February 20 - Where you stood

Those little green shoots are the daffodils, with buds. And it's only 29°!

January 29 - Grow

Another shot of the too-early-to-sprout daffodils.

Spring-ish

Look closely at those little green shoots poking up from that patch of dirt. This photo was taken at a rest stop in east Tennessee, near Bristol, late yesterday afternoon as I made my way back home from Nashville.

Those are daffodils. January 13, 2013. Mine are popping up, as well. See?

But you know what? I went back in my photo files and found a similar shot taken on January 20 of last year. And they bloomed when they were supposed to. Well, maybe a little earlier than expected, but the early growth spurt didn't results in a lack of flowers.

I'm not sure what to think of this. Winter isn't even a month old and I'm seeing robins and daffodils, two sure-fire signs of spring, at least in my mind.

It was 70° in Nashville Friday and Saturday. A cold front has now moved through – if I were still there, I'd be appropriately dressed. As it was, I was too warm in my long-sleeved shirts. I didn't even take my jacket out of the car. And it was a good thing I packed two dress-up ensembles, as the one with the quilted jacket would have been far too warm to wear to the performance I went to Saturday evening.

Which was lovely, by the way. My granddaughter is so talented and so graceful, a natural at dance. Watching her move delights me.

And I am beyond grateful she inherited the lithe, lean genes of her mother, who got them from her father, rather than the vertically challenged and horizontally enhanced ones from my side of the family.

LoseIt!'s week begins on Monday, while mine begins on Wednesday. (You perpetual dieters will know what that means.) LoseIt! sends a report every Monday letting you know how you've done. As I'm only weighing myself once a month, I have no loss to report, but I've stayed below the calorie limit every day since I began 20 days ago (-5519 calories), and have managed to rack up 18 hours and 10 minutes of intentional activity (nearly an hour a day!).

Not bad for an old lady.

The cold front that moved through Nashville is heading toward southern West Virginia. There's a lull in the rain right now, and the temperature is manageable, in the low 40s. If I'm going to walk outdoors today, this would be the time to do it. (My designated Monday rest day got switched to yesterday again. Two consecutive weeks! Perhaps I should re-think the rest day plan. Or perhaps I should continue to remain flexible.)

One more cup of coffee 'fore I go …

A lazy Monday morning. So far.

If I don't get my ass in gear pretty soon the day will have completely slipped by and I will not have participated or accomplished a darned thing.

I scheduled a 10 a.m. client meeting three blocks away from the gym. That was a very good idea. Heh. Because I could easily, easily make this a pajama day.

I rewarded my hard work pulling weeds with a bouquet 

of daffodils. Cheerful, sunny, happy, and there are still 

dozens of them brightening up the edge of the pine grove.

I spent 90 minutes yesterday pulling weeds from the flower bed at the end of our driveway. I only quit because it started raining. And I'm not done. Which is frustrating and annoying, because I don't know when I'm going to have another 90 minutes to finish the job.

I'm the kind of person who wants to finish a project in one fell swoop. It's why I don't often sew. In fact, it's why I tend to collect supplies for a variety of crafts and activities rather than work on actual projects.

I'd love to be able to start and stop and start up again, but that's just not my nature. (I had to really really really rein myself in at the Democratic women's work party last week. I could have stayed until we finished, but they all wanted to go watch a basketball game. Harumph. Heh.)

The exception, of course, is knitting. Somehow I've put knitting into the "enjoy-the-process" category instead of the "finish-the-project" one. I'm still slogging away on the blue sweater I started last summer. Sigh. Although I'm not sure that "slogging" and "enjoy-the-process" are compatible at this point.

The family drama has been reduced to a dull roar. It's so very difficult to watch someone put up his own roadblocks and not want to insert myself right in the middle of it, pointing my finger and telling him what to do. I've shared my opinion. All I can do now is stand back and hope that he will receive his moment of clarity before it's too late. I've had to accept that my will cannot be done. People are gonna do what they're gonna do, and that includes me. I'm choosing to be graceful and centered and calm and serene and at peace with whatever the future holds.

Most of the time. Heh.

Still no answer ...

on the logo. Maybe I'll make a video and it'll go viral on YouTube and out of the millions of people who view it, the original designer will come out of the woodwork and offer me lotsocashmoneybucks for the one remaining gimmetote left from that particular event.

Or not.

Moving on …

I originally dedicated my Project 365 blog (I guess it should be 366 this year, eh?) this year to food, glorious food. But you know what? You can take just so many pictures of meat and salad and it starts getting boring. And repetitive. And boring. A couple days ago I kind of circumvented the topic by posting food for the soul, but yesterday I just busted out totally and shot this.

People, it's waaay too early for daffodils. The first daff photo I took last year was of a bunch of them along a median strip. On March 23. The first asparagus started coming up March 15. I'm kind of afraid to go look at the asparagus bed. I haven't even cut back last year's dead stalks.

I continue to stay on track with the food part of the South Beach plan, but totally blew off any intentional activity yesterday. Even though the dumbbells are now convenient to where I usually park my ass. I kept postponing the walking, mostly because I was busy clearing out the guest room of the generational clutter.

Among the treasures I found were five tuxedo shirts, all different, four of which are in remarkably good shape. They'd been carefully folded and placed in the bottom of a cardboard box, and then various other odd things were tossed atop them. Things like:

• Dozens of spools of thread, some wooden
• A set of plaques with heart images on them, advertising drugs made by Boehringer-Ingleheim
• A stack of handprinted fabric squares, 9x9 inches, made in Key West, FL
• Odd pieces of light blue cotton
• Enough beautiful dark-pink cotton pique fabric, embroidered all over with daisies, to make my younger granddaughter a dress
• A Kodak camera. With film in it.

And that was just one box. I'm also now stocked for life with blue, white and black fabric ribbon, and with gift wrap. As long as I want to present my gifts in a plain brown wrapper.

Today looks like a good day to catch up on another episode from Glee's first season. I'm always gone on Tuesday nights when it airs, and I don't have anyone to talk about the episodes with anyway, so I don't mind being a couple years behind. I do intend, however, to keep up with Mad Men when it begins its new season on AMC March 25. 9 p.m. Be there or be square.