Confessions of a Grandma

Today started off as a gorgeous day--sunny, temperature at 76 degrees at 9 in the morning when I was preparing for a trip to the library. But the weather report warned it was not to last, and it did not. The sky has turned grey and the palm trees are bowing in the strong north wind while the temperature plummets. It will be a good night to heat up a bowl of this sweet potato soup with roasted red pepper and toast up a crusty roll to dip in olive oil. It is a literary day for me.  This morning at the library I met with an area poetry group and I felt an instant connection there.  Later I will Facebook with two of my Vermont writing partners. I do miss my Vermont family and friends, but not the winter weather.  I have heard too many stories about falling and getting stuck on ice to miss the place itself.  I heard from one friend today who fell on the ice outside her back door  and could not get herself back up again.  After 40 minutes of bein...

I had just gotten into bed the other night when the wind started to blow.  And what a racket.  It ushered in a thunder storm and a down pour.  The lightning was actually scary. There were some branches and some trees down, but I did not hear of any major damage and we didn’t lose electricity.  Our deck furniture was re-arranged though.  Usually, two of the chairs are at the other end of the deck.  I guess we are lucky that a chair did not hit the glass door. I would say that the crab apple blossoms are pretty well done.  It looks like pretty pink snow. The next morning the deck chairs were all against the opposite side of the deck.  We had flood warnings on Thursday and several roads were washed out--7 inches of rain.  Rain was needed--just not all at once.  It has rained all day here (Friday), but not the torrential downpour type. We are inconvenienced by road closings, detours, and dump trucks continuously rumbling past; but the...

  Sandy did not hit our area as badly as it might have.  I heard a meteorologist explain why that was but I don’t remember the explanation well enough to try to repeat it here.  It had something to do with the speed of the storm passing and layers of cold versus warm air.  I know that the winds on top of Mt. Mansfield hit 100 mile hour per hour while we here in the foothills just had a few afternoon gusts.  Our electricity blipped out only for a moment.   While it has been mostly wet and grey for the past few days, there were moments:   The sky was clear and it was warm on Tuesday morning.  The full moon was shining through the kitchen window.   Later that same morning I looked out our front window, which faces directly east.  It was raining quite hard.  I looked out the back door and this is what I saw to the west:   I am grateful that Sandy snubbed us, but heartbroken at the damage s/he did elsewhere.

Every one has been saying there was no winter in Vermont this year.  Maybe so, but we are having typical April weather--which means no one would be surprised at the freezing temperatures and the sleety snow fall. I spent the afternoon working at the library.  I met with the state librarian consultant on Wednesday and had a quick tutorial in pulling books off the shelves for de-cataloging.  Our small library probably needs that done more than most because space is so limited.  Of course new books are coming in and there are always donations that need sorting through. Once the books are pulled I have to take them off the computer record, pull the bar code, mark the book as 'withdrawn' and then box them all up.  I can see where this is going to be a long time until completion. I spent the morning sewing some new curtains for my bedroom.  I am about half way finished with that and will maybe get more done later tonight.  Or maybe I will just have ...

I was talking to a woman from Canada the other day.  She was surprised that the Florida weather was not having a beneficial effect on her arthritis.  Gee, I wouldn't think so with the humidity.  It seems to me that the "aches and pain" guide on the weather site always warns about sore joints when the humidity is high.  It has been humid.  I have fuzzy hair and I cannot finish addressing an envelope before it is stuck shut and badly wrinkled.  I guess that this warm wet air meeting cold fronts as it moves north is what is leading to the great snow storms of this winter.  I'm not complaining because I like the warmth here, but I do sympathize with folks back home.  I just wish I had manageable hair and that I could send off a card without it looking like a bear mauled it first. I tried to find some beneficial effects of high humidity on the internet.  Apparently there are none.  It aggravates all kinds of conditions, causes fatigu...

The icicles are dripping slowly outside the window as I sit here.  My cat would have been riveted.  He could sit at the window and watch the drip...drip...drip all afternoon.  He loved Christmas, too.  The tree went up and he was ensconced under it for the duration of the season.  We still miss that cat. We do not plan on putting up a tree this year, or on doing anything else in the way of decorating, for that matter.  The ceiling and wall painting will not be completed until a couple of days before Christmas Day so it would not be worth the work involved to decorate and then take things down three or four days later.  Usually, I like decorating so I am not giving it up forever, but things are definitely scaled back this year.  I will have our family get together, but other than the pierogis already in the freezer and two pies, everything else will be store bought.  The kids will be kind of disappointed not to see a tree at Grandma's house...

Yep, that's what they call it.  The wind started blowing late night on Tuesday.  The rattling windows woke us up I don't know how many times.  One might have thought we lived next to the  tracks with endless freight trains roaring past.  It wasn't a hurricane and it wasn't a tornado, but it was an impressive display of wind power from a warm front colliding with a cold front that sent 60+ MPH gusts down the mountains. A torrential downpour followed the ending of the wind Wednesday night. We lost power on Wednesday afternoon around 3:30 and we were without for 26 hours.  At least we have a wood stove and a gas stove that we could light for cooking.  Mike dug out the Coleman lantern that belonged to his father.  It's at least seventy years old, but still dependable.  Still, we were reminded just how much nearly everything we do on a daily basis requires electricity. Our yard used to be an open field where corn was grown so we have few trees on...

I think a day could not BE more New England-November than today--dark, dreary, cold to the bone, and raining.  A cup of Constant Comment tea and few ginger cookies--that's all there was to be done on a day like this. I did get the results of my blood work in the mail today.  Everything--most of which I haven't really a clue about (total alkaline phosphatase?  AST?  Albumin?)--was within normal limits.  My cholesterol has gone down a whopping 20 points over the past year.  The "vegetarian inclined" diet changes have paid off there for sure.

Hot and steamy--that's the weather forecast for the next few days. The trick is to move slowly through the daily tasks, but I have a hard time remembering to do that. I do love this time of year, though. Iced tea, real brewed tea, tastes so good on days like this. I pour mine into a frosted glass from the freezer and add a touch of lemon and sweetener. I was drinking iced tea all day yesterday, then remembered at bedtime about caffeine. Between staying up late and having to get up early for a trip to the bathroom, I certainly didn't get in my usual eight hours of sleep. I did however, finish up sewing projects--a top for Kristen, pj's and a robe for Dane. I plan a trip to take the kids to see Circus Smirkus on Friday. Sitting in a circus tent with the weather like this...hmm. We'll see how that goes. It could be cool again by then. Kristen has been at day camp, but Dane is ready for some vacation time with Grandma. Momma and Dad are ready for a kid break, too, I t...

It has been a rainy day here. We needed the rain since we have had no precipitation to speak of since it snowed last month. This has been the perfect kind of rain for the garden, too--slow, steady, gentle. I hope those baby vegetable plantings out back are drinking up. The flowers were ready for a good drink as well. I'm just glad I don't have to drag out the hose today. Mike's sister and her husband are coming for the next weekend so I have a list of preparations to make for that. It will be a good time and we look forward to their visit. Hey, maybe we can go all Tom Sawyer on them and get them working on scraping the deck. Or...maybe not. Maybe we can come up with something a bit more fun to do.

It was still snowing when I took this picture this morning. It snowed until around 3:30 this afternoon. All the snow knocked out our electricity for about eight hours. We got up and went out for breakfast and did not bother to even shovel the driveway. It will melt soon enough. We ran into some old friends at the restaurant so that was kind of fun. I've had my day of reading and knitting and relaxing that I missed last Sunday.

Ah, April as we know it in Vermont. It was snowing this morning. It cleared up late in the morning and warmed up to the 50's, but the wind chill was making it feel like the 30's. With all the walking we did in Florida, it was a shock to get home and notice how hard it has become to handle the hills on our walking routes here. Both Mike and I have made the commitment to keeping up with daily walking, though, and healthier eating, too. Time to get serious about losing those pesky added pounds. Even though Mike has way more to lose than I do, I know he's more likely to reach his goal first. Men and their metabolism! We had baked fish with dill, capers, and pine nuts for supper tonight--with a side of asparagus . Last night it was baked chicken and a salad for Mike and curried chickpeas stir fried with carrots, onions, celery, and spinach for me. I love, love, love the spring vegetables. I have not given up my glass of wine for healthier eating, though. I drink wate...

Something is very wrong. We got back to Vermont and the weather was warmer over the past weekend than it was the whole time we were in Florida. It was an unusually cold winter in Florida, but it has been a an unprecedented warm spell in Vermont. March, 2010, was the warmest in Vermont recorded history. The grass looks green, buds are out on our maple trees, lilac bushes, and crab apple trees. The daffodils are all up and some have already bloomed. Birds are flocking in the meadow behind us. This never happens until the third week in April (and that would be early). I wish I could just enjoy the springness of it, but instead, I cannot help feeling that we will pay for the nice weather in the end. Last year we had a frost in June. It is not unusual for the weather to turn cold again in April. I've seen plenty of snow in May. In 1993, it spit snow on Memorial Day weekend. What happens to all those early bloomers when we get the inevitable frost? Nice, springlike weather...

The picture is our grandson (#4 of 8 grand children between the two of us) in South Carolina yesterday. Wow, while I was lost in my own little world, I missed (until the evening news) the fact that it is snowing again throughout the south. They said all fifty states had snow on the ground yesterday. I guess we should be good neighbors and lend economic aid to Canada by sending truckloads of all this snow to Vancouver. My brother and sister-in-law live for six months at their home in North Carolina. They were frantic to pack up and be out of Vermont by the first of November to avoid the snow--no small task since they travel with two miniature donkeys, twelve exotic chickens, two Italian greyhounds, a Jack Russell terrier , and a bird. My brother's goal was to never shovel snow again and my sister-in-law's goal was to never see snow again. That has not worked out for them for the past two years.

What a dark and gloomy day we have today. It's been pouring and we've needed the lights and the heat on most of the afternoon. We spent a lot of time reading. I even made a loaf of oat bread. It's not ready yet, but I am enjoying the aroma while I finished a cup of tea and my new favorite cookie--"digestive biscuits"(I know. Boring)--and now start a little computer time. Today would have been a good day to visit the aquarium in Sarasota, but we somehow just could not work up enough energy to make a dash out to the car. Instead I'm going to take a cruise to some of the recipe sites and plan a Valentine's Day meal for my sweetums. This looks to be a major foody weekend around here so I do hope the weather is a bit nicer tomorrow. There is a Polish food sale on Saturday, a Jewish food festival on Sunday, and an Italian festival running all weekend. I could do some damage...better stock up on those digestive biscuits...find them on the tiny British she...

We arrived in Venice on New Year's Day at around 2:30 p.m.--having made exceptionally good time on the road even with the infamous route 301 Florida speed traps. That was nice as it gave us some time to unpack the car and get a bit settled before crashing into bed and sleeping for ten hours straight. For Mike, "settling in" means quickly hanging up his shirts and then hooking up the lap top. His eager hopefulness is a bit sad to witness since history tells us quite clearly that an easy and immediate hook-up is just not going to happen--and it didn't. Once again we have spent out first five or six days in Florida without our internet security blanket, but I have to say we are developing a more Zen like attitude of acceptance as time wears on. Tech support at Comcast came through, we just had to wait our turn. Now that we are here, we are enjoying the "new" house that we rented. It is in the same neighborhood as the house we used to rent (which went into forec...