in the face

“A snowball in the face is surely the perfect beginning to a lasting friendship.”

-- The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak

snow

View from our patio

Snow! It snowed here in the DC area on Tuesday. Lots of snow. I think our particular area outside of DC got somewhere around 3-4 inches.

Does anyone else love snow as much as I do?

The way I see it, if we're going to have super cold weather and walk around all bundled up and risk getting windburn on our faces (wind is serious here), then we might as well have something pretty to look at.  If you don't get snow, then all you have is cold weather and dead trees.  With snow, plants get a white winter suit and not everything appears dead and brown.

It's still freezing here.  Yesterday, the high was 15 degrees.  Yes, 15.  It's a little unusual for this area.  The news has been calling the weather patterns things like "Polar Vortex" and "trifecta of winter weather anomalies," whatever that means.  I heard some older people grumbling about the days when weather like this "was just called a cold snap," spoken with a distinct amount of contempt for the news weatherpeople.

Stay warm!

beowulf

"Just don't take any class where you  have to read BEOWULF."

-- Woody Allen

blessings

In November, we left our old neighborhood and headed out to the 'burbs.  This was the last picture I took of our old neighborhood, Woodley Park.  DC can be a pretty place!

As we start the new year, I'm feeling grateful for all the positive life changes happening around me; remembering beautiful places and happy times cramped in tiny apartments; hoping the new year brings even more happy changes and new life events.

Wishing joy to you out there and hoping contentment fills your inside spaces.

(Please excuse the poor quality of the photo.  Taken with my phone.)

seeing new things and people

"Putting down words on paper is a very dull substitute for seeing new things and people. [...] The real meaning of "You can write anywhere" is that you can choose a place where you're going to like to be and do your writing there after you've exhausted its other possibilities.  Your original choice is free."

-- We Took to the Woods, Louise Dickinson Rich

on love and marriage

"Because love is not something to wait for or hope for or look for -- it's something to do. Do not measure your marriage by how much love you feel today, measure it by how much love you've offered today. When you don't feel love, do love. Feelings follow doing, not the other way around. Lasting, true love is not about being swept off your feet. Sometimes love is just sweeping the kitchen and being grateful that there is a kitchen and a partner who is contractually obligated to share it with you forever."

-- Glennon Melton, in this post about "happy-ish ever after"

winter

"After I grew up, I still hated [winter], and I think that now I know the reason why.  In civilization we try to combat winter.  We try to modify it so that we can continue to live the same sort of life that we live in the summer.  We plow the sidewalks so we can wear low shoes, and the roads so we can use cars.  We heat every enclosed space and then, inadequately clad, dash quickly from one little pocket of hot air through a bitter no-man's land of cold to another.  We fool around with sun lamps, trying to convince our skins that it is really August, and we eat travel-worn spinach in an attempt to sell the same idea to our stomachs.  Naturally, it doesn't work very well.  You can neither remodel nor ignore a thing as big as winter."

-- We Took to the Woods, Louise Dickinson Rich