Winter stupor is a thing; spring, please get here soon
- col-teri-stein
- February 22, 2024
- 549
It’s the dead of winter. A surprise snowstorm rolled through last weekend to the delight of sledders and skiers, but what am I doing? Pretty much nothing but holding out for spring.
I’m still caring for our outdoor neighborhood cat — indoors, of course, where kitty has adjusted well to living a life of warm beds and watching snowfall from a window perch. She spreads her fluffy body over my lap like a warm blanket and purrs endlessly.
I’ve even watched videos for cats on the internet with kitty. Her favorites are the ones with mice in them.
I’m feeling slug-like as I read on social media about friends who are making major positive changes in their lives requiring great effort. Maybe I’ll do this later. Cold weather just is not conducive to the extra energy required.
I did find something new and entertaining though. Probably everyone else knows about this but me since we haven’t shopped for a home for decades. You can pretty much totally home shop online. I would say the best thing would be that you can rule out a lot of homes without even setting foot in them.
My internet provider has been showing me homes in a little box at the top of their news page for a while now. They have even shown me many photos of homes that are about four hours away in another city of the same name. I never paid much attention to them.
Then I happened to notice one home that seemed to have railroad tracks on an embankment running through the backyard. That would not be a selling point for me. It’s winter. I clicked on it. I saw there were railroad tracks as I enlarged the photo. I clicked through all the other photos of that home. The house itself was cute, so it’s sure to have new owners at some point — probably ones who own noise-canceling headphones.
Other homes showed up, and I clicked on them as well. I had forgotten how bad home shopping was — toilets by themselves in the middle of nowhere and one kitchen featured a tired looking 4-foot countertop as the only work space. Just like when watching Home and Garden TV, I found myself saying things like that’s going to be a total gut.
Seeing some photos of homes with people’s junk stacked discreetly next to couches and in cubby holes, I decided I needed to get busy cleaning out a few stacks of my own stuff.
I got on my phone. Sight unseen, my sister agreed to take a large picture frame I still had in its box from about 20 years ago. The smiling fake family photos were still in their original spots.
When she came to pick it up, I carried it out to her car and sneakily added a smaller bird-themed picture to the mix. This is how you get rid of extra stuff. I still liked that bird picture, but there comes a time when you must realize if you haven’t put that stuff up yet, you are not going to do it. Let it go.
My sister laughed. She had bought the same large picture frame at the time because she liked mine so much. Her frame was on the wall in a spare room but still had the fake family photos in it. Life is not a game, but in this instance, she won. Mine was still in the box. I’m a loser. Note: Our mother did not raise us this way. And my sister is nice enough to take that duplicate large frame and pass it on.
Back in the house, I got on social media — again — to look up some information. Of course, with the cold weather stupor, I now can’t remember what that was, so I’m just scrolling mindlessly. Please spring, get here soon.