Glaciers melting in the dead of night.

So, just in case you've been wondering, I still have the Homeless pair, mother and son, living with me, and also?  I'm looking forward to when they leave.  I'm planning on them being gone by the end of February, so let's keep that happy goal in mind.


I'm at work, with a bag of snacks, and that includes a bag of salted caramels, which are not as good as you'd think, since they are SALTED.  I'm not a huge fan.  But I have a Diet Pepsi to wash them down with, so that's a good thing.


This weekend Rich and I are going out of town to visit his parents and Kim, and it's going to be lovely.  I'm going to spend some time with Sheila, and not with my houseguests, so yay.  The dogsitter will be at my house, so the Homeless are going to RA's for the weekend.  We just don't feel comfortable about the Homeless taking care of our dog while we're gone.


What I'm knitting now:  I just finished an angora scarf for RA, that I knitted with angora yarn that she picked out and paid for.  It was shedding like crazy, so I put it in the freezer, because I've heard that freezing the yarn cuts down on the shedding, and that might be true.  I left it in the freezer for a couple of days, which resulted in some funny looks from people in my house who needed something from the freezer.  Anyway, I finished that, and now I'm making a hat from the Lowlands pattern, and I'm using angora again!  It's a ball of lovely dark blue handpainted angora that I bought at the Saline Fiber Fair when we were there in October.  Oh, and that scarf?  I used a pattern from Purl Soho that made a lovely ribbed scarf with no purling!  It was great, and I would like to make another one, with yarn that is pleasanter to work with.


What I'm reading now: An Uncollected Death by Meg Wolfe.  I'm really enjoying it - she's a good writer.  I told Kim I would do the first editing of her third book while she works on rewriting the second book, but neither of us is doing any work on her books.  We are slackers.


What I'm cooking:  Today I made beef stew in the crockpot and it was wonderful!  It made a lot, and was so good.  Rachel stopped by tonight on her way home from her YW program and finished it off while we discussed the program.  I've been cooking a lot more than usual and making casseroles and crockpot (one pot) meals, because I'm feeding the Homeless.  Usually, I cook once or twice a week, and Rich and I just forage in the kitchen for whatever we want on the other nights, but since I've got these people, I feel like I have to feed them.  Ugh.


Looking forward to having the house to ourselves.

Smell like you mean it.

Whew!  I finally made it to a yoga class tonight!  I went to Laura's class tonight, and tomorrow I'll teach mine, so that's two this week.  Better than nothing!


Laura picked me up on her way to the studio, and when we got there I needed to shop a little, so I picked a couple of things I needed from the storefront, and then I was sniffing some oils with Paula, and a drop of Vetiver fell on my shirt, and OMG, I was reeking of Vetiver the rest of the night!  It was pretty overwhelming at first, but by the time I got home I was kind of used to it, and I miss it a little now that I'm at work, wearing a clean shirt.


 Then I went home and ate some delicious chicken soup that was leftover from yesterday, and practiced the piano. 


I'm still practicing the Bach Minuet in G Major, and yesterday at work I looked up a YouTube video of someone playing that song just to hear how fast it should be played.  Oh man.  So fast.  Sob.  So today I practiced and practiced, and here's the thing.  I'm not really getting any faster.  Oh well, I'm sure that someday, maybe when I'm 90, I'll have played the piano enough to be good at it and be able to play that song at the correct speed. 

Smile like you mean it.

Tonight I was thinking as I played the piano, and  I realized that having houseguests has changed how I practice, and not for the better.  I usually play after Rich goes to bed, because he is a good solid sleeper and it doesn't bother him.  He says he doesn't even hear it.


Since we have company, I have been playing after they go to bed, because I feel self-conscious about practicing while they are sitting around the house, as if they are paying attention to me, and even though I don't think they are, sometimes the mother will comment on my playing, so they are paying some attention to me, and I really don't like it.


Neither of them can play the piano, so they don't have anything constructive to say, and really, they don't say much at all, but I feel like if I play when they're awake, they will have trouble hearing the TV and they will have to turn it up (which I hate!), or that it will otherwise be an annoyance, and even though I know that it doesn't matter, and I shouldn't care, I still feel self-conscious.  It's all very awkward. 


So I wait until everyone goes to bed, and try to play quietly, so as not to bother anyone who is sleeping, but the quiet playing feels timid and it makes me play the notes timidly, and just not as well.  Ugh, what should I do?


I guess my answer is to play in the afternoons or in the evening after dinner and not care about the inconvenience of others.  Rich is not bothered by my playing and I don't really care if anyone else in the house is.  Maybe it will encourage them to move out faster, haha!

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice! Practice!

Someone asked me if I liked practicing the piano, and I had to think about the answer.  I do and I don't.  I like to practice in a way, because it's fun to be able to play something, even if it's slower than it should be played, because I have to play slowly so I don't hit wrong notes..  On the other hand, I don't play well, and any improvement I make is so small as to be almost invisible, so it's frustrating. 


I can play okay now to accompany the primary kids, if I only play with one hand.  Even just playing the melody line can be tricky, because if I play a wrong note, I can't stop to correct it, I have to keep going because they're singing! 


I would like to think that someday I will be able to just sit down and play effortlessly, at least when it comes to primary songs, but I kind of doubt it.  I might be starting too old, and I don't have enough years ahead of me to learn to play well!  Maybe I need to practice more!

In which there was cooking and eavesdropping.

Every day when I wake up (at 3 in the afternoon), I text RA to see what she's doing, which is almost always nothing, and we go out and get a big Diet Coke from McDonalds, and then we drive around and do any errands that either of us needs to do.


Today was one of the rare days when she was actually doing something, and it was kind of an icky day, so I just stayed home and did, well, not much.  I made Thai Cashew Chicken for dinner, and it was pretty good.  I bought cashews yesterday when I was shopping but I don't know what happened to them.  The kitchen cupboards are both very full and very unorganized, so it's hard to find anything, but I just bought them yesterday, so you'd think they would be easily accessible.  So it was just Thai Chicken, with brown rice, and it was good.


This was the day the social worker stopped by to visit my houseguests, who are hoping to get some financial help in getting a place of their own to live in, and while the social worker met with the mom, I shamelessly eavesdropped from the kitchen table while I played Spider Solitaire on my laptop.  (Have I mentioned how much I love Spider Solitaire?  Because I do.)


Both Diana and Sheila tried to call me while I was busy eavesdropping, and I had to reject their calls, so after dinner, I spent an hour in my room talking to people on the phone to catch them up.


Why I didn't go to yoga today:
It was raining and melting all the snow yesterday during the day, but it's been getting colder and all that water is freezing, so by evening, the roads were so icy that things were being called off.  I didn't go to yoga because I was cooking, and avoiding ice!  Both good reasons.


This weekend I want to really clean some stuff out of my room, like some piles of books, and some piles of knitting patterns and yarn, to make room to spread out my yoga mat.  The den is just too cold in the winter to use it for yoga!  So that's my plan for Saturday afternoon.  I have already informed Rich that "we" are going to be doing that.


What I am knitting today:
A pair of socks for a man with large feet.  Rachel asked me to make them for the husband of one of her friends, and she is making a pair for the friend.  They are going through some bad times, and so we are making comforting socks. 


I just finished a little vest for Leif, and I want to knit one for each of the boys.  I have a couple of hats to finish, and then I can start the vests.  The socks are my purse knitting, so they don't count, because I always have something in my purse.


When Kim is going to update her blog:  The blog that she was going to write in every day in 2017?  Hmm, that's a good question.

In which everything is fine. Really.

I had the best of intentions today about yoga.  I was completely seriously planning to go to the class at 6:00 with Shelley, but then I remembered it was Leif's birthday, so I ended up having dinner and cupcakes with him and his family instead.  It was really fun!


Leif got a toy cell phone for his birthday, and he was pretty thrilled with it!  I took the vest I knitted and some rubber dinosaurs, and RA sent one of those foil balloons that floats on a ribbon and says happy birthday on it, so it was all fun stuff.


Later, back at the house, I successfully, and with much cursing, managed to get a poster framed into a plexiglass frame.  I've had the poster for years, sitting on the table in the hall rolled up in the tube in came in, and this year I just up and ordered a frame for it and it's on the wall above the piano! 


Tomorrow I am going to yoga for sure, and I'm looking forward to it because I'm feeling a little stressed.  It's all fine, though.  Really.

In which I don't have a home practice.

I've been wanting to get back into the habit of going to yoga classes, and telling myself I'm going to develop a home practice is just a lie that smoothes over the yoga guilt, so now that I have houseguests and I don't want to be home with them, I am going to more yoga classes.  Last week I went to three, including the one I teach, and this week I am hoping to go to four, including the one I teach.


So I braved the slippery roads tonight as snow was falling and I went to the Y for the Monday night class.  It's a good class, with a teacher that I know and like, and I always intend to go to that class, but then I sign up for the six-week session and end up going to only one class, or even worse, none. 


My friends Shelley and Luanne both go to that Monday night class regularly, so I told Shelley to text me a reminder, and tonight I just got up and went.  Yay!  It's a challenging class - not horrible, but challenging.  Tonight there was a woman ahead of me who was using a chair, but the teacher wasn't able to give her enough specific modifications, so she was just standing there some of the time, not able to do the poses. 


I talked to her after class and told her that if she comes next week, I'll sit next to her and use a chair, too, and help her adapt the poses, and she said she would like that, so I have that to look forward to.  I've been wanting to do a little more chair yoga, and even do it with my regular class just for an interesting change, so it will be a good opportunity for me to figure things out.


I mentioned our houseguests above, so let me just say a word about them.  It's a woman and her son from church, who have a temporary housing crisis, so we took them in the week before Christmas, and they're staying with us for a while.  They are pretty low maintenance, so they aren't a problem, it's just that I am tired of always having people around, and the TV is always on, so I just like to go out in the evening.  The mom wants to learn to knit, so I'm going to teach her that, and the kid is just a dumb 13 year old, who I mostly ignore.  He plays video games.  Whatever. 


Rich moved my laptop from the TV in the living room to the breakfast nook in the kitchen, where he usually sits with his laptop, so it's kind of fun, with both of us sitting at our laptops and talking.  It's cozy, instead of me sitting in the living room computing, and him in the kitchen, with us too far away from each other to talk.


So here I am at work, and I actually have a little work to do, so maybe I'll do it.