A Quiet Weekend With No Food

I am looking forward to a weekend with no entertaining for a change. Usually we have people in, or are going somewhere, and every time there are large quantities of food involved. I went back to Weight Watchers last spring, and did well until we hit August and went on summer vacation. I gained back about three pounds, and have been gaining/losing those same three pounds ever since. It goes like this: weigh in on Wednesday, lose a pound or so more before the weekend, gain two or three on the weekend, diet them off again before weigh-in on Wednesday. This weekend we have no plans, and I think I am just going to go with that, and maybe I will get a head start on next week's trial by scale. Right now I am on what the WW people call "maintenance", only I haven't gotten down to my "goal weight". I maintain very well, so after I get to that magic number I ought to do fine. I'm just not fading away the way the WW books claim you will if you follow their program. And, after months and months, I confess to being weary of the whole thing.

The best part of this process is that we three friends have been attending the sessions faithfully every week, and afterwards we hit the food court in the mall for a little chat session. Ut-ut! I know what you are thinking--we only have coffee and tea--we're very good. I have enjoyed the company and it gets us to the meetings, even when time was short through the holidays. I think back to when my grandmother had her weekly kaffee klatch, and all the ladies would come for catch up talk. Too bad my generation decided that it would be "liberating" to all get jobs and go to work everyday. Too bad my children's generation made this an economic necessity, and that we have all lost touch in ways it is not possible to describe to those who have not experienced a different way of living.

So, for entertainment this weekend, I'll put together some "healthy" dinners so that we have a few meals ahead and maybe get to the grocery store for vegetables to keep things going for the week. Maybe this Wednesday I will get a little star for the front of my gold book. The real target is to hit that goal weight so that I can stop paying for all this nonsense. And maybe I won't look lumpy on the next wedding video, the way I did in the last one...

Just Up The Street

When we moved into our white elephant house in the 1970's, it was on a somewhat shabby street in the center of a block of houses that had long ago passed out of style, back in the days when people tended to live within their means. Big old houses were oversized for modern families who only planned on having two children, and realized that high taxes and heating bills could break the budget if they overbought on their living space. We moved in and were the next to last of the large families to take up residence. We had five children, and the family across also had five. As of today, there are no children on the block, except for a pair of twins down the south end. People have put on big extensions, and a number of them have landscapers and sprinkler systems. The street is no longer shabby (except for maybe our house...) Funny how it goes.

Without planning any of it, we found ourselves close to town, the train station and the library, which is just six houses up the street--don't even have to cross. Our kids grew up three blocks walk to the high school, and had access to Manhattan, via the LIRR. Each one of them made use of the train, either for music school on Saturdays, orchestra rehearsals on Sundays, or as commuters to their first jobs in the city. I even rode the railroad for a while, when I was singing in the opera. The fact that we can walk to the train is wonderful, since it is almost impossible to find a place to park at the station, and we when we go to concerts, we don't have to worry about whether we will snag a spot. We also can travel into the airport by train when we go on a trip, and can save the cost of the long term parking lot. We are quite the sight pulling our wheelie suitcases down the sidewalks late at night after a trip home from somewhere.

For now, the library is a great joy. I can go on line, and request just about anything I want, and they deliver it up the street, call when it has arrived, and all I have to do is pop on my coat, and walk up to get it. Whoohoo! Free stuff practically to my door! As an added bonus, my doll club has voted to move their meetings back to the library. They had met there before I joined, but the library closed off the meeting room for renovations, and we have been gathering at a church on the other side of Long Island--a pleasant enough drive on a spring day, but about a half hour ride. We had our first meeting in the library on Saturday, and it was the due date for a music themed doll--something that said "Music" to it's designer. Music for me is opera, so here she is, right off the second act of Tosca, wearing her beaded train that dragged noisily across the floor of the stage every time she turned or took a step. I confess to cherishing my brief time at the opera. MyTreasure can't understand why I don't want to actually go to the opera, but the real pleasure of it was in the performance. How lucky I was to have had the opportunity, and that it was at the Met!

N is for Neville who died of ennui...

I confess that each year after the holidays I lose steam. Days just go by, and no work of any significance gets done. I cook, I do the laundry, but the time slips by until the spring when the days are once again long, and the air warms up so that I can take off my woolies. I can't seem to shake off the winter blahs. For now I am Neville.

Last summer when we went to Cape Cod, The Professor came across a listing in the tourist magazines for the house formerly occupied by Edward Gorey. I am not sure what fascinates me about this odd man, but for some reason I have always been attracted to his drawings, and his inexplicable little books. (You all have seen his work in the credit animations for the PBS Mystery Series.) I spent a good deal of time with an old pen and a bottle of India ink, so I appreciate the process. Gorey's texts and drawings are all enigmatic, leaving out vital parts of the plots, forcing one to draw one's own conclusions. His life was that way too, looking rather ordinary from the sidewalk, but very curious when you put it in the context of his work. Amazing that anyone could make a living from little pen and ink drawings.

So, see me loafing about, looking at picture books, and piecing together life's little mysteries, waiting for the sun to shine. I bought three bunches of tulips for my window sill just to hurry things along. I'm sure it will work...

Sunsets on the Gulf

I confess to being slow to return to real life after a vacation. The luxury of doing only what I want to do lingers for me long after the drive home from the airport. Some trips I do better than others, especially if there are commitments on the calendar, but this vacation started and ended on a Thursday, so I have been floating along through the weekend. Maybe my brain will restore itself today, and I will get back to normal functioning. We have had trouble though, around 5:30 pm, as we walk past a window, and we see the sun is going down. MyTreasure and myself have both been peeking out at the sun as it sinks below the trees in our back yard--a flashback to last week, when we were watching the sun drop right into the Gulf just to the left of Sanibel Island.

We shared a two bedroom suite with good friends, in a beach house right on the Gulf, and had the pleasure of our own lanai, looking to the west. Five out of the seven nights, we managed to find our way back from our day's adventures, and settled into chairs to watch the sunsets. My goodness! What a show. Each one was different, depending on the clouds, and glow went on and on after the sun disappeared below the waterline. There was no finer finish to our days of nature walking and bird watching, and no admission charge--just show up!

Now we are back in the frozen zone, chipping ice out of our very own driveway skating pond. Somehow a big puddle formed on the north side of our house where the sun doesn't shine, and then the temperature dropped so that there is a good length of solid ice that shines bright in the headlights when you pull in with the car. At least that reminds you that it is there, and you don't want to be stepping on it. Boy, last week "get the sand out" meant something completely different. See--another flashback!