The Past Two (Lazy, Indoor) Weeks

Well, I highly recommend kicking off a new year by conquering one's fears and achieving something that's been on the To-Do list for ages.  It's infused the past two weeks with significantly more lightness and dance-around-the-apartment-to-my-favorite-songs JOY than I usually feel in January and February, for sure.  In the spirit of celebration last week, I treated Stuffed to a comfy new cat bed--and he's actually been curled up in it, wonder of wonders--and a catnip ball, and I gave Mike an amazon gift card.  We can all use some extra fun here in these weeks of day-after-day of forehead-freezing wind and back-wrenchingly slippery sidewalks.  I got my taxes done this week.  And filled out some student loan paperwork that had been on my to-do list too long.  And got another box of books and book characters ready to mail to the school.  And worked at my job, of course.  Otherwise, I have been lazily cuddled up with an afghan more often than not:  reading stretched out in bed, reading in my chair with my feet tucked under me, or refilling glass-after-glass of chocolate almond milk, hot chocolate, or iced tea while making my way through the episodes of "The West Wing" that I missed when it was still on TV.  In short, aside from a few must-do duties, I've spent the past two weeks vegging out, and it's been lovely.  I treated myself to the dvd of the first season of "Downton Abbey"--I've only ever seen some the first episode--and plan to relax with that sometime soon, as well.  Eleanor Roosevelt's book You Learn By Living is brilliant.  I admire her so, especially for her managing her shyness so beautifully.  I have only a few pages left in J.K. Rowling's The Silkworm, Steve Berry's The Lincoln Myth, and Steven Rigolosi's The Outsmarting of Criminals:  A Mystery Introducing Miss Felicity Prim.  I've been skipping around in Frances Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun--one of your favorite books, Lisa, I know!--since around Thanksgiving, probably.  I'm a fast reader, but I like just reading a section or so of that book and waiting awhile to dip back into it.  It is a soothing read, with some of the most beautiful writing.  Patti Smith's Just Kids has been hauntingly beautiful too.  And "Mrs. Mimi's" teaching memoir, It's Not All Flowers and Sausages:  My Adventures in Second Grade, along with Searching for a Savior:  The Trials and Triumphs of a First-Year Teacher, because I've never been able to shake the idea of giving a teaching career a second go.  (I taught two months of middle school when I was twenty-four.)  We'll see.  For now, I'm reading and watching and thinking and daydreaming:  teaching kindergarteners how to read, solving mysteries with Cormoran Strike and other detectives who need my expertise, assisting Josh and Donna at the White House, falling asleep while an owl watches over me from my bedroom windowsill in Tuscany, discussing shyness and fear-conquering and driver's license-acquiring with Mrs. Roosevelt. . . .The rest of me continually re-wraps itself into a blanket, only getting up to pour another drink or to feed the cat, but my head--Well!  My head and I, we're GOING places, I tell you.  :)

Giveaway Winner and Groundhog Day Love

I'm likely the only one goofy enough in my immediate family to feel this way, but today and tomorrow, Groundhog Day, always seem like extra-special days designed for my family, as if  the first couple dates on the calendar this month are very much "ours."  My older brother's birthday is today ("Groundhog Eve"), and he, my dad, and I were all born in Punxsutawney, so we share the hometown of the celebrated groundhog, "Punxsy Phil."  It always feel both odd and somehow fitting for "our" family birthday and hometown to be celebrated and on the news over a national holiday every year.  (My family would all roll their eyes at this, as I said, but I myself love holidays, even strange ones that fete a rodent weather forecaster.) 

Have I mentioned here before that groundhogs are one of my favorite animals?  They can get so big and chubby, and their hind-ends waddle when they run (if they're chubby enough), and they just melt my heart.  'Love, love, love them.   

I worked at a dollar store off and on throughout college and a couple years after, and one of my customers mentioned once that she had found a groundhog cub in the woods behind her house, and after watching it for awhile and concluding that its mother must have died, she decided--illegally--to keep it as a pet.  The groundhog lived right in the house with her and her family for years, just as a cat or dog would, she told me--and although I wouldn't really keep one as a pet the way they did, I've been somewhat envious ever since.  A pet groundhog!  Be still, my heart! 

And as I just said to Terri from the lovely blog "Artful Affirmations," be still to her heart too because she's the winner of my first giveaway.  Congratulations again, Terri!  :)  And thank you all for your sweet comments and the stories you shared in the comments of the last post. Reading them and discovering new blogs and new people brightened an exhausting end-of-January, so thank you for everything.  ♥ 

Happy birthday, Older Brother, congratulations again, Terri,  and a jubilant Groundhog Day weekend to you all.  ;)