30 January 2011 - Friends and birthdays

30 January 2011

This has been such a hard winter for me in many ways. It has been cold. So far, out of the last 61 days we have had two days—2 days—where the temperature was over freezing. Mostly we hover in the low 20s, with wind chill measured in single digits. Cold. Gray. No wonder people go to Florida. I have lived in Michigan for thirty-one years now. This is the first winter I have truly understood the need to get out of Dodge and head south for the warmer climes. 

My siblings think I’m depressed. Maybe. But I think it is more a factor of the cold, the unrelenting grayness of it all than anything else. In addition to the gray, I get up in the dark and come home in the dark. How do I cope? I have been counting the light minutes.

I started keeping a daily chart of sunrise sunset times. On January 10: Sunrise 8:02 am. Sunset 5:19pm. Today, Sunday the 30^th,  the sun rose at 7:49 and set at 5:44. In only twenty days we have gained  37 minutes of light. I can’t even begin to describe how good that makes me feel. I am still getting up in the dark, but by the time I pull out of the driveway the world is light. No sun, but light.

The continual gray saps the will to do anything. I had big plans for Dec. Patch all the holes in the walls, pull down the wallpaper and paint. Here it is in the last days of January and I haven’t started yet. I get home in the dark and find that the cat, a book and the couch seem to be my best options. And it often digresses into really bad tv. I have even found myself watching the ubiquitous cop shows: NCIS, Without a Trace, and the ilk. What has happened to me? I think I’ll perk up with the longer days.  

The 27^th was my birthday and I received a huge surprise. Saturday morning I was out shoveling snow and I heard someone calling my name. I knew Karen had planned on stopping by. I had mentioned to her earlier, that my sibs thought I was depressed and not getting anything done. She said she’d come by and help me get started. Well, she came by, and surprised me by bringing Amy with her. They said they couldn’t let me spend a birthday alone. We had a wonderful girls’ weekend. Amy brought a huge pot of home-made cabbage soup and some wonderful bread. We ate, laughed, talked and caught up. We went to a quilt shop in Berkley where Karen found backing fabric for a quilt top she just finished for one of her three grandkids. 

From there we went to Leon and Lulu’s, a store I’d wanted to check out for some time. It was even better than advertised. Housed in a historic roller skating rink, it is now a mecca with one of a kind pieces for the home. From furniture and lamps, to art and artful clothing, it was just amazing. We closed the store. Then off to Empire Dynasty for Chinese. Yum! What a wonderful way to end birthday month. There is just nothing like old friends. Karen is a good forty minutes away, living in Hartland and Amy is four hours north up in Gaylord. It was a treat.

The funniest story from the weekend was about quilts. In August of 2009, Karen’s youngest daughter, Erin, was living in North Carolina. Her apartment building was hit by lightning and burned to the ground. She lost everything. Amy and I decided on the spot that we would make her a quilt. It took us almost a year for the process of deciding on colors and fabric, followed by designing the pattern, splitting the fabric, sewing blocks, and laying it out. We used up almost every last piece of fabric as the quilt became larger than we had planned. We had some interesting moments trying to make do with the small amounts of fabric we had left. The quilt was all in batik in lovely purples and oranges. It looked like a wild sunset. 

The joke was that they would have to pry it out of my hands to give it to Erin, when it was finished. I, however, thought they would have to pry it out of Amy’s hands. After we gave the quilt to Erin I had the bright idea that I would use the last of the scraps of fabric and make a small commemorative wall hanging for Amy. It would be my Christmas gift to her.  

Over the last couple of years the dining room has been taken over by my sewing machine, fabric, and projects. I had a paper box lid with all the scraps from Erin’s quilt. When the time came for me to start the wall hanging I was dumbfounded. There was nothing left! I could hardly come up with enough fabric for two small blocks. I went through my piles of fabric over and over again. I was so sure I had more. I did make Amy a keepsake. It was very small. At Christmas when I gave it to her, I told her how shocked I was to discover how little fabric I had left, when I was so sure I had enough to make a decent sized wall hanging.

You can imagine my surprise when Amy gave me a Christmas present… a wall hanging made from scraps of the fabric left from Erin’s quilt.  It turns out that last fall when she spent a weekend with me, she snatched up a handful of scraps from the dining room table every time I left the room. Sneaky! So sneaky, and so not Amy’s style at all. I think Karen and I have been very bad influences on her. But her quilt—um, my quilt is just gorgeous. It isn’t quite finished, so Amy took it back—just as I took back the Christmas keepsake I gave Amy, which needs to be quilted. I am still laughing about this. 


 Here is a photo of the wall quilt Amy made for me out of the scraps. She calls it Zinnias Outside My Window. Zinnias are one of Amy's favorite flowers. She had a big bouquet on her table while she was sewing this together. It occurred to her that the blocks looked a lot like the zinnias in her bouquet. 

It is wonderful. It has the feel and fabrics from the quilt we made for Erin, but it is entirely new.

17 January 2011 - Spring sneaks in

I am not a morning person. I should rephrase that: I am not a morning person--anymore. I used to be. I’d get up early in the morning and I’d be at work sitting at my desk by 7:15,  which also meant that I could leave at 3:30.  I did this for years. What happened is that I married a night owl, nothing wrong with that, but after he retired 16 years ago, his late hours got even later. The only way we really had time together was for me to stay up later as well. Not to mention that there is nothing I hate more than going to bed alone. These days I get up later and manage to drag myself in to work about 9:30.

However, because I have an overdeveloped work ethic, whenever I have a doctor appointment, I schedule it for as early as possible, so that I still get to work around 9:30.  I know, crazy.

This month I have had quite a few early appointments: dentist, orthodontist, mammogram, optomologist, and a few early morning meetings. But what this getting up so early in January has done, is to alert me to the fact that birds are getting into spring mode. Even though sunrise is about 8 am, when I step out of the house to feed the ferals at  7:30, the frigid air is vibrating with bird song. The red-bellied woodpeckers are already belting out their one note shriek. Little birds are twittering in the shrubs. Chickadees are busy in the lilacs calling out deedee, deedee. The cardinals are whispering up in the top of the crabapple trees. How interesting!  In my previous world view, the birds started up in March, but no, here in January the spring song has started in the predawn.

This morning when I was standing guard over Hughie’s dish (protecting my favorite feral from the ravening herd) I noticed a pair of sparrows very busily cleaning the birdhouse. They were working together to get last year’s nest out the tiny little bird door. It was coming out the same way it went it in--one beakful at a time.

Made me think I should stagger out of bed earlier to see what is going on in the world.  You can see the latest fuzzy bunch at her feet. She was pushing it all off the ledge. That’s my kind of housekeeping.

I also noticed another activity going on in the south forty. We have a very old, very tall silver maple, with two squirrel nests about as high in the tree as possible. Both nests were being attacked by starlings. There were anywhere from four to seven starlings poking around each nest. They were pulling leaves out and scattering the nests.

I don’t know if they were looking for food remnants or just being neighborhood vandals, but it was interesting. Because of the backlighting, it is hard to see, but there are three birds in the nest, plus the one underneath, who was reaching up and pulling the stuffing out from below.

I watched in amazement for about five minutes before it dawned on me to get my camera. This continued for a while, until all at once the entire flock lifted off as one and flew south.

And for the weather report: Cold and more cold.

Since Dec 2 when we got our first snow and sank to  highs around 10, it has been bitter. Cold with snow, cold with winds, blizzard warnings. Bone chilling cold. On January 1^st we ushered in the New Year with the annual January thaw. From 22 degrees the day before we hit 48 with rain. Amazing. All the ice and snow disappeared overnight. The grass was actually still green it had not yet turned the dried yellow color that we see when the snow melts in March. Our thaw lasted two days. Whump! Back into the high teens and low twenties again with more snow.  Right now it is 20 degrees and the ever present wind gives us a 14 degree wind chill factor. We have a winter storm warning for tonight. Snow mixed with icy rain and sleet. I do wonder where the rain is coming from  when it is this cold. Wonder what the commute will be like in the morning?

At the moment, the sky is merely hazy, which is a nice change as we are two days away from a full moon , and right now, at 6:45,  the moon is starting to rise.

It reminds of all the movies where someone tells the dead or dying guy  “Go to the light!”  Even through the haze, the moon was so bright that it made me feel like I was being pulled up into a tunnel. The air is so cold that the light was crystalline. I so understand how people can worship the moon. 

I have spent a lot of time over the last couple weeks shoveling snow. We get one inch. The next day we get four inches. Then two inches. As the snow has been light fluffy stuff, I have been shoveling rather than using the blower. 

While shoveling, I have noticed the pattern of cat tracks through the yard and driveway.  It is interesting that one cat comes through, then all subsequent trips are made in the same footprints. How do they do that? Even watching the ferals show up for dinner I can see that as they make their way across the yard, they are carefully stepping in their last path. I find this odd, because they occasionally get the crazy and chase each other around in the snow, or bat pieces of icicles around. No path is needed during those times, but when the game is over, they follow an existing path back to the garage or the deck. 

 

1 Jan 2011 - A New Year

How odd is this? 51 degrees on January 1!  Guess yesterday and today count as the annual January thaw. It rained all night. The snow and ice are totally gone, and naturally, the roof leaked. More wet spots on the ceiling.  What is surprising is that all the lawns are green-- they haven't turned to the yellow straw that shows up when the March snows melt. Even the perennials on the berm look green. And that god-awful weed that grows under the snow all winter looks so happy and has been growing madly. Parts of the flower beds are already covered with it.

According to the forecast we will be back into the high teens to low 20s tonight with chances of snow for the upcoming week, but 51 so far today? Wow.

This is especially wow because on Dec 2 we had a snowstorm after rain. and then the temps plummeted into single digits and the snow on top of rain froze. For the last four weeks it has been bitter cold. The highest temps in all that time have been in the mid 20s, though most of the time it was colder, in the teens, accompanied by lots of wind.

After a month of freeze, to soar to 48 yesterday and 51 today was pretty amazing. The ground is so frozen that all the rain and snow melt is puddled up in every dip and low spot. It is windy today, so maybe that will help evaporate some of the puddles before the turn back to ice tonight.

After feeding the cats, I  walked around the yard, which is quite the mine field, and checked everything out. Then I got my coat and went for a walk. It may be 51 degrees, but we also have 96% humidity. It was good to get out and get moving, but the damp was a lot chillier than I realized. Now that I'm back inside, I feel cold radiating off my bones.

I'm thinking that 51 is going to be the high for today. An hour after my walk, it is now 48 degrees.  The bug says we should be down to 34 by late afternoon. I'm thinking I'll just stay cozied up inside. 

Last night, the New Year's Eve ruckus started at quarter to twelve. Fireworks, as in aerial bursts went on for at least a half an hour. Many many strings of firecrackers were lit as well as many of the single big boomers. There must have been some wild parties. It is now 11 am on Saturday morning and it is extremely quiet. I would be surprised if even a dozen cars have gone by. Quiet is good, but it is kind of an eerie quiet. 

And speaking of eerie, last night (this morning?) I was standing in the driveway watching all the big color bursts. There were two areas with quite the shows: one group in the sky over the Averhill corner and one up by the school. The eerie part is that there were 7 red lights in the sky over the trees as you looked towards Averhill. If I had a ruler at the end of an outstretched arm the lights would have been about 12 to 14 inches apart. They were flying in a staggered arrangement like this:  , '  ,  ' ,  ' ,  At first I only saw a couple and thought it was weird there were so many planes in a row. The lights went north until I couldn't see them. Then they came around again.  Remote controlled planes out for fun? Who knows, but it was strange.