Or better yet, just stay in bed in your flannel granny gown.
Very cold here, and even colder on the other side of the mountains where temps will be below zero at night. I hope to get over to Twisp soon, but not this week.
This is also National Football Hangover Day and 22.5 million people across the United States intend to miss work following the big game. That's a 40% increase from last year. For what it's worth.
That's a cool poster from 1990. This will be the 8th Superbowl in party town New Orleans.
More often than not, we have an afternoon concert on Superbowl Sunday, but not this year. I hope that team that always wins not wins for a change. But I don't really care.
When the Seahawks pooped out early, I started rooting for the Buffalo Bills. We only spent 2 nights in that rabid football town, but it rubbed off on me, maybe lubricated by all those Buffalo wings. But you gotta love the Bill's fans with their snow shovels. (Listen to me, yakking on about football.)
I'm on a mission to get my little freezer used down so I can finally defrost it. On Sunday we're having a small turkey that I bought after the holidays.
Our neighbors from the Valley are in Seattle this weekend, and we're meeting at the art museum tomorrow morning. So a nice weekend shaping up.
Hope you have a good one.
There's a section on techno and futuristic drawing which doesn't interest me in the slightest, but I'm looking forward to the landscape and animal lessons. Realism isn't his thing, but he can draw anything and make it look easy.
The most useful part has just been reviving a drawing habit. The hardest part is staring at the blank sheet and getting started.
I did that mountain sketch yesterday in about a half hour, and when I stepped away, the "rock" in the foreground looked like a giant sleeping (or dead) beaver! John suggested I add some downed cottonwoods, just like Twisp. Rocks and trees, by the way, are really difficult.
Anyway, I'm trying to do one sketch a day and not take myself too seriously. It should be fun.
Guess what? Snowing again in Seattle this morning. I have a dentist appointment 2 blocks away (providing my hygienist can get to work.) By afternoon, we should be done with the snow, but bitter cold. This afternoon I might brave going to ukulele group on the heated patio. It's pizza night.
It's been a long winter. February is the month when we turn the corner to spring. Not this year.
We have to cheer ourselves up in these strange times. Amanda's been playing around with some AI app that turns photos into cartoons.
And yes, we look like a goofy Nana and Grandpa from some cartoon movie! It gave me a toothpick neck and John generously more hair. Ha ha.
Most of us had our share of canned soup growing up. The cooks of the 50's and 60's were seriously into convenience foods. (Unlike now, ha ha.)
Crazy as that sounds, some restaurants had canned soup displays. The waitress would warm the contents in a little pan or beaker then pour it into a bowl for the customer.
I remember feeling important doing that as a 15-year-old waitress at the Thunderbird Cafe in Florissant, Colorado. Mom ran the Thunderbird for a while, and she was the short order cook.
Anyway, we make lots of soup in this house, especially in the winter. A favorite is what we call taco soup, made with leftover seasoned taco meat simmered in (canned) beef broth with (canned) spicy tomatoes, whatever fresh vegetables and maybe beans. John would disagree, but I think the best soup is thrown together and never quite the same twice.
Our weather guru says we're headed into a "historically long" stretch of frigid weather. Some people find cold weather energizing; I find it hard to get out of bed.
There was something for everyone in the weather yesterday. The morning started out with big wet snowflakes, followed by few hours of bright sun, and in late afternoon, bands of snow squalls blowing up our street off Puget Sound. In some places, thunder snow.
Not much snow is expected in Seattle, but icy cold temperatures for the next week. I don't have to leave West Seattle for anything, and both of us glad our commuting days are over.
Browsing through old snow pictures on the blog, it's hard to believe this was Maya and Nova "only" ten years ago.
Grandchildren
by Olivia Stiffler
They
disappear with friends
near age 11. We lose them
to baseball and tennis, garage
bands, slumber parties, stages
where they rehearse for the future,
ripen in a tangle of love knots.
With our artificial knees and hips
we move into the back seats
of their lives, obscure as dust
behind our wrinkles, and sigh
as we add the loss of them
to our growing list of the missing.
Sometimes they come back,
carting memories of sugar cookies
and
sandy beaches, memories of how
we sided with them in their wars
with parents, sided with them
even as they slid out of our laps
into the arms of others.
Sometimes they come back
and hold onto our hands
as if they were the thin strings
of helium balloons
about to drift off.
