Please remind me that life returns.

Nights on the town.

My younger son and I went to an fundraiser downtown for an organic community farm.  There was music, a beard pageant (seriously) and several local restaurants participating in a soup competition.  The only problem was that it was very crowded, so we stood for a long time to get a bowl of soup and then in another line to get something to drink.  It was at a restaurant with a big selection of beers on draft so I got a Lagunitas IPA.  After second bowl of soup I decided it wasn't worth the lines, so that's all I had.  The butternut squash bisque was fine but not as good as the one I make myself.  But the cheesy onion soup with croutons was delicious.  It got my vote.

When the pool table in front of us opened up, so my son and I grabbed it.  I don't play pool, but I did anyway.  I'm terrible.  However, that did not stop me from doing a victory dance when I won by default when he accidentally sank the 8-ball.  We played pool for a couple of hours in spite of my complete lack of skill.

Last night my son was heading out with his friends, so I met up with a friend of my own for dinner. I've got male friends, of course, but this is the first time since college when I've had a platonic relationship with a guy I actually spend a lot of time with. Afterwards we stopped for hot chocolates and split a giant dark chocolate turtle. Whenever I see those, I always think about the discussion about chocolates in the office where I had a work-study job in college. One of the secretaries said in her very Southern way, "You know them turtles?  I could eat 'em till they just don't make 'em anymore." The tiny coffee shop was toasty and the night cold, so it was nice to huddle inside for a while and talk.

Yo no hablo español...yet.

I decided that I should learn a little Spanish.  In case I ever decide to re-locate to Costa Rica or something like that. The only language my little rural Georgia high school offered was Spanish. I didn't want to take Spanish, I wanted to take French. So I refused. And they let that slide, even though it was a graduation requirement for everyone else on the college track. When you're the top student in your grade at a small, poor school they let you get away with things they shouldn't allow. Especially when that student is awfully damned pig-headed - I also refused to take P.E. In a weird twist of fate, I went off to boarding school in Switzerland my senior year and lived in a French-speaking town. As the sole sixth-form kid without any background in the language at all, I was the only student in the class. Just me and Mme. DeWolff, an Austrian married to a Belgian. What French I do know is inflected with the Swiss sing-song intonation and a little Germanic guttural-ness. But in these parts, French isn't all that useful. Barring Canada getting a militaristic bee in its bonnet and invading southward, Spanish is more likely to come in handy. I'm starting with the iPad app Duolingo, because it's convenient and covers basics. And because it has a cute little owl icon. And mostly because it's free.

Each lesson has several different exercises - choosing a word from a set of photos, translating Spanish to English and vice versa, multiple choice, and repeating sentences into a microphone to be checked. You can have the sentences spoken in a slowed-down version by tapping that little tortuga, but I'm trying to avoid that because I know I won't encounter a slow-speaking Hispanic anywhere in this world.

So far I've covered some basic phrases, foods, animals and learned plurals for all those words. I know that English is an irregular language and considered difficult to master, but at least we don't assign gender to non-gendered objects.  Nevertheless, I can now tell you that I drink wine or we read newspapers or penguins eat rice (I swear I'm not making that up) or the boys write letters. I've said the word manzana more times than I care to, remember the silly upside down exclamation point, and I'm rolling my r's.

El pájaro seems happy with my persistence. I finished through to level 7 and then went back and repeated all the lessons again to help cement it in my decrepit 51-year-old brain. My ex-husband took a pure-science load to meet all his undergrad requirements for vet school in three years and was even more at sea than I was when we went to Mexico for our honeymoon twenty-five years ago. We went to one night of a non-credit conversational Spanish class at UVA and dropped out because everyone else was so serious and there was homework. Armed, then, with virtually no Spanish, we headed off for a month to Cuernavaca and Isla Mujeres. Once there, I stood by giggling as he told one Mexican after another, "Tú no hablas español."  After a few days I finally said, "Did you know you're telling them they don't speak Spanish?"

Occasionally the French tucked away in the dark recesses of my mind intrudes. Apparently, une fraise is not an acceptable substitute for una fresa. Well, whatever.

All things considered, though, it's been a bit easier than I was expecting. So far, so bueno.

Grammar Guerrilla

I couldn't help it, something just had to be done about this sign at the park.

I've turned into something of a sporadic blogger.

And it's snowing. You will hear me carping about this until Spring hits. Just so you know.

Not that I haven't been doing some fun things.   went with my photo-shopping friend to see a play in an itty bitty theater. There were parts of the play where the actors were in the aisle. There were maybe forty seats for the audience. The actors in the four-person show did a good job and even though I'd seen the movie, I was engrossed. There's something about the immediacy of a small venue for acting or music that is compelling.

I've also gotten in some good time with my younger son. We went for a walk in town and then had sushi together. We've developed a routine of going to half-price sushi day on the weekends I have him and ordering these same five rolls. The we order two or three more. Why don't we just get seven or eight to start with? Well, that's not our routine. We often talk about how things are going with him as we eat because it's just a relaxed way to be together. I am sure going to miss that boy when he heads off next fall.

And in the meantime... it's snowing. :-/

I appreciate someone who can make me laugh.

After I mentioned to a friend that the birds were singing outside, he said he thought all birds went south for the winter. I said, "This IS the South" and emailed this photo that I took from my window of a cardinal in the Harry Lauder's Walking Stick in the back yard. He asked how he could be sure it wasn't photoshopped and I told him I don't have those sorts of photoshop skills.  

A few minutes later he emailed me this:

Are we close to Spring yet?

Let me say up front, that I am fully a Southerner when it comes to weather. I like it warm. Sweltering, even. Summer is best and Spring and Fall not far behind. Winter and I, however, are often not even on speaking terms. And I know, the north and midwest have gotten pounded much harder than we have by this polar vortex distortion business, but that hasn't stopped me from retreating to facebook and sniping about the weather here:

The weather report said "brutally cold" this afternoon, then "dangerously cold" tonight. Nice. Next up, "horrifyingly cold" and "holy mother of god batshit crazy cold."

and later:

The on-line report says, "Dangerously cold morning with brutally cold weather all day long! At least there will be sunshine!" What is wrong with them? Those are not happy statements. Give me cloudy and warm enough not to freeze the air in my lungs. It's -2 degrees but "feels like -8." And by "-8" they mean "hell." 

And today:

I was almost giddy when the temperature briefly rose to 32 today. That's right, we were UP to freezing. There's a reason why the worst circle of hell, where Satan lives, is frozen. Dante knew what he was talking about. 

It's not just that it's miserably cold and I can't bear to be outside unless I have no choice (because hey, I have my 7-minute workout, which I am doing religiously twice a day), but that it brings with it a wave of cancellations. If someone truly can't make it in, that's fine. But don't cancel your 8 am appointment at 7:45, just as I'm arriving at the office. And worse, don't just freaking not show up and not bother to cancel. You see why I had too much time to be spending on facebook?

One silver lining - a seasonal IPA just perfect for the weather. Now - if you need me, I'll be stomping around and thinking up new snarky weather commentary. Many more empty appointment hours, and I'm going to apply for a job as an irritable meteorologist.

So this whole New Year's Intentions thing...

I think the way that is most likely to make a difference is to just elaborate on things you are do anyway so you have the momentum already going. For the past two years I've been doing the Goodreads book challenge. In 2012 I set my goal at 36 books and in 2013 at 48.  I met both of those goals so this year I challenged myself to 50. For avid readers this might not sound like a lot, but remember that I'm maintaining a household on my own, have a couple of kids, running a business and date. So 50 it is for this year. Every year I tend to start books during the holidays, but I count for the year any book I finish in that year. I have finished up these two. I really enjoyed "My Stroke of Insight." Then there was "The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture."  It was dreadful, and I so wanted to like it. The author said everything in the most convoluted way possible and made even interesting ideas deadly dull. 311 pages of mind-numbing droning.  If I were cornered by this guy at a party, I'd shoot myself.

Each book gets logged on the website so you can track your progress. I've moved on to "Hush," a novel about childhood sexual abuse within a New York Chassidic community. I had a hard time putting it down last night.

But I had to because I had this waiting for me in the morning. The friend I hiked with on New Year's Day had told me she had downloaded an app called "The 7 Minute Workout." Well, who can't spare seven minutes? I came home and found three free versions, and tried the first of them. They all seem to have the same exercises in the same order. You do a specific exercise for 30 seconds and then you "rest" (get in position for the next exercise) for 10 seconds. It seemed doable - so I decided I'd do it first thing every morning and, if it was a low exercise day, again in the evening. But yikes - the next morning I was already sore! Still, every morning I roll out of bed, put on pajama pants and a sports bra and start the app. But I'm not always graceful about it - the app says, "Side planks.  Start." And I say, "Noooo!" even as I start my side planks.

I switched over to the third of the free apps because it uses a real voice instead of a robot voice, it counts down the seconds for you, and at the end is encouraging. I like that. Even though it doesn't split the side planks into two fifteen second sessions but makes you do each side for 30 seconds. Every day, I've done the app twice in the day. I'm sore all over, but at least I'm told I rock. The middle of the three apps included push notifications that I did not authorize. I was sitting on the couch peacefully reading and suddenly there was a high pitched alarm and a question: "Screeeeeee! Do you have seven minutes to exercise?" No. No, I don't. I'm reading. But I do have seven seconds to delete you, you pushy little freak. I do pretty well with encouragement and accountability, but I don't like being bossed around.

Off to a good start.

A good friend invited me to go hiking with her and her daughter on New Year's Day. We couldn't have asked for better weather - crisp but not too cold, and clear with a brilliant blue sky.

The hike went as hikes do with young children making all the usual stops - the rest stops, the snack stops, the sock-adjustment stops, the poop stops, the look-at-the-rock-I-found stops. I'd considered going on another group hike, which would have been at a much faster clip, but I was in a Zen state and content with the leisurely pace and preferred spending the day with people I love.

The route took us up the mountain to an overlook, across a ridge, and then back down the mountain in a loop. We set out early and as the day progressed, ran into more folks out enjoying the glorious weather.

At the top we sat on a flat rock for a snack. Shortly after we settled there, an older man and a young Chinese woman arrived. I'm guessing she was an exchange student and he was in the host family.  He was talking to her very loudly and telling her all the words in her language that he knew and that his Chinese name was "Yomika" (Yo MY Kah). He told her, "Now I'm not a dirty old man, I'm just being friendly and I thought you'd enjoy this area.  I don't want you to think I'm a dirty old man, we're just friends.  Understand?  Just. Friends." She looked uncomfortable, nodded and said, "Oh of course." Well. I've got news for you, Yomika. Anyone who goes to the trouble of insisting repeatedly that he is not a dirty old man is a dirty old man. Because obviously you were thinking about it. Normal men would feel no need to talk about it. Creeper.

Other than that, all was good on the mountain. Symbolically, I think walking a path and getting a new perspective is a good way to start a year.