Look What I Found Today

A birdie tree!  I've kept my eyes peeled since the first of the year and only saw one tree at the curb in the first week of January.  It was around the corner on Fisk Street and I was on my way to visit LC and OJ.  When I came home it was gone.  Since then I've been looking and looking without any luck.  I was just thinking about taking a jaunt out to the yard waste place to see if one was out there when my luck changed. Today on my way to the Y, up Seventh Street, just a couple blocks from home, there it was.  I took my chances that it'd be there when I got done walking at the Y and it was.  So I pulled over, dug my old gloves out of the basket, and shoved the tree into the back as far as it would go.  I had to drive the half-mile home with the hatch open and, let me tell you, the car didn't like that.  But I made it safely and dragged it around back where I wedged it into the fence near the birdbath so the birdies can flutter over into it to dry off in comfort.  I usually sprinkle seeds in the tree but since there was an overwintering rat last year, I think I'll skip that.

There's a recipe for Green Goddess Dressing in the new Weight Watchers cookbook I got for Christmas (where I found most of the recipes I made last weekend, too) so when I was shopping I got what I needed and made it today.  It's good.  It has a bit too much tarragon for my taste but I'll eat this batch and adjust the herbs next time.  I got a head of iceberg lettuce too and cut out a wedge for supper tonight.  In the cookbook the recipe is for a BLT wedge salad with Green Goddess so I dug around in the freezer, found some slices of Canadian bacon that I'd crisped in a skillet a while back, and cut up one of the slices to garnish my salad.  I will definitely have that again.  Tomorrow.



Tonight's main course was one of the Moroccan Chickpeas in Acorn Squash with a bit of the Herbed Chicken on the side.  Yum.  These recipes both get hot pink Post-its in the cookbook so I don't lose track of them.




 





This evening I finished both January Preemie Hat #3 and #4, that gives me a couple weeks to knit on my sock and finish up the dishcloth that's languishing in the bottom of my knitting bag.  A plain, no-need-to-think-hard project like that garter stitch dishcloth is a good thing to knit on in a group or with a friend.  And I can still manage to screw it up but it's usually a screw up I can easily fix.

15 January--Tropical Obsession.  It was like dreaming. The water was so clear it was invisible. I felt the bump of wavelets as they passed under the kayak. The splashes from my far-from-expert paddling cooled my face. But I couldn't really see it, especially if I looked down toward the bottom twenty feet below. Gazing toward the horizon, the water became turquoise then navy as it fell away to the abyss but right where I was, right over the bright white sand and patchy reefs, it was clear, invisible. For a moment vertigo gripped me before the voice in my head kicked in to remind me that there was water under my hull, nice dense seawater, warm and salty, just like my tears.

Can you believe that it's the middle of January already?  Time...whoosh.  Today's toss was a box of the oldest, ickiest, tackiest Christmas decorations left by my long deceased mother-in-law.  Don't worry, I sorted through and it was mostly those "satin" ornament balls, broken cheap glass balls, and foil accordion banner things with a few creepy red plastic velour reindeer and a wall-eyed elf.  Trash.

I bought five sessions with the trainer at the Y today.  I don't envision her standing over me cracking the whip but I do want to have a few sessions with her so that I learn the workout program she planned for me, how to do some of the balance exercises I couldn't figure out, and have her show me where to find the stuff like resistance bands I'm supposed to use.  My plan is to walk one day, use the weight machines and aerobic machines another day, and do the trainer-planned workout the third day and rotate them so I do each one once a week and won't get bored.  I'm trying to work out how to keep myself going because it makes me feel good and I don't want to crap out.
--Barbara