Brrrr!

Man, it was cold today. It was sunny and clear and very, very cold. When I got into the car after the Market around 1 o'clock the car thermometer said 14 degrees. So much of the water in the birdbath was frozen that almost the whole basin was iced up. There was just a little bit of clear water right around the heater which was mostly exposed so I went out in my winter coat and filled it up as best as I could. Almost as soon as I filled it, it started to refreeze and there's still an icicle on the right side where the wind makes the water drip over the edge.

The Sparrows and the Mourning Doves were busy under the feeders pecking away to find any fallen morsels. I was surprised to see so many birds on such a cold day. My next door neighbor put her Christmas tree out at the curb and I'm tempted to go drag it over here so the birds have a place to perch out of the wind but there's no snow to bury the trunk in to help it stand up so I won't. The wind would just keep knocking it over and I don't want to have to go out every day to stand it back up. Besides the honeysuckle that I used to lean it up against is long gone so I'd have nothing to hold it up.

I tackled the first day of a 31-day watercolor daily floral practice this afternoon. I've seen these flowers dried in arrangements and never really thought of them as flower flowers. They were fun to paint even though I put them too far apart and had to tuck an extra one in so that there wasn't a big space in the middle of the paper.

After supper I knitted on Alpaca Mitten #3. I've got about four more rounds until I hit the 4" mark but I'm going to add a little more, maybe half an inch, to the hand before starting the top decreases. I'm not tired of making mittens yet which is a good thing since I've got to make one more to have two pairs to go with the two avocado alpaca hats.

And I made myself sit down and draw a gratitude journal page today. I said on the first that I wanted to get back into the habit of daily journal pages and then I skipped two days. Today I'm on it.

There weren't a lot of people at the Market on Military today. Even the cheese guy next to us had a slow day. I almost sold a book to a lady who decided at the last second that she'd come back "next time" with cash instead of paying with a credit card. *sigh* I was resigned to not selling anything today when a guy stopped at each of our displays and ended up buying a copy of Island Dreams. Turns out he's been scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef in Australia and bought it for the diving chapters. I don't care what his reason was, I was just happy to sell a book. At least it paid for my day in the booth. And my clothes smell like french fries from the snack bar at the market. Guess I'm doing dryel cleaning tomorrow.

I got a charlie horse in my right calf last night that didn't keep me up all night but still feels like someone whacked me in the calf with a baseball bat. I don't recommend it. I was just walking to my car from the restaurant last night when it seized up and wouldn't let go. What causes that? That kind of stuff makes me crazy. I feel like I'm slowly falling apart. Gah!

--Barbara