Folks, Lindsay Has Left the Building...

I'd just like to say that it is almost 1:00 in the morning, and I just went outside, without a coat on, in 8-degree weather, and read a sentence out of a book - by the light of the moon - and - I didn't freeze. WHAT ON EARTH IS HAPPENING TO ME???!!!

The Upside of Winter in Wisconsin

So there's downsides to living in Wisconsin in the winter, but I've found there's a few upsides that I never would have been able to appreciate in California:

Downside: Living on a busier street can be hazardous.
Upside: Living on a busier street means we get plowed and salted first. And often.

Downside: Shoveling the walkway, the sidewalks, the porch and the driveway.
Upside: Getting to know my neighbors as we help each other out.

Downside: Freezing cold basement = freezing cold bedroom.
Upside: Snuggling under an electric blanket.

Downside: White, white, white.
Upside: The florescent pink house, the turquoise blue house, and the pumpkin-colored house with maroon shutters. (Yes, really.)

Downside: No cloud cover to hold "heat" in means extra, extra cold temperatures.
Upside: No cloud cover means crisp air, and the brightest stars and moon you've ever seen.

Downside: 15,000 types of snow.
Upside: A learned appreciation for the Inuits who have names for each type.

Downside: It's snowing - again.
Upside: The prettiest glitter-fest in my backyard.

Downside: Water freezes outside, causing all sorts of issues.
Upside: Heated bird baths.

Downside: Too much closet space taken up with winter scarves, hats and gloves.
Upside: Feeling loved because it is my friends who made them for me.

Downside: Big berms of snow caused by the plow at the end of my driveway.
Upside: Watching the girls across the street running to the top of the berms and sledding down, squealing the whole time.

Downside: Cold hands.
Upside: Hot cocoa.

Downside: My eyebrows froze until they were numb while walking across the parking lot from the grocery store.
Upside:The grocery store was my first stop of the day, complete with milk and frozen food - and THEN I drove around doing errands for 5 more hours. (Yes, with the food still in the car!)

And finally:

Downside: Winter is just too white, and stinkin' COLD!
Upside: It just makes spring that much sweeter.

Love to you all!

Continued Care

So while pulling out some old nails, I took a couple of good-sized hunks out of my little finger. No major pain, but a lot of the nails were rusty. Of course, the next thing I think about are all the horror stories of people stepping on rusty nails and tetanus shots, yada, yada... So I call Mom. Mom says call the doctor. I call the doctor at 8pm, and by 8:45pm, I'm already home, complete with updated tetanus shot. I love my health care!

So Cal

Outlet shopping at Cabazon today. 4.3 earthquake just now. Correlation?

I still hate earthquakes.

New Year and Warm Days

A freezing 82 today. Brrr! No, really, it was wonderful. The last few days have been just beautiful - blue skies, clear, warm. Did I mention it was warm? I've been sitting in the sun for a couple of hours at a time each day, quietly gloating about being here. Danielle said I'm like a lizard.

Speaking of temperatures (when do I not?) - I was thinking about Thanksgiving today. We were blessed with good weather (well, not snowing, at least), so we drove out to Michigan to spend Thanksgiving with my grandfather, aunts, uncles, and cousins. We had the traditional feast, we ALL somehow managed to fit around the table, and we gave our thanks to God. Because it was a nice day (60s), my Uncle Scott, the pastor, said we should open up the windows. We did. Everyone took a nice deep breath of fresh air. As we enjoyed our meal, Uncle Scott says, (to no one in particular), "Boy, how many Thanksgivings can you think of that have been nice enough to open the windows?" Like I could let that slide by... :) "Um, about 31," was my reply. He kept his response short and to-the-point: "Shut up."

I drove out to visit my sister-in-love, nieces, and grand nephews (yes, grand-nephews - I have 5 of them and one grand-niece). Just three boys there today, but boy, my niece has her hands full! Did I mention that my sister lives in Huntington Beach? She does. I do not. It's a fairly long drive (an hour), on interstate freeways. BUSY freeways. With stupid people on them. I do not miss those. (Freeways or stupid people.) I've become very spoiled by my "rush hour" traffic in Madison. Two-minute stops and slows in traffic are tolerable. Stop-and-start for an hour is not. I still hate driving when there's ice around, but I found that buying a house on a fairly well-traveled road has its advantages. It gets plowed and salted - often. That means that pretty much anywhere I need to go is all on salty busy streets. Yay.

In my travels today, among other sights, I saw a couple of sign twirlers. For those of you unfamiliar with those, they are people who stand on busy intersections with big signs pointing toward some random place they want you to visit. Usually, there is bouncing, dancing and twirling involved. Today there were two on this one corner - one was for a new home development, the other was for a Mexican restaurant, featuring 3-foot long burritos for $19.99. One of the men was Caucasian, one was Hispanic. The Hispanic man was NOT the one twirling the Mexican restaurant sign. No, the holder of THAT sign was your stereotypical "white-guys-can't-dance" kind of guy - complete with a whole entire fiesta dumped all over him - sombrero and all. Welcome to southern California.