abc's abc's

a cute video. as always, i added my own personal touch to the video by having my hand showing in the upper right hand corner for the first half. one of these days i will get it right.

yesterday's quote

yesterday, william and i were reading a book about animals. there was a "pet" page, which turned our discussion toward his pets. we agreed that he had one dog and two cats. he pointed to the chinchilla on the page and i asked him if he had a pet chinchilla.

in a very serious tone, he responded: "not yet."

haiti

haiti is a bummer. 45-50,000 people dead? it's hard to even comprehend that with a number that large they are talking about people who all lost their lives in a number of minutes. 45-50,000. a quote from a woman screaming as she ran down a street in Haiti: "God, we know you can kill us! We know you're strongest! You don't need to show us!"

today's tip

walk in the deep snow. it is very good exercise.

reflections on ice

i'm still here! all of you fairweather blog readers who only check in when you think there's going to be something to read... well, here you go. and for the loyal readers who don't mind seeing the same post everyday for weeks on end... thank you especially.

actually, i'm not going to have much time to write. our office, which doubles as a guest bedroom is occupied this week by greg's dad--currently though they are talking chemistry or some sort of core-of-the-earth stuff, however, it's getting later, so i'll probably have to turn the office over soon.

our westwardly vacation was very nice. it's always so nice to see my family and my family's family and significant others and family's friends, etc. and especially nice when that happens at christmas time. because let's face it, christmas is such a nice time of year. and sad when the tree has to come down, as it did this weekend upon our return, and la la life gets undecorated and turned back into routines which are much less fanciful.

now, more so than before christmas, even though it snowed buckets and the immediately surrounding world was frozen, we must really, finally put our heads down and get to work getting through winter, until everything unfreezes and the sun comes back in the evenings and we can go to our gardens and we can play outside without sweaters and snow pants and mittens and scarves and hats and coats and boots, in that order, and it feels festive, like christmas, at least for awhile.

but i'm not dreading this winter so far. i feel well equipped and i think that william understands that in order to get outside we have to go through this very long exercise of dressing up and also we have decluttered somewhat so that life feels a little bit less disorganized than it might otherwise feel and that it likely will feel when we fall behind on things as we inevitably do-- but for now at least, i'm ahead of winter-- i think it doesn't hurt that we spent some time apart from it... but if that's what it takes, so be it. then i am happy that this year we were able to take that time apart from our northerly existence.

well, the chemistry talk is still going on but now i am getting tired, so i'll end here and hope to update again soon. until then...