It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new.
But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful.
There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
Alan Cohen
"Outside of a dog, a book is a man's best friend.
Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read."
Groucho Marx
The doors we open and close each day decide the lives we live.

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Life Can Be Lovely

The sun is shining brightly, the sky is clear and  blue, not a cloud in sight. 
The road looks pretty clear. I would go out but there isn't really anywhere I need to go and it is still only about 30 degrees .. so cold. so very cold. Tonight it will be 7 ΒΊ .

I appreciated the lack of snow and ice and terrible winter cold when we lived in Buenos Aires .. but not as much as I appreciate those Argentine winters now ! 
Sure it was dreary and cold and often damp but you didn't have to shovel it, hire someone to do the shoveling, hear horror stories about a roof collapse from all the snow ... making you run out to look at your own roof , in the snow and cold.

I still feel the loss of my husband in about a thousand ways but one of them is really coming back to me every day .. and night .. getting into a cold bed to cuddle up to a warm man on a winter night is just about priceless.

Having him get up and turn up the thermostat then scurry back to bed, under the covers, snuggling up and waiting for the room to be warm .. he was a Morning person. Priceless.
I was not and never was and never will be. 
But I did love waking up to that cup of coffee he brought in to me each morning. 
Now I wake up to a grumbling kitten , a freezing house and the sight of more snow.

Just that .. right there .. freezing house .... more snow ... calls for someone to cuddle with. 

Minette likes to cuddle .. then bite ... then run around the house like an insane little creature then she comes back to me talking and purring. 
 I have no idea what is going on in her tiny kitten brain but it is usually unexpected and cute as a .... kitten.

My house is for sale. I know this because my realtor and I decided to do it , there is an ad in the real estate website and a couple of times, people have come to look at it. 
But now, nothing. No one. Nada. Apparently no one wants to go out in the snow and sub zero temps to look at my house. Go figure.

So it is super clean and neat and there is no smell of garlic or cooking of any sort ... that is one of the things we learned during our days of house hunting .. walking into a nice house that stinks of garlic or fish really doesn't sell the house to you.  
Then there were those two guys in Grandview on Hudson , NY .. whose house smelled like a baking apple pie and I hardly remember what the house looked like but I wanted a house that smelled like that.
Later I found that there are products you buy and put in the oven or in a pot on the stove and it does the same thing, makes people think they would like to live in such a pleasant smelling house ... who knew ?

So Minette and I sit here and wait.
Look at snow. 
Listen to music .. She likes the Narco Tango CD I play, I mostly like listening to  Barber  or Sibelius .. 
What do you listen to that is soothing and beautiful ?
What do you use to make your house smell welcoming and pretty ?
What do you do when you are snowed in ?
(besides read my blog )

How is the weather where you live ? Are you happy with it ?
I have a friend who moved from Canada to Nice France. She is happy with it .
I have an old friend how moved from England to Brazil ... he is happy with it.
If you could move anywhere .. somewhere you have possibly dreamt of living , where would that be ?

Minette wants me to come play .. she found her ball. The one I hid. She is so happy. Her little tail just got bushy.
Here we go .. I throw the ball, she catches the ball, she makes me come get it .. 
I have to find a new game .. or get a new kitten. Or a puppy ?

Life is lovely when you have choices . . and a Tango loving kitten .. and friends.

11 comments:

  1. Hello, plummeting temps here after a few days reprieve - and the snow has actually stopped! Until Tuesday according to the forecasts. Sigh.

    I usually am looking forward to beginning to commute to work via biking as I start in March; this year maybe not. So streetcar it is for the foreseeable future. -30 wind chill in the morning.

    Okay, now I'm depressing myself. But tonight we're safe and warm with a nice dinner and a warm fireplace to stay near to.

    I will likely stop from such inane comments from now on as I really have little to bring to the table as it were but I am so relieved you are continuing to blog. I would certainly miss you very much if you did.

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  2. Not depressing, misery loves company :)
    Thank you very much for your comment .. besos. C

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  3. Sometimes I wish I lived in Paris. But living in SoCal isn't a bad place to be!

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  4. Sometimes I think Southern California is a very nice place to be .. I lived in SF then LA before arriving in NY. And now all those years later, here I am ... in NY .

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  5. We haven't had much of a winter here in the Netherlands. Not as warm as last year, but not cold either. Lots of rain, and lots of sun too. For some reason it can be sunny when I set off to walk the dog in the woods and pouring down by the time I get there.
    I quite like living in the Netherlands I guess. I would probably have been happier staying in our little market town in England, but I know the rest of my family have been happier here than there.
    We found some small towns we really liked in northern California, and in Oregon. Not sure I would actually want to live in the US though, much as I love visiting.
    I could live on La Palma, provided I had a regular escape route to somewhere bigger. The weather there is pretty much perfect most of the year.
    I actually dream of selling up and becoming a nomad. It can't happen sadly, but a girl can dream.
    Hetismij

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  6. Hetismij, I totally relate to the dream of being a nomad. A very worthy dream :)

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  7. I've lived in NY, Chicago, France and the Netherlands, so have had a variety of temps and precipitation...and for some reason, the rain and gray skies of Holland didn't depress me as it did some of my friends. Maybe because I was so happy not to have snow - it does snow in the Netherlands, but most years it is minimal, and clears out pretty quickly.

    Now in northern Florida, no snow, a couple of cold days, but I'm loving the winter here: mild and just cool enough to be comfortable. Ask me again in the summer - when it's 90+ degrees and horrible humidity - and snow will actually start to sound pretty darn welcome! Hope you find your perfect place soon.

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  8. Candace,

    If I could move anywhere, it would be Paris, as I always feel like I'm where I belong upon arrival there.

    A few years back, I listed my home and it was sold two days later at an Open House. When the Realtor arrived, soft music was coming from the CD player and the aroma from beef stew in the crockpot filled the house. When I got back home after the Open House, the Realtor said the music and aroma added to the coziness of the house, and we had an offer.

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  9. That's one of the many things i like about life here in Portland, Oregon. We get lots and lots of rain in winter, and sometimes the grey is hard to deal with, but i can go on my long walks, just carry an umbrella with me, and i don't have to shovel the rain! :)

    I hope your house sells quickly so you can move to the smaller house you want!

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  10. I love living in Virginia even though I'll be glad when it warms up and stops snowing every few days!

    Before we retired, we lived in Mississippi and then Cajun Louisiana due to a government job. Too hot and too humid. It is such a relief to live in an area with four seasons again!

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  11. Vivian, we lived in Jacksonville for a year. My husband hated Florida but it certainly was a pleasant winter that year :) Buenos Aires was perfect, the summers were never too hot and the winters were pleasant.. they had the first snow in the city in , I think it was 50 years when we arrived .. ha ! we bring cold weather with us !
    Mary I loved Portland so much. We lived in the Pearl District , right across the street from Whole Foods. . how lovely is that ?
    The one thing I was told by a realtor years ago when selling our first house was try not to have the smell of food in the house. Some people are turned off by odors of food. There are a lot of vegetarians who would hate the smell of meat cooking. I just keep fresh flowers and everything is ridiculously neat and tidy. It is like living in a showroom, nothing is out of place. I have gotten very good at "staging" a house for sale.
    I just can't do anything about the 10 feet of snow outside.

    ReplyDelete

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