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!

Whooooph! Ready To Go!

Tomorrow we're off on the plane to our week of sun and sand. I guess it isn't supposed to be blazing hot where we're headed--only in the 70's, but it will be a heck of a lot warmer than it has been here on good old LI. We seem to be in the stranglehold of a January that isn't interested in the traditional thaw thing, and that "Now the ground is white" line from the old song seems to be the theme for the month.

But "HA" I say! I am leaving! Well--for one week, anyhow. Next thing you know we'll be back, and it will be February, when the weather is usually worse. Wait, wait! Optimism called for here. Focus on next week, when the palm trees will be waving, and the herons will be winging by with pelicans diving into the ocean, and me in a sand chair with a book in my hand, and maybe a glass. Better, better.

The suitcase is packed, the boarding passes printed, got my new little tiny hairdryer and a bunch of novels in my carry-on, binoculars and bird book all ready for our nature expeditions, Fodor's for restaurant scouting, car reservations, picture ID, sunscreen and sunglasses--I confess, it's hard to go have good time! But so worth it!

Brain Drain

I went shopping yesterday for groceries. It wasn't the worst weather day of the year, but we had snow falling all morning and it was only in the teens, but when it tapered off I decided I would toddle off to make my rounds of the grocery stores. I had made a list of the sales, and it was the last day on the circulars. I am doing Weight Watchers, and had promised myself that I would cook up some good meals that would be within the guidelines that the program espouses, and that means plenty of fresh vegetables. I bought my favorite arugula, baby spinach, a big bag of kale, zucchini, radishes, string beans, sweet potatoes, spaghetti squash, butternut squash, three containers of grape tomatoes, romaine lettuce, onions and some broccoli crowns. I still had a big head of cauliflower tucked into my vegetable drawer of the fridge. I hauled this all home, and packed it away, and contemplated some fine dinners.

That was Thursday. I look at the calendar, and realize that I have a luncheon out on Saturday, followed by our choir party (have to bring food, but will have no time to cook), and Sunday I have to play for church, and then get on the train and go to a concert in Manhattan, followed by dinner in a restaurant. Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday are fine, but we are leaving for a week in Florida on Thursday morning. What is going to happen to all those vegetables? And where is my brain when I am buying all this stuff in the store?

So, that leaves today, Friday to make good on all of this self-created mess. I cooked a batch of cauliflower soup that will be lunches until we leave, the surplus headed for the freezer. I roasted up the grape tomatoes along with the zucchini to take to the choir party, accompanied by a spaghetti pie, a distinctly calorie laden concoction which needs to be consumed by people who do not live in my house. That solves the dilemma of a lingering container of fresh mozzarella that needed to be used, and a zip-lock filled with diced sopressata. There was a vegetarian recipe off PBS that I wanted to try for dinner--a sweet potato stew with greens. Perfect for that bag of baby spinach. And, it was very excellent, except for the can of coconut milk that went over the whole thing to the tune of 1020 calories, 990 of them being fat. What the heck is a coconut anyhow? It's a plant. Isn't that supposed to be good for you? Anyhow, as of Monday we will be eating a lot of salad to get rid of the romaine and the arugula, plus a half-frozen head of iceberg that is lurking in the bottom of our vegetable drawer. For some reason, stuff freezes in our vegetable drawer...

So--where is my brain when I am in the store buying all this stuff? Why doesn't it put two and two together before I leave the house, instead of waiting until I get back home, and then clicking in. Maybe I compartmentalize too much. All of a sudden my different lists come face to face, and there I am working to combing the zig-zags of my outside life and my inside life. I am thrilled to say that I have an interesting life, even if my brain is sometimes lagging behind. And I confess that I still have the wherewithal to catch up when things go awry. It should be a great week--this and next, especially if the plane swerves around the birds!

Things Change

I suppose if you live long enough you see change. Certain things seem to sit there in your life like monuments, but there are other aspects that are more temporal. Now with the "Economic Crisis" there will be another round of things that fade away into the fog of the past, some to be remembered, some to be forgotten. I was with a group of women last night, and we were naming off all the stores where we used to shop that are long gone. Now with the economy giving agita to retail businesses, I imagine we will be losing more of our favorites.

Afterwards I headed out to buy some black embroidery thread. Now, I understand that embroidery does not play a large part in the lives of 99.685% of the women of America, and that the market for this product has justifiably shrunken down to very tiny. There are two stores within reasonable driving distance from my home that sell embroidery thread,but the little slots where these skeins would normally rest were EMPTY. Remember when shops kept their shelves fully stocked? These days, when the space for an item is empty, it stays empty sometimes for months, until the store restocks. So, what is my recourse? I can access anything I want off the internet, and as long as I am willing to pay the shipping charges, it will arrive at my door, without the aggravation of not finding what I want at the store, and without filling my gas tank. But that doesn't keep the stores in business, and there are situations when the internet doesn't cut it. Sometimes it is necessary to get your hands (feet) on the items you are seeking, and give it a good looking over. You can't see quality on a monitor.

I don't know--we have taken a lot of hits in the last few years as customers. There are no sales people to even look up the correct prices of items, much less give any information so that you can make an informed purchase. The lines to pay are impossibly long, because the company will not put on enough workers to actually man those twenty cash registers that are lined up there, looking like the store had thought about giving you service when it was built, but has now changed it's mind. Joann's actually has the audacity to call it's patrons "guests", as if we come into their store to visit and we better not annoy the "hostesses". Well, I am not a guest. I am a customer, who is paying for "service" (there's an oxymoron--customer service!) for which I am forced to wait ignominiously on line with other patient/impatient customers. Color me Grumpy.