Enough Already!

At first it's romantic. A gentle snow falling. You remember playing in it as kid, you recall the how good the hot chocolate tasted after sledding for hours or how nice it felt to slip on your gloves after they've been sitting on the radiator all night. But now we put aside our childish notions and take out our shovels and shout, Enough Already! I am sick and tired of digging out the car. My driving skills have been tested enough by parallel parking between snow mounds.

Will I ever see the car again?

Even though I have had enough of the snow for this winter and the next few winters, I have to admit it adds a dignified, graceful beauty that causes us to notice the everyday objects we generally take for granted, and ignore.

And it brings out the kid in all of us...

So don your best ermine...


Take a friend by the hand...


and get out there

I won't last forever (thank god!).

The best comment overheard today..."honey, they don't need any snow, they have their own".

S.W.A.K./Gung Ho Fat Choy/Happy Birthday Abe and George

It's Valentine's Day!
I have Valentine's Day chocolate hearts that my sweetie gave me. Yum!

We still have lots of snow on the ground. All the snow and packed ice around the car's tires makes it hard to get the car in and out of parking spots, so we decided to leave the car at home and go to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens this morning by bus. The snow was still white and pristine in the Gardens, with no yellow, no brown and no gray stains. Fields of white with no footprints. Small bushes looked more like vanilla frosted muffins than shrubs. A mermaid statue in the pond filled with snow, looked like she was riding a sled. Cardinals stood out like Orissa Garnets against the snow. The first bird we saw was a Mockingbird sitting on a crabapple tree. The big treat of the day was watching a hawk chase a small bird. We went back and forth trying to ID the hawk, but finally decided it was red tail because of it's white belly.

In addition to Valentine's Day, it the Chinese Lunar New Year. In celebration of the New Year we will have Chinese Food for dinner tonight. I have been looking forward to this meal all week. Tomorrow is President's Day. It's the triple crown of holiday weekends.



Yet another picture in the series of self portraits.

Snow Stormitis

It finally arrived. THE BIG SNOW. THE BLIZZARD.
It's here complete with wind, snow and of course all the media hype. Twelve to Eighteen inches of the white stuff, 40 mile per hour winds. None of that bothers me so much, because I don't have to go out in it.

What will bother me is the mess tomorrow and on Friday, when all the pristine white snow will become shin deep slush and you have climb over mounds of it to cross the street.

How many indoor projects can I find to do? I cooked a little, made toasted egg barley with mushrooms, I worked on my necklace, I watched a couple of videos on PBS.org. And now I am sitting on a heating pad because I pulled my back sitting all day. Only me.

Husbands are just big kids!
Husbands make me laugh. Here I am doing the dishes with just 2 left to do, when my husband says to me, just do the wok, I'll do the rest of the dishes. I guess it was a delayed reaction on his part, I had already been at the sink for a good 5 minutes or more. It's the thought that counts.

Super Bowl=Superb Owl

Today we went to one of the best kept secret parks in NYC (and I hope it stays that way). We went on an Owl Prowl that turned out to be owl-less, but really fun. The park combines second growth forrest with ancient forrest. We saw many trees, old Oaks, Cherry trees, Sassafrass trees, Sugar Maples, Tulip trees, to name a few.

I have always wanted to be able to identify trees by their leaves, by their bark, by their shape. It's makes life as a birder a lot easier. It's so frustrating to hear, "It's in that tree, over there!", when you want to see a bird in a grove of 20 trees. It's so much nicer to say, "it's in the snag, to the left of the Serviceberry".

Sometimes we take a our NYC tree guide with us and try to identify the trees in the parks. I now know that most of the trees on my block are Little Leaf Lindens, or Black Locust trees. We also have male Ginkgos in front of the house. I go to the little park down the block with the guide book and identify the trees there. The Brooklyn Botanical Gardens is great fun, all the trees have name plates on them.

When I was learning to identify birds, before I went to bed each night, I studied my field guide. I would go through all the pictures in a section and really look at the field markings for each bird. I should do that for trees and for butterflies. There really is a lot to learn.

Birthday Thoughts

Friday is my birthday.
I will be 52. It's a strange age to be. I am not quite young and I am not quite old. I am somewhere in the middle.

Numerically I may be 52, but I still think of myself as much younger. Although the reality is my hair is graying and I have lines on my face. I see frown lines, laugh lines, worry lines all getting deeper. I look at older people on the subway and notice the lines and wrinkles on their face and think, one day that will be me.

Birthdays are depressing...
I think I will eat some cake.

A weighty matter

My trouble with my weight is always mind over matter. The matter being food. So many irrational thoughts pop into my mind when choosing what to eat. Like, if you eat this now, then latter you'll eat less for dinner to compensate. Irrational, because it doesn't happen. I'll eat the same amount for dinner, no matter what I ate before. Another is, I will only have this one. Irrational, because I will have two.

I have managed to overcome the worst of the irrational food thoughts by saying to myself, do you really want this? And for when the thought gremlins win, I keep "safe" foods in the house to reach for. There is always a variety of low calories, sugar free/fat free things for me to grab in a moment of weakness.

Keeping weight off requires lots of planning. Breakfast and Lunch are easy. Oatmeal or yogurt. Lunch can be trickier, but usually a salad and a sandwich will do. Dinner is a challenge. There always has to be fresh vegetables in the house to cook with. Since we don't eat pasta, rice or flour, dinner isn't as simple as boiling water for pasta, or calling in for a pizza. Chinese food can work sometimes, but I always have to explain to the restaurant, no garlic, very little oil. Sometimes I miss the old days, but I don't miss them enough to revert back to my bad eating habits.

There are many mental tricks to play on yourself. Serve food on smaller plates, split shrimp down the center to double the amount, bulk up on vegetables. The one I like the best-I have to have seconds, so, I take 3/4's of my designated portion and save the last 1/4 for "seconds". Works every time. I think that I am having seconds, fooled me!

I don't like my meals to be science. I try to stay away from tofu noodles and TVP products, like hot dogs, pastrami, chicken nuggets and meatballs. Or things made with soy that shouldn't be, like cheese, milk and yogurt. I would rather eat the real thing instead of a lab project. Igor eat this...Igor like? Good Igor...

Pass on the molten chocolate cake, vanilla ice cream, creme brulee, tiramisu, or cheescake-can do! Pass on the warm crusty bread and the butter? I don't think so, some things I just can't resist.

Winter

It was 14 degrees when we woke up this morning. Too cold to go out birdwatching, even with layers of clothes on. We needed milk, so I bundled up and went out and bought some. Afterwards, for the first time in ages I sat on the sofa reading a book. I haven't been reading lately because I haven't been riding the subway. I used to read for hours everyday, commuting to and from work when I lived on Staten Island. I read so much while commuting, that I did most of my reading and studying while in transit when I was in grad school. I couldn't do that now, with people talking on cell phones constantly, or because they show movies on buses or play the radio. I can't stand the proliferation of TVs. Everywhere I go, gas stations, doctor's waiting rooms, supermarket checkout lines and even the bank, there are TVs. I can't even find quiet in the bathroom-there are women who talk on the phone while urinating. All this constant audio/visual input fills my world with unwanted noise. I find it difficult to concentrate outside of my own home. A person can't be alone with their own thoughts in public any longer. I have to wonder why people are afraid of solitude.