Sorry I Went AWOL

... last night but I came home in the afternoon feeling like crap.  By the time it was time to go to Friday Knitting I had the chills and I was wearing a path to the toidy.  Not a great feeling.  I dosed myself with the pink stuff, bundled up, and was in bed asleep by 9:30--and woke up about every 45 minutes through the night, so often that my fitbit decided that I got up at 3:30 AM.  Not restful.  I am happy to report that, aside from being tired today, by this afternoon I knew I was really on the mend.  Whew.



It was terribly windy yesterday and I found a way to show you how windy it was.  See this picture of my bootprints in the roughly 6" snow?  I went out at 8:30 to clear the snow that had blown over the seed in the platform feeder and this is how it looked just over an hour later.  The wind had blown snow in and nearly filled them up.  Windy.



The red family of birds visited the platform feeder yesterday.  All of the House Finches, the ones with the reddish pink heads and chests, have started to put on their mating finery and this Cardinal came to join them.


 

And at the same time this male Downy Woodpecker was working so hard to get nuts out of this wreath that I could hear it through the double-pane glass.  I know there's a biological reason why woodpeckers don't get headaches but it amazes me to watch them pound away at the frozen seeds and suet.





My knitting friend, LB, and I went down to the Lutheran church where the Bay Lakes Knitting Guild meets and we went through the library cart.  I printed out a (frustratingly incomplete) inventory and we went through the cart, culling these torn or unpopular books, and adding in new donations that hadn't been entered.  I guess when I get home from my jaunt to the sunny south I'll be the one making a new inventory list.  

I haven't told you about my escape from winter.  My beloved Aunt B, she of the comments, bought me a ticket to go visit her in Florida for a week.  I'm so looking forward to it.  I haven't seen my cousins in ages and ages and can't wait to spend time with them someplace where I don't have to put on all of my clothes to go outside.  Tomorrow I pack.



I added a few more rounds to the February Seaman's Cowl this afternoon once I started feeling human again and stopped dropping off to sleep every half hour.  Being sick is tiring.

9 February--Tropical Obsession. 

"Where do they buy their paint?" Edward shaded his eyes with his hand as he stood gazing at the Amstel Bar in Rincon. "Creative name too," he said to Louise as she walked up beside him after parking the car down the street. "I suppose it's safe to leave it there while we're inside," she said, squinting up and down the street as if expecting to see roving bands of car thieves. She turned to him. "What did you say, dear?" Edward patted the tin Amstel Beer sign nailed firmly to the wall beside the open door. "Someone thought long and hard to name this joint." Louise elbowed him. "Don't be superior. You're not known for your creativity, remember you've got a Dalmatian named Spot." "Well," he said with an injured sniff, "you wouldn't let me name him Sparky."

I do not remember who Edward and Louise are in that story.  They aren't the people that found the body or maybe they were in the first version but they're not now but I really like them.  I'm keeping them.  It's surprisingly difficult to think about what I'll pack because my mindset now is piling on clothes to keep warm but it's in the 80s in Florida.  This is going to take some consideration.  Oh, poor me, having to think about warm weather clothes.  
--Barbara