Song of Ice and Fire written by one George R. R. Martin. I'm determined to read the whole thing right through and have all five (so far) books finished by the time the TV show starts back up again in April. That might sound do-able unless you know that (a) I am the world's slowest reader and (b) each book is like 48,000 pages long. But whatever, it's not like I have any other hobbies.

(I've been assured by those who know that upon finishing the fifth book I'll suddenly feel compelled to write Mr. Martin VERY strongly worded letters explaining that he IS TOO my bitch and should write faster, perhaps mailing hardcopies of pages to me one by one as he knocks out the sixth book, but that's just crazy talk. I don't even know his mailing address.)

In other January news, the Ohio State Buckeyes football team gave my dad a National Championship for his birthday, so that was nice. Nutrition school is moving right along and getting more awesome by the day. I've started working out again, and meditating again, and taking photos again when I'm not reading. But I'm usually reading. Or napping. Or sneezing.

Yeah. That's about it. Wake me when the temperature is higher than my age. Or better yet, my dad's age.

September is my January

What the heck, how have I not posted at all this month? I don't know what to tell you. Things are sort of busy. H is back at school (she had strep the first week, did I tell you? that was fun) and C is doing some sort of cyber security certification course (I think we finally have a Plan there) and my health coaching classes have started and my birthday is this week and my parents' 50th wedding anniversary is next week and yeah. Busy!

I have been trying really hard to not be so busy, you guys. I realized that a lot of my busy-ness was self-generated hoohah that didn't need to happen, and as a result I have stopped following a bunch of people on Twitter and Tumblr and Instagram and unsubbed a bunch of email newsletters and rejiggered my newsfeed on Facebook such that I now spend WAY less time online and way less time worried that I'm missing something, except that I'm totally missing lots of somethings. But I've decided not to care. I've also stopped watching TV shows that make me feel unclean, so adiós, Sons of Anarchy. You were good back when you were all Hamlet-y but now you just make me feel like I need to take a shower and go to confession. And I'm not even Catholic! Something's gotta give.

I'm reading Kate Atkinson's Life After Life and boy is it good. I thought it was going to be some weird Lovely Bones thing, you know, like it would take place at least partially in the AFTERLIFE. But no, the title refers to multiple lives in succession, not the afterlife. Or multiple iterations, in succession, of the same life. I dunno. You'd have to read it. It's really good. After that I'm tackling Louise Penny's The Beautiful Mystery because the TENTH Chief Inspector Gamache book just came out and I'm still two books behind, quelle horreur! And then I'll probably read some more Pema Chödrön.

I get the itch to change things in September. Maybe because of my birthday, or the changing seasons, or the start of school or whatever. September is when I want to clean out closets and throw things away and do the whole "in with the new" thing. So far all I've done is start wearing jeans instead of shorts (I don't CARE if I die of heat stroke, I really don't, I'm done with shorts for this year) and start drinking hot coffee and tea instead of iced coffee and tea. But whatever. It all counts. Plus: pumpkin spice lattes! YES.