“Optimist: Day-dreamer more elegantly spelled” ~ Mark Twain

After working through the weekend to finish a couple of projects, I’m itching for an afternoon off. This afternoon was spent with the DVR (to watch last Friday’s episode of Grimm), and a glance around the interwebs.

Animal Planet announced their Puppy Bowl VI lineup! Whee!

(I’ll be watching the Super Bowl, but how can you resist these puppies?!)

Update: I was so taken in by the cuteness that I failed to realize that this year’s puppy bowl is actually Puppy Bowl VIII… this video is old… but still cute!

“For my part I know nothing with any certainty, but the sight of the stars makes me dream.” ~ Vincent van Gogh

Well THAT’S a dry spell, huh?

What’s been going on lately? Um, nothing.

No, wait, that’s not true.

We went to DC for Christmas. It was wonderful. I have no good photos of the experience. We went to the National Zoo, and the Museum of Natural History, to the National Gallery and Air & Space.

At the zoo I came face to face with a king vulture as he loped over to the front of his enclosure. (Vultures do that on the ground, you know. They can walk and run, but they seem to be most comfortable galloping.) We had a moment of mutual consideration. (You might commune with a whale or dolphin and consider it communication, but birds don’t seem to be communicative in that way.) It was amazing.

At Air & Space we marveled over the Wright Brothers exhibit, and then the manned space missions exhibit. Did you know that those two “events” were less than 70 years apart? Really, how amazing is it that we went from not having flying machines to going into space?

Flight 85: Orville in flight, covering a distance of approximately 1,760 feet in 40 1/5 seconds; Huffman Prairie, Dayton, Ohio. Public domain photo from the Library of Congress, via Wikipedia.

How cool is it that the Wright brothers got inspired by the notion of flight and then did the work to make it happen? And how amazing is it that with equipment that looked like it could have been purchased at the hardware store, we sent men (and chimps and dogs) into space? Trial and error. Test and refine. Learn as you go. Keep going.

There were clearly some great minds at work there, and an overabundance of courage.

And I’m sorry, but I’m just not getting that in my real life. Presidential politicis? Puh-leeze. Wall Street? Right. Did you know that a lot of brokerage houses want nothing to do with you if your assets are valued at less than $250,000? I’m tempted to become a financial planner just to deal with the “poor.” (According to Merrill Lynch you’re poor if you have less than $100,000 in assets.) The message I’m hearing is that we’re supposed to be able to pay for our own insurance, and retirement, in an economy where traditional savings vehicles no longer work the way they used to, and we’re just supposed to know how to do that… at least until we’ve accumulated enough wealth to make it worth it for a financial advisor. What?!

OK, so it’s time to ignore that TV machine.

One of our local parks is renovating their “mirror” pond to make it pretty… and pretty much devoid of ducks and frogs and turtles. We live in an age where kids don’t know how to behave in the presence of nature, which leads them to trample wetland plants, threaten herons with baseball bats and carry turtles around with them (instead of leaving them be and observing them). I’m not sure how sterilizing an already man-made pond helps with that.

See? What did I tell you? I’m Debbie Downer… sigh.

My self-assigned task for the next week: seek out inspiration.

Other things on the to-do list: find a job (I see a change in direction on the horizon), draw more (better than therapy!) and cook some yummy non-food-hangover-inducing food.

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;
Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.” ~ Christmas Hymn, 1st verse, author unknown

I’m a little loosy-goosier than the average person, and I’ve never really been a type-A overachiever, but I must admit I’ve never really understood the follow-the-natural-rhythms-of-the-year crowd’s exhortation that we slow down in the winter.

It’s not like I can’t see it happening all around me in the natural world. Most of the birds are gone (except for the juncos, the goldfinches who overwinter in our neighborhood, and a few chickadees), the yard goes dormant, there’s a lot less sunlight and it’s a whole lot colder.

I just thought it shouldn’t affect me so much, but I’m finding — especially as I get older — that it does.

I naturally go to bed a little bit earlier and read more before going to sleep. It’s harder to wake up (or get out of bed) in the dark, cold mornings to go to the gym or do some yoga before starting my day. I not only look forward to my morning coffee, I find I actually need it to get going.

Starting in about mid-November, I live in layers: camisole, t-shirt, sweater, fleece jacket, warm jacket, plus a scarf, gloves and maybe a hat, if it’s bitterly cold outside. And socks… thick warm, dry socks. I have a wardrobe of winter shoes: boots for walking around in snow, muck boots for shoveling snow, boots for cold and dry weather, hiking shoes, waterproof slip-on clogs, and, of course, slippers.

I even crave slow, warm food in the winter: beans, stews, roasted fruits and veg, baked goods of all stripes. The oven goes on for hours at a time while I figure out what I can bake next — or if the oven should go through a self-cleaning cycle — because if the oven is on, the kitchen warms up.

I get it, intellectually. I do. Physically it seems to be an imperative — you can’t scurry on slushy snow without risking injury (especially if you live on a big hill). But while winter slows me down physically I find my anxiety level ramping up. Why is is so dark all the time?! Why can’t I seem to get s*&% done?! Instead of going fallow for a little while, I lament my inability to work at the same pace I do for the rest of the year.

I don’t have a solution, except to admit that maybe it’s time to get on board with the follow-the-natural-rhythms-of-the-year folk. Maybe for the winter, slow(er) should be the new fast. Maybe I should just put on an extra sweater and see if I can pick out any extra details I miss when running around at break-neck speed is the norm.

Or maybe I should just take a nap… until spring.

“To live content with small means; to seek elegance rather than luxury, and refinement rather than fashion; to be worthy, not respectable, and wealthy, not rich; to listen to stars and birds, babes and sages, with open heart; to study hard; to think quietly, act frankly, talk gently, await occasions, hurry never; in a word, to let the spiritual, unbidden and unconscious, grow up through the common — this is my symphony.” William Henry Channing

I have too much stuff, and it’s everywhere. Sometimes it piles up before I know it and it’s time to dig out a little bit so I fit back in to my regular life.

Last year was a prime example of a collecting phase. I was flying a lot, away from home a lot, and generally not picking up after myself very much. The end result: a mound of shredding that took about 12 hours over three days to sort through and dispatch appropriately. (Actually, I found checks from before D and I were married, which meant we’d been hauling around a bunch of detritus for years.)

Here’s what I discovered: Chase Bank is evil. More specifically, the Continental Airlines card offered through Chase Bank is evil. Here’s a stack of 15 (yes, FIFTEEN) credit card offers our household has received over the last several months… and these are the ones I decided to save and count AFTER going through a seemingly endless pile of the same credit card offers dating back a year.

What makes these super insidious is that your name/address appears at least three times in each of these envelopes. It’s like the bank wants someone to come along and steal your identity if you carelessly throw these away.

Not. Cool.

I was tempted to toss these in a box and send them back to the Chase address on the back of the envelope, but I’m not sure I want these floating around the country.

Besides, it’s a tremendous waste of resources. And I suspect that those of us who are already Chase customers are financing this giant misadventure. Geez. Bank of America is no better, with those balance transfer “checks” they keep sending. (Dudes, those go straight to the shredder without passing “go.”)

Next, a collection of boxes, each full of books, to be donated to the library.

Yes, I have way too many books, even after thinning my collection. Some people collect shoes, some stamps, with me, it’s books. It’s not the worst thing, I think, but I need to learn to keep it a little bit more in check.

Finally, a stack of new Utrecht sketchbooks. I don’t live near a Utrecht store, and I don’t usually shop there unless I’m visiting Seattle or Portland. I missed it last Thanksgiving, which is fine, except that I’m in need of some sketchbooks and I really like Utrecht’s.

I’m not sure why I like these sketchbooks so much. From what I can tell, they’re not all that different from any other sketchbooks, but for some reason I have a preference for the paper in these. Is it irrational? Oh, sure, but I like what I like (and fortunately, the shipping was free for Black Friday).