Theme: Salty

In January, DH and I drove up to Santa Barbara (about an hour) to check out a green building center we'd heard about. After the building center we went out to Stearns Wharf for a walk on the pier, then to the Enterprise for lunch. We had a lovely afternoon and enjoyed a fabulous sunset on the way home. I took a bunch of pictures flying along the beach at 70 miles per hour and was surprised at how well they turned out.

When I read that the Photo Hunt theme this week is "salty", the first thing that came to mind was the way, when you hang out along the ocean, you collect salt on your skin from the spray. Eventually, when you lick your lips, they will be salty, but it's a special salty that's unique to the ocean experience.


Do you ever read your own posts? I get a lot out of writing mine, and certainly out of reading everyone else's. But occasionally I go through and read my own as if I'm new to them, just to try to see how they come off. I wish I could say that I was surprised to see how negative mine all sound, but I'm not. I know that I've been fighting depression for some time, now. This is not like me. I'm usually the one trying to make the lemonade. But I've gotten to the point where I don't want to get up in the morning, I'm a bitch at work (and I work with kids, so that's not good) and I don't have energy for things I usually love to do. Textbook signs of depression, huh? Anyway, Thursday I decided I was tired of fighting depression. After work I just gave in and wallowed in it. I put on my sweats and opened a bag of Dove milk chocolate eggs. I opened a Word file on the computer and started a "poor me" list of everything that is wrong with my life from most recent backward. The most recent was finding a new skin cancer on my arm just hours after opening a $194 bill for dental work I had been assured was fully covered by my dental insurance. Neither of these things is a big crisis, just a pain in the butt to have to deal with. Anyway, the list went on and on. I never finished it; I got tired of it but it served its purpose. My life sucks right now for a variety of reasons out of my control. I have every right to be down in the dumps. Just knowing that I had good reasons helped me put things back into perspective and I feel much better.

But I'm keeping the chocolate.

I have managed to get some cross-stitch done this week on the hollyhocks. It's tempting to keep going with that edge because it goes so fast, but I know I'll get tired of the constant color changes in the flowers so want to trade off. I'll move back down into the flowers for a while, then back to the edges.

However, I need to change projects for a while, so this one may get tucked into its project bag.

It's been snowing like crazy in Eden this week. 18" on Powder Mountain in the last two days, and their base is up to 102". We finally got a rental check for the condo! Several magazines did feature stories on Utah snow this season and all three resorts in "our" valley were mentioned. Both Snowbasin and Powder made the top ten lists in Ski and Skiing. And Ski magazine called our condos (Moose Hollow) "the valley's nicest digs." We also got mentioned in Disney's Family Fun and Sunset. DH said the place was packed over the Presidents' Day weekend, and we missed out on a long-term rental because he was staying in the condo. Maybe there's hope, with this great new snow (they call it 'snorkle-deep powder' on Powder Mountain), for more rentals in February and March.

We'll be there in April for spring break. I have the Friday before Easter off and we think we're going to do a "gag-out" (drive the full 800 miles) in one day on the way up. Then we can crash and recover the next day. We'll take two days to get home (with a stay-over in Primm, Nevada) because we have to go to work on Monday and we just can't function after driving 800 miles in one day. During the break we're supposed to meet with the architect to see some preliminary ideas for our house sometime but otherwise it's just sleeping and stitching for me (with maybe a walk here and there if it's not too muddy.) Last year our side of the valley had melted but we were looking right at the east-facing slopes and they were still snowpacked. It was beautiful!

This snowy picture is from the golf course behind the condo, looking toward our building lot. If the middle of the picture is at 0,0 and the edges are 4 and -4, then the building lot is at about -2,-2. There's a two-story house and a one-story house and our lot is in the middle. I've wanted to live where there is snow in the winter my whole life. I'm very excited to get my chance!

I'm planning to take Firefly Faeries and the Hollyhocks with me. I may also take my "What Color is the Spring" quilt and my lightbox so that I can start transferring the embroidery patterns to the muslin strips. I'm not in a rush for this piece (won't do any embroidery until next winter because I will embroider through the bat and it's just too hot to stitch with the quilt on my lap in the summer) but that would be a nice change of pace at the condo. Sometimes the television noise gets to me and I like to tuck up in the dining room where it's not so loud.

I'm trying to control myself from taking too much stuff with me, though, because we should start hauling some stuff home. We don't expect the condo to sell until the spring or summer (or if the economy remains so unstable, maybe until the fall) but we don't want to have to haul four years of accumulation down all at once. There's stuff up there we thought would be good to have but have never used, so we need to start hauling it back or getting rid of it.

DH and his brother are traveling to Washington, DC, for the protest march on the Pentagon and while they're gone I'm thinking about a trip to Disneyland. I may go on Saturday so that I can watch the fireworks. And I have the next Monday off, too, so may go to enjoy one more off-season day by myself. I invited DS2 to go with me (I want to show him the Jedi Academy and Soarin' Over California) but he didn't seem too interested. That's OK. I know how to have a lovely time all by me onesie.