Out of sync

Those who know me know that I dread the cold temperatures of winter, but this weather is ridiculous! New York City on January 6 is NOT supposed to be 70F (21C for 3/4 of the world).
And so keeping with the tradition of completely being confused as to what to wear throughout these months, I was again fooled by mother nature. Hubby and I went for a walk and I thought that I was going to suffer from heat-stroke after only one block.

Even though I was aware that it was unseasonably warm out there, my brain could only process that it is winter after all, and so although I didn't put my mittens and hat on I did don a heavy sweater. N took one look at me and in his ever-so-wise way said "don't you think it's a little too much?", to which I replied "It's January!" and off we went (His Wiseness doesn't argue with his wife when she makes no sense).
Weeeelllll, not smart. I came back to the house ready to put on a swimming suit and jump into any body of water (but the bathtub, it's too small to be "jumping" into unless I want to break something). So out the sweater came and t-shirt it was.

Dinner? well, since it's warm: chicken with rosemary... yup, summery kind of dinner.
I finally used the rosemary that I had so dutifully put into ice-cube trays when I did my urban harvest. I can vouch that the whole freezing in ice-cubes works, the house smells great!

In another piece of useless blabbering (which by the way I've seen spelled as blabbing which is not quite the same thing – Blabbing: To reveal (secret matters) especially through indiscreet or unreserved talk; Blabber: To chatter – I'm not indiscreet and so this is not blabbing but blabbering).
So where was I? Oh yes, useless chattering. I was thinking about being lazy and not sticking to my resolution of writing more. Which led me to think about being lazy in general and all the little forms it takes, which in turn took on the form of a list: The Height of Laziness. And here it is for your enjoyment, feel free to add your "proud" moments.

The Height of Laziness
1) Leaving the toilet paper resting ON TOP of the empty roll instead of just changing it (mea culpa, can't even blame hubby for that one).
2) Walking around in circles looking for the remote control (because actually changing the channel, song, etc by hand is unheard of).
3) Eating on the kitchen counter (place settings, plates and cutlery for two? so passé).
4) Seeing dust bunnies procreating and multiplying and constantly repeating "next week I'm definitely taking care of them" (and months pass until the only choice left is to either do it or move to a new place).
5) Considering the option of going out with wet hair even if it's 10F outside (because the 5 minutes it takes to blow-dry your hair is waaaay too long - not styling, just drying).
6) Not shaving until you can't distinguish between your husband's legs and your own (hair cannot grow that much in one day, or two or three, can it?).
7) Serving yourself yesterday's left-over coffee and nuking it (throwing it out, getting the coffee out of the refrigerator, pouring water and turning the machine on? too many steps).
8) Waiting until a bikini bottom is the last piece of clean underwear you have before doing laundry (and no, it's not a fashion statement, I despise doing laundry).
9) Making sure that whatever clothes you buy are wrinkle free (I have an iron somewhere, it scares me, I bet it's the dust-bunnies' pimp).
10) Making a list instead of doing all the afore mentioned.

Rest assured, the house is clean, but far from perfect. Then again, perfection can be so boring. Right? Right.

Update: The bunnies have moved on to a better place (the vacuum cleaner). May they rest in peace. I'm still working on the rest of it, including the toilet paper...

The end of Summer

I've been lazy... mea culpa. I've often sat in front of the computer with the best intentions of writing but was distracted by numerous things. Once it was a fly. Ok, it might not have been just any fly, the thing was persistent, it kept landing on my arm or on the screen. It wasn't big or small, and apparently it liked our apartment so much that it survived for what seemed to be the whole summer, avoiding Nadir's magazine swats with mastery and my annoyed persecutions in a very non-chalant way.

Often when I sat ready to write, my eyes would wander and I would ultimately find something that needed my immediate attention: a plant needing water, an unwanted spec of dust, a pillow not fluffed enough. Another time it was the breeze. Yes, I sit next to a window and the summer breeze is one of those things that takes my mind to far away places. Nothing awakens my senses like a summer breeze. There was the garbage truck one evening that seemed to make more noise than usual, and I should also mention Mister Softee. Now Mister Softee is one of those NY things that brings out the best in you when you're 10 years old, and the worst when you're an adult.
Mister Softee, for all of you who don't know, is an ice-cream truck. It c-o-n-s-t-a-n-t-l-y plays this music that I always wondered why it hasn't been used in a horror movie. The first time you hear it it's almost nice, it reminds you that summer is here, that kids will be running outside to get their ice-cream and that everything is ok with the world. By August you're ready to grab a bazooka and shoot the damn thing (when there are no kids around and the driver is getting a cup of coffee mind you - no need for blood). And so Mister Softee makes me forget the summer breeze as I close the windows to keep my murderous instincts in check.

Right now, someone is listening to Andrea Bocelli in their car, loud enough for me to hear, and my first instinct is to get up and put the CD on, but no, I've decided that I would write today (saying absolutely nothing by the looks of it) and post a blog.
So here it is, an entry about flies and ice creams and my lack of concentration. It's the end of the summer, and that means, my dear friends, that I'll be moaning soon enough about weather and winter, writing about soups and hearty dishes, about classes and life. Nothing else to say but: I'm baaaack.

Drip, drip and more drip

To say that I am fed up with the rain is an understatement. What's up with this weather??? I mean come on! I haven't seen the sun in like months now! There is apparently a shy appearance every now and then, but of course it happens when I'm in the office and ergo do not see it. It teases, a ray here and there, and then vlam! a thunderstorm, a freak rain shower that turns every street crossing into a battle with the rapids. Yesterday I had to fold-up my pants and take off my shoes to cross an avenue so that I wouldn't go into involuntary surfing. Not pretty I'm telling you.
Needless to say that I have not done any gardening and have only gone once to the pool. This morning I went into the garden before going to work to check things out and can almost guarantee that the tomato plants have become possessed: There is a mangle of branches that have no beginning or end sprawling all over the place. No tomatoes of course...
The strawberries? never mind those, it's a horror story. Yet the grapes have decided that they do not like their new habitat and have maintained their comatose state. The weeds on the other hand are happy campers and I'm sure are stinking their tongue out to every plant that we've planted claiming their kingdom back.
This weekend is supposed to be OK and so I find myself in a quandary: Soccer or garden? for many of you it would seem like a no-brainer but I'm hooked on this World Cup. And so the dilemma becomes to either watch the matches or save whatever self-esteem the poor plants still have. Oh if I could have both. Maybe I'll run from one to the other and do the best I can. The World Cup is once every four years, the weeds? If I were ever so lucky...

Reminiscence

Do you remember when you were a kid and as the summer neared its end you felt the knot at the pit of your stomach slightly tightening? You knew that the care-free days were almost over and that soon you would have to sit in a classroom day in and day out, and do homework!
Well, as adults most of us don't have the luxury of a couple months off before starting to get that uncomfortable feeling, now it's limited to a weekend.
That's basically how I feel on Sundays during the summer. It's like I want to squeeze as much "me" time in a few hours. The fact that I feel cheated out of my weekend due to the weather might explain my sudden flash-back into childhood. I watch the clock as the day progresses and do an automatic count-down. "Yeah, I still have 6 hours." How sad.
Could it be that my week is not satisfying? maybe it's just that summer reminds me of the simple pleasure of just waking up. During the winter you have to find things to keep you busy and uplifted, whilst during the summer the mere fact of walking around your neighborhood might be enough.
I feel like I'm being robbed of that luxury. The weather is lousy and forcing me to stay indoors when I should be in the garden or the pool, or just out!
The elements, my biggest enemies...

Finally!

It's spring! yes yes yes! The trees are blooming, the first flowers are showing their colors, the birds are chirping. Even the dogs look happy while peeing on the sidewalks and no longer have that "hurry hurry before my paws freeze and I get stuck here!" kind of expression. Misery is no more, happiness is in the air. Pants are being tossed in the back of the closet and skirts get shorter as temperatures rise (not me mind you); flip-flops do their flippy-flapping in a wishful way although it's still a bit nippy out there. The moment it gets above 50F (10C for you mathematically challenged) New Yorkers don their summer attires so as to dare Old Man Winter to show his face again. I often see them shivering stubbornly in the evening, with a sweater around their waist and refusing to admit that they might be very close to hypothermia. I sometimes feel like reminding some of those dare devils that we have had snowstorms in April, but hey, to each it's own.
I, very wisely, have learned the lesson and carry my faithful pashmina around. Don't want to look like an old lady wearing the "just in case it gets cold" buttoned up sweater, discreetly admitting that they have the right idea about the "evening chill". And so during these spring evenings generation gaps become painfully obvious...
Anyway, spring is here and so I open the windows, start considering the million variations of salads I will be making, buy flowers that never fully satisfy me and patiently contemplate the soon-to-be-here dips in the pool.
Somehow it's harder going to work during springtime than during summer. I guess that since spring is the first hint we get of any outside activity where layering is not involved we feel like being outside all the time. By summer we get used to it and even look forward to air conditioning... right now the simple thought of AC makes us roll our eyes and say "pleeeease". Any second we are out there we inhale as if to take it all in, sort of like letting our lungs fill in with the new and get rid of the stale air winter has.
And so spring is here. I am going to playfully skip on to the kitchen and make a wonderful herb and mushrooms omelet accompanied by, what else? a nice mesclun salad, the whole finished by a nice lemon sorbet, my pashmina nearby just in case I get a bit of a chill...

Cold sense of humor

I have come to the conclusion that the elements have a personal vendetta against me. The weather, I have found, has a sick sense of humor. You wake up in the morning, it's a beautiful sunny day and because you are in the sanctuary of a temperature-controlled ambiance your brain immediately thinks T-shirt. OK maybe sweater because half of your brain is awake and remembers that it is still February after all, but never would you think of layering your whole wardrobe ! It's been 20 years and I still fall for it. I took the precaution of wearing a coat on top of the T-shirt I wear to the gym... it's a big coat, I froze my buns off. Still, I refused to go back and get a sweater... to the gym for crying out loud! It's difficult enough to get myself to go, but if on top of it all I have to dress as if I was actually going out forget it, it wouldn't happen.
So I came back to the house after the gym and stuck my tongue out to the sky as I mumbled "I'm not going out today anymore, so there". And the day continued to be bright and sunny, but I had been hit, literally, by the reality of freezing temperatures.
I am so ready for Spring it's not even funny, at least a sunny day will mean warm weather and not this tease we've been getting.
Oh well, back to making myself a hot chocolate, crawl under the covers and reminisce of days to come.

Winter winter winter

I decided to embrace winter, at least for a few minutes, and post pictures I took this morning... it's beautiful, it's clean, it didn't last long... enjoy (this one is for you Jen ).

Visit my Winter Wonderland album

Yuck

It's snowing... a lot. It's white, it's wet, it's cold and it's falling horizontally since yesterday, sometimes even upside down. Yes, upside down. If it had lasted an hour or two I would have said how pretty, now it's more like enough already!
Judge for yourselves.
This is what I usually see from the apartment:

And this is today:

What can I say, it's snowing. I hate winter. My favorite blogger (The Disquieting Muse) put it best: "I take it entirely personally. I take umbrage at the precipitation. I am affronted by the plummeting temperatures. I believe the sky becomes that shade of uncompromising gray on purpose, just to suck every last vestige of joy out of me." I'm still somehow holding on to that last vestige of joyfulness, but you are so on the money girl...