Wednesday Weirdness

 The weather has been so nice out for the past week that I've been spending much of it outdoors.  I took down all the Christmas decorations which is a record for me, because they would normally be buried under a coupla feet of snow by now.  This has got to be the oddest January I can ever remember.  I hear we're in for a snowstorm by tomorrow, though, and that's a good thing.  We don't want bitter cold temperatures that are bound to come to catch us without a nice, warm blanket of snow.

I haven't been blogging as much lately, either, mostly because my tailbone is still healing and I can't sit down.  So in the meantime,  I've caught the fitness bug.  Every morning I walk, walk, walk, walk ala Leslie Sansone and well, it takes time, 73 minutes if I do the five mile workout.   I have high hopes it will do me some good.  We'll see.  I read somewhere that most resolutions don't make it until February 1.  I didn't make a resolution, so I wouldn't feel guilty about breaking it, ha!   Someone asked me if I'm seeing results yet, well, I've only been doing this for eleven days, so nope, I haven't seen massive results yet.

I ordered another DVD that came in the mail yesterday and I sat down and watched it for about ten minutes.  Yeah, I know, you're not supposed to sit and watch it, but I was already done with my other workout.  Anyway, I think I'm going to keep that one on the side until I'm in much better shape because to tell you the truth, I was completely worn out just watching them hop around.  What I like the most about Leslie Sansone's workout is the simple steps.  I'm really not very coordinated and her workouts are easy to follow.

Over twenty-five years ago I used to tape (on my Sony Beta-Max, remember that?) a workout that came on TV every day and try to follow along with it after work.  I was twenty-something years old then and the exercise program was aptly named the 20 Minute Workout.  There were three or four young girls on rotating platforms who would jump and hop around and stretch and lunge with their big hairdos and 1980's leg warmers and tights on.  They did everything but sweat.

It was impossible for me to follow.   I'd be just getting into the routine only to look up and see they'd moved on to yet some other contortionist act.  Sometimes I'd get so frustrated, I'd hop up and down flapping my arms like a chicken in an attempt to catch up on all the moves I'd missed.   I felt I had to do all the steps since they were imperative to achieving a Size 2 body.  Needless to say, it never happened.  The Size 2, that is.  I would usually end up gasping for air and feeling woefully inadequate while they continued disco-dancing their way to skinnydom.  I never mastered the art of bending over at the waist, grasping my ankles as my ponytail grazed the floor and gazing seductively through my legs at the camera either.  Those little smirks and suggestive winks were so over-the-top.  I think it was more of a tape for men to watch then for flabby women to work out with.   I always made sure to do the cool-down, though, that I could handle.

The only problem with all this walking is it cuts into my blogging time, and I need to write for my mental health as much as I need to walk for my physical health.  So I've been writing snippets here and there every day. And with the weather being so unseasonably warm, we're starting to panic about the stained glass, too.  We usually build a lamp or two over the winter and if we don't get our rears in gear, that won't happen.  It's hard to concentrate on stained glass when it's almost 50 degrees outside.

We did get the little window done for the stained glass quilt for the Association of Stained Glass Lamp Artists this past weekend though.  The pattern they sent out was a selection of the Spider Mum lamp.  It turned out fairly well.  

I am sitting shivering as I write this.  I did something really stupid this afternoon.  Since we have our little flock of nine free-range hens, we are still getting at least four eggs a day probably due to the warm weather.  Carl and I love boiled eggs, so I took the oldest ten or so of the four dozen we have on hand (I pencil a date on the eggs every day) and set them to boil on the stove.

I used to set a timer for ten minutes when I boiled eggs before, but for Christmas I was given one of those plastic egg timers that  turns from red to black when the egg is done to the hardness you would like.  Well, wouldn't you know I put the eggs on to boil and went to the basement to start doing laundry and forgot all about them.  There's no timer that goes off when they're done, you're supposed to watch them.  Of course, a watched pot never boils, so I thought I'd get a good start on the laundry.

It wasn't until I heard a weird popping noise upstairs that I ran up to find the kitchen enveloped in blue smoke.  I grabbed the smoking pan and went right outside with it where it finished billowing in the driveway.  Such a mess and such a smell!  The egg timer melted down on one end and the eggs themselves had started to char.  I wasn't gone that long, but had chosen a smaller pan than usual and it had boiled dry.  And wouldn't you know, the smoke alarm that normally goes off when the toast gets a little warm remained mute through all of this mayhem. 

I turned the furnace off and opened all the windows and went back to washing with my wringer washer.  It's now a few hours later and the house is a chilly fifty-three degrees but at least it smells much better in here now.

Time to turn up the heat or pop that new exercise DVD in..........that will heat things up around here.  But I will shut the windows first!