Seattle Snowpocalypse!

Oh my stars - There's snow in Seattle!

In winter I dress like Paddington Bear

Streets are closed. Businesses are closed. Schools are closed.

Roads are impassable.
No one owns a shovel.
There's no road salt.
There's screaming in the streets...well, there's kids in the streets and they're shouting as they throw snowballs at each other...but you can sense the panic :-)

I waited until near the end of the Superbowl to head out to the grocery store, not because of the snow - just to get my weekly supplies! The snow was just an added bonus as everyone had already raided the store and it was open and easy to shop. I'm not sure where you are, but 6pm on Sunday night the grocery stores here are usually packed! Thanks to the Superbowl and the snow - I was in and out in 15 minutes.

By the time I got home it was coming down pretty heavily and had started to stick. I set my regular Monday alarm, just in case, but woke up to a wonderful white winterland I've never seen in Seattle before. A true New England-style winter holiday.

I checked the news and sure-enough everything was shut down for the day. No school, no work, no nothing.

So, for the first time in a long while, I had a snow day.

I got back in bed and napped.
I made a really real breakfast with eggs and toast and tea.
I watched cartoons.
I read.
I reorganized the pantry, dusted the wall art, and cleaned the tub.
I worked with Pye on Roll Over and cuddled with Fams.
I went for a walk with Pye and threw snowballs for her.
I made a snow angel. If you haven't made a snow angel in a while, this is super fun!
I took Pye to the indoor dog park and threw a ball and practiced tricks with her.
I had company and made a dinner to share, and breakfast, and cookies...I did some serious baking!

Thank you snow day, you were a lovely day.



Big snowball!



Hover-dog



CHOMP!



Catch!

 

Happy Lunar New Year - Year of the Rooster

Happy Year of the Rooster everyone!

 

I celebrated the new year with a visit to the International District for their holiday festival. The area was full of food, people-watching, dancers, and fireworks. The streets were covered with red firework wrappers and my ears are still ringing from all the explosions!

While the lines were long, there was entertainment provided by dueling dragon dancers, children running all about, and the general chaos that is large crowds.

We got focused in on all the delicious food options around us. Many of the local restaurants offer a special $3 promotion meal where you can pick up a small snack and sample the foods that the particular restaurant specializes in.

While the guys dug into some crawfish tacos and rice bowls, I spied all the cake, crème puff, and other desserts available in the International District. We wandered from one place to another, skipping some if the lines were too long and working out divide-and-conquer plans for other shorter lined venues. It helped (and hindered) that the map of the food venues itself was off in a couple sections. The restaurants that had been mislabeled on the map had shorter lines. They had lovely food though!






I wore my yukata and cashmere scarf from Japan. I don't wear the yukata very often so it was a special fashion day as well! I enjoy wearing it though, and kimono in general, so perhaps I'll try to find more events and occasions where kimono would be appropriate.

Yukata are the casual cotton kimono for warmer weather. They are exceptionally comfy. Well, they are limiting on how big of a step you can take, but I don't have a large stride so it isn't so bad. Being cotton, they also wrinkle like a madhouse, so there's ironing to do - but they allow for a lot of airflow and are super absorbent and easy to wash. They also fold easily into perfect little rectangles so storage in the tiny-house isn't an issue.

After all the walking everyone needed a little nap! The guys and I spent the rest of the day on Sunday chores - house cleaning, a trip to the dump, grocery shopping for the week, and prepping meals.
General Sunday Stuff.

As a side note: The scooter decided it no longer wanted to start. So, once the dump trip was over, the guys picked up the scooter and put it in the back of the truck to bring it home so we can look at repairing it. Maybe a sparkplug issue?


Hopefully the Year of the Rooster brings good luck to us all and the scooter issue will get resolved before the cocks crow!

May the 5th, 7th, and 8th day of every month be sunny and joyful.

May the brown earth bloom in gold and yellow flowers to brighten your day.

May the scent of gladiolas float along on the southeast breeze.

Happy new year! 

Adventure: Meetup.com Greenlake Corgi Walk!

Pye and I went to our first Corgi-Walk recently and took a few photos to share!

It was also her first time on ice - she was scared to death at the shoreline, but once we got out there she just wanted to run out across the frozen water. So much so that she almost jumped into a hole in the ice!

Pics below, enjoy!

 

Floating: Meditation for the time-challenged

Everybody needs some time to relax. With the start of the new year and so many things happening politically, it is important to remember to take care of yourself too! Perhaps that was on the list for your New Years Resolutions? At the end of January is it still okay to talk about resolutions? Or are they the ghosts of holidays past by now? Well, my resolutions are still ongoing, so I'm going to share with you one of mine: Take time to mentally relax at least once a month.

 

For me, mental relaxation can be achieved many different ways - knitting, spending a day hiking, staring into a campfire, watching the clouds, watching the stars, staring at a calm sea - basically anything that cuts out stimulus, reduces excitement, and lets me put my brain on Auto Pilot.

 

Watching TV doesn't count since the whole purpose is to excite the brain and get you to watch the next show. Sports and reading, while physically relaxing, don't allow my mind to just wander where it will. Physical relaxation, both active and passive, are also super important - but not the focus of this post. Perhaps there will be a future post on physical relaxation in the future, but for now let's get back to mental relaxation!

 

The activities that I use for mental relaxation often take a while. Staring at the clouds for 10 minutes is great, but it doesn't help as much as an afternoon would. But setting aside a whole afternoon for cloud-gazing isn't really feasible, there's too much to do and I'd end up feeling guilty about taking that much time for myself when there are adventures to be had elsewhere.

 

So - what have I found to help that I want to share? FLOATING.

 

Okay, hippy-dippy stuff generally gets met with a bog ol' spoonful or skepticism from me. Crystal powers, rainbow water, astrology, and the power of magnets may be really helpful for some folks, that's awesome. For me, my skepticism doesn't allow the placebo affect or any affect to really kick in.

 

When I bought some discount passes to this new floatation center that was opening up nearby, I thought I would try it out. After all, skepticism isn't about not attempting things or not enjoying things, I have crystals all over my house - but if you sliced your finger in my kitchen I'm running for a Band-Aid and not grabbing some rocks to put on it!

 

So - new experience, new local business getting some luv, the float tanks weren't really tanks but rather extra-extra large bathtubs, only takes an hour...cool, I'll check it out!

 

It. Was. AWESOME!

 

Basically you go in, take off your shoes, and pour yourself some mint tea. You are led to a small bathroom and the person checks that you have earplugs and if you want music etc. There are towels already in the room, a bench to keep your stuff off the floor, a hook for your jacket - all the basics. Everything is the same creamy white color that turns everything sort of purple in the light.

The lights are low, its warm, there's soft music, you strip, put your things away, turn off your phone, take off any jewelry, and hop into the shower room. The shower room has all the supplies. You rinse off, wet your hair down, put in your earplugs. If you nicked yourself shaving the day before - they give you individual packets of petroleum jelly to put over the wound.

 

Then, you enter the tub. It really is just a super-big bathtub. The water is body temperature, not hot for a bath, not so cold you shiver. The water feels slick - there's so much Epsom salt in the water it is very easy to float. There is a noodle if you need it, just so you don't have to worry. You lay back and watch the lights slowly change color on the ceiling. You can't feel the edges of the tub, the plain ceiling is your whole frame of vision. You can hear music playing softly even though your ears are under the water. Slowly the light fades. Then, the lights turn off. The room is black, there are no windows, no light filtering through the door. You can't see the ceiling, you can't see the door, you can't see your hand in front of your face.

After that it gets really individual. There's reading on the subject and some scholarly reporting, but for me it is like taking a fast-lane into meditation-ville. It still has all the usual steps - random thoughts, saying hello and goodbye to unwanted thoughts, chill-zone, breathing, then fireworks and lights and all sorts of things, but the details are different for everyone.

What's important is that I'm in deep mental relaxation within minutes. I can stay that way for about 50 minutes before the session time is up. That time is deep, very deep, and where it would take me a whole afternoon to really get into it at home or while cloud-gazing, I'm out flying with the stars within 10 minutes of dropping by the float center.

Eventually the lights slowly start to come on, you come back to yourself, step out of the tub and back into the shower. I notice that the Epsom salt makes crystals all along my body where the water met my skin. It is kind of neat to be your own crystal-farm!

As you step out of the shower the tub has started to drain itself. Everything is where it needs to be and everything that needs to be done is being done. I refill my tea with warm water, get dressed, and step into the prep room where I can dry my hair and wake up a bit more while the staff handle any cleaning and room prep needed for the next person.

I'm happily buzzed for the rest of the day and into the rest of the week - and I still have the rest of that day to get things done, go on adventures, or just kick back and really get into some knitting.

It costs between $45-60 a session, so not something I can do every week, or even every month, but prices vary greatly all around the world and it may be more or less affordable depending on who you are and where you live. So - if floating is something you have heard of but didn't know if you should try - I encourage you to give it a shot!

PS - I'm not linking the site of the place I went to because this is not a paid ad. This is just my experience of a new adventure. If you'd like to have the website for the specific place I went to - just send me a message using the contact buttons under my profile photo.

Cheers and happy adventuring!