Thursday Thankfuls: Noisy Birds and the Bike Path

This may sound just silly, but you know what I’m thankful for this morning? Birds. Seriously! I love waking up to fresh, early morning air filled with the twitter and warble of birds.

Remember a few months ago, when I was bemoaning the frigid temperatures and wishing for spring? Birdsong reminds me as I wake up that I’m not waking to a bleak, gray day where the temperature might get above 40° if I’m lucky. Today will get into the low 70s with abundant sunshine – a perfect day for a long walk.

I know I’ve mentioned the neighborhood bike path before. At this time of year it’s filled with flowers, with bright green canopies of leaves, and all sorts of birds singing to each other and chittering away at squirrels who try to get too close to nests. The sounds and scents of the area tend to encourage me as I walk, making me want to go just a little farther, see if I can find out which bird is making that pretty song, or where that squirrel hid, or just to enjoy the spring day. Nearly all the people I pass on my walks are friendly. They smile, say hello, and sometimes we even have a small conversation. No one is in a big rush to get somewhere else, and only a few people look with a scowl and anyone else around them. (I feel sorry for those individuals, because everything’s so much nicer when people greet each other and smile. Do I sound naive? I’m not, which makes these greetings all the nicer.)

If you have a chance today, stop, close your eyes, and just listen to the birds. It’s worth a few moments of time.

April 15 last year – poor sparrow was NOT happy with the late snow, and neither was I!

I also just found that I can place a degree symbol in my post, so I no longer have to use the asterisk in its stead! See? A bonus thankful thing.

Friday Photography: Baby, It’s Cold Outside!

More cold, more snow. I’d say all I want to do is climb under the blankets and quilts and hide until Spring, but that’s not true. All I want is for the days to warm up a bit! A light breeze, warm sun, blue skies with puffy white clouds floating along, in the upper 50s to mid 60s… *sighs*

As it is, Dexter has learned about burrowing under blankets for warmth:

Dexter has the right idea!

He’s even got one paw possessively over my warmest cardigan, like there’s no way he’s going to give that up! Smart boy.

 

(Yes, I know – Cat Photos. I have two cats, and their pictures will show up here once in awhile. I promise not to inundate!)

 

 

I Told You!

I said I would, and I did – and just in time, since there’s really cold rain with some icy bits falling outside now!

My hikers on the bike path in all the melt this noon… with my feet in them!

Fallen tree bark in the meltiness.

It’s just above freezing outside. The wind began to pick up a little on my way back home, but otherwise the cold really didn’t bother me. My breathing, on the other hand, wasn’t so easy. I already don’t breathe all that well in the cold thanks to some asthma, but adding nearly a whole second person to my frame really makes it tough. On the great news, my lower back didn’t ache! While I could feel it in my leg muscles (which is really embarrassing now that I think about it – how out of shape did I let myself get???), my back felt fine.

There were two men on the trail behind me somewhere, their voices happy and laughing. It was nice hearing that as I snapped some shots of my walk. It was also nice to see grass beneath the snow, and to not have gotten the eight to twelve inches of snow they were predicting last night!

Little hills of grass.

 

Thankfully, it’s not quite this dark out there at noon, but it can sometimes seem that way…

It almost looks black and white, or like a setting for a suspense movie.

I was going to walk back on the sidewalks just for a change, but after taking a couple photos on the little walking bridge, I started down the other side – and realized there was a thin sheet of ice all the way down. Even the treads were a bit slick. back to the path for me!

On the walking bridge, with snow and ice and moss. But I’m here!

And because i will probably forget to post this tomorrow: a groundhog burrow for Groundhog Day! (The one day of the year I never mind clouds.)

Please, please, please, Mr. Groundhog – don’t be scared back into your burrow by the sun tomorrow!

 

(Okay, that might also be a rabbit hole. Both rabbits and groundhogs are all over the place here. But let’s say it’s what I say it is, just because, okay?)

 

 

I’m Afraid

I have been lying awake in bed the past couple hours with thoughts running pell-mell through my mind.

Outside, rain has been plipping and plopping against the windows and on the pavement – rain that was predicted as heavy snowfall. I’m not going to argue about this change of events!

Still, this and the insomnia brought on those Late Night Thoughts. The subject of mine varied a bit tonight, but was mainly about my weight loss and fitness and lack of both these things in the past months. After mulling about binging on stuff I should not have binged on Saturday (with my Logical Brain telling me to just start again this morning, and change my life to how I want it) my thoughts sort of went like this:

• Just eat less of what you’re eating.
• Then you feel lighter and are more active
• But I am stuck in the house for days during this cold!
• Remember a couple years ago when you would bundle up and go for a walk on the path, even though it was cold outside?
• You even bought those cool weather-proof hikers so you wouldn’t fall on the ice.
• Yeah, I remember. That felt good. I want to do that again.
• So why don’t you? If it’s not horribly nasty out there in a few hours, why not bundle up and walk a bit?
• Walk a little today. Then walk a little tomorrow. and walk some more the next day.
• There’s a springtime 5k in March up north, and I know you want to do that.
• I do! I could start walking a bit and then be able to walk that easily by March! Only…
• I’m afraid. 

And that’s a big problem, I am realizing, with being fat. I’m afraid of things. In this case, I’m afraid of falling on the ice and breaking something. Of my weight adding to the momentum or the pressure or whatnot, and really causing a bad injury – one that not only can I not afford at all, but one that will keep me from trying to get back into walking all the time and losing this weight. Which of course means that I stay indoors and do nothing all winter long, while wishing I was small enough to go outside and do things. A really silly Catch-22!

I know – it sounds whiny, doesn’t it? Hey – I’m writing this at four in the morning, and the conversation with myself happened around three. Still, sometimes that’s when we can be the most honest with ourselves, isn’t it?

My Logical Brain huffed a little bit, said it understood – but why not try it after the sun comes up, anyway? Just put on jeans and boots and a sweatshirt and a big ole windbreaker or whatever I can fit into in winter-wear, and just go try it. If I don’t feel safe enough from ice on the walking path, just walk on the sidewalks – they usually keep those snow and ice free.

Just try.

Oh, and eat smaller portions.

 

 

 

Friday Photography: Tiny Snowballs

The cold rain yesterday turned into freezing rain, which turned into little ice pellets sometime during the night. When I went outside this morning to feed the birds, I immediately came back in to grab my phone for a few shots of this:

Little snowy balls of ice on the arm of my patio chair.

These look like tiny snowballs! I half expected the chipmunks to have a snowball fight with a squirrel sometime this morning.

Snowballs for the chipmunks!

Another shot of the pebbles of snow on my wooden patio chair in the blue light of early morning. I thought this was an interesting view.

And the hoary little things on the seat of my chair!

If you are expecting some nasty winter weather (like what they are predicting for us) in the next 48 hours, stay safe and warm!

 

 

Thursday Thankfuls: Springtime WILL Come

The sky has been a flat gray color all day long. Even though the temperature managed to get up to 40*, I still heard icy rain for quite a few hours.

It’s on winter days (and weeks) like these that I have to remember to be grateful that springtime will come. Granted, we may wind up with another five inches of snow one night at the end of April (which happened last year!), but we will have springtime, and then we will have summer. I have to be thankful for the winter, too, because without these dreary, icky days, I wouldn’t appreciate the blues and greens of spring as much as I do!

Now to keep repeating to myself: “Spring will come… spring will come soon…”

 

 

 

It’s Chilly Out There!

Yesterday we had a dreary, rainy, cold cold day. Flat gray skies, the sound of the raindrops marching across the roof and pavement, the static-y noise of car tires being driven through standing water. Sometime during the night the rain changed to snow, giving us another coating of the white stuff to wake up to.

I could complain, but I can’t. Not really. I don’t live in New York anymore. where they are worried about inches upon inches of snow and blizzard conditions. We have a Level 1 snow advisory in a few of the adjacent counties, but not mine, and I’m good with that – believe me!

Instead, this is what was seen in my small area of the world:

Footprints in the snow.

Footprints of neighbors as they made their ways to their cars, scraping off the ice and brushing away the accumulated snow before making their ways – slowly! – to work this morning.

 

Waiting for springtime!

The birdbath is filled, but the birds probably won’t want to use it until the water is warmed up a bit more… They may need to wait quite awhile. The long-range forecast (if you can believe such things) isn’t showing temperatures above 45* for another month at least. Please remind me how much I gloomed about the cold when I am grousing about the heat in six months?