baby it is cold outside. and i really do not like it.

ok, so i hate the cold. and yes i know i live in new england, so i should be getting over it by now. this past couple of days has just had a tempy dip. so i am not inclined to leave my house pod if i do not have to.
today, i got all kinds of brave and showered to wash the nursing home grade unkemptness out of my hair. i have a huge fear of being relegated to a not so nice home when i get more doddery. i also do not see that my kids will visit me there even if they did promise to house me in a good one where i would be served cheese doodles and jello.
they said this when they were all pre-teenaged. i am holding them to this of course. no matter what. it still comes up in conversations. so i know they remember it.

anywaaaaays, i got all kinds of clean and warm and thought i might leave the house. OOPS.  I forgot somehow that last night's lovely walk with the puppy, all alone in the bright yellow halogen lighting on my traffic-free street and in  the blustery cold winds ... was also in the middle of a nor'easter. or sometimes they are called blizzards. um so there was some snow outside. and yes, there was a lot of it.
so i had a child of mine go work on her shoveling skill-set. she is mighty delirious about her newly acquired L.L.bean boots... courtesy of her older bro. so i let her work out the mittenless existence she has with a pair of not thermally sensitive leather gloves. she got the front steps and the little bitty part of the walk to the driveway dug out.

i thought i might dive into the snowiness and get some basics from a local food emporium.  for all of you who may or may not run on local circulars, the whole foods in this area is selling split chicken breasts cheaper than usual this week. i thought it might be nice to lay in a stock for the freezer and snag some other basics while i was in the world.

more on the topic of epic failure.
if you dig the snow to move in and out of your home (using that as my example here, but you can insert any viable building you want...) it makes some rudimentary sense to dig the driveway out too. especially the 3 foot berm that the snow plows pushed in front of your car. otherwise, you can generally only bring home from the store, that which you can carry. and let's face it. if one of those things is a gallon of milk, the other side of you will want to carry a matching gallon out of sympathy for balancing your pedestrian act.

i kind of gave up on my great outdoors adventure and made pasta primavera. those leftover smalls from the vegetable crisper come in handy. and noodles too.
and then the big reveal. or realization. no cooking oil in the house. no dog food. no peanut butter. i dare not go on. also, there was none of the wine in a box that hubby drinks (not at all like a 'dick in a box' ala andy samberg and justin timberlake). so he drank my nice beer and whinged about it.

 what is up with that?

not like he bought it or should drink it as it is MY favorite beer.
so when he is just too irksome and my back is against the wall, i drop some butter into the dinner dish.
screw his holier than thou attitude about his cholesterol level. i put up with a lot, but i sometimes need some butter. just saying. do not disrespect my beer, when you haven't thought ahead of the all out panic and local news reports to refill your wine needs... drink my stash and then think you will have your puritanical dinner as always. just don't. fair enough warning ...

last night i spent time in my awful space of a studio. sometimes when i go to Garden City(a local outdoors mall), i go by anthropologie. it is against every fiber of my being to support stores that rip off artists. however, their corporate group fired the big ripper offers... and the space is super nice with really cute stuff in it for a gal that likes kitchen gadgets in enameled glory.
so i bought myself a pale aqua colored timer a while back. it was part of my trying to corral my efforts and make them potentially more productive.
i set the timer to 20 minute intervals and see how much clearing and sorting and filing and putting stuff away that i can get done in that increment of time. there are no hard rules for this, because if i am in the zone, i can always reset the timer for another 2o minutes. whatever my mind is in the mood for.

so i managed 5x20 minutes and 1x30 ... yielding two hours and some odd minutes. i sorted and resorted. i pulled drawers out of cabinets and put the overflowing jewelry pieces into new much larger drawers. the top of the enamel topped table that is supporting two drawer chests with smaller drawers, is reorganized a little better now. i opened up several spaces and relocated several categorized groups into the new advent chest. i have one large drawer with steel cut jewelry in it, another for brooches that are all birds of one kind or another, and there were enough pieces to merit a fresh drawer for all things pastel, Japanese and floral celluloid. it is as if i am seeing these things for the very first time, all over again.

as a matter of fact, i was asked to make a necklace for my friend sheri this past autumn. her sister's daughter was getting married and sheri wanted to supply a mother of the bride necklace to go with her dress. so i had a rough idea of what i would make. there were some requests made. to find my components, it was as if i was going shopping at a really cool store. one where all the stuff in it was pre-selected by me, for me. oh wait, it was just that! so i was able to make a nifty (kick ass) necklace by visiting my pearl item drawer, the place where i keep rhinestone necklaces for a swaggy piece of something glittery.
and there were a bunch of other things i wanted to mix and match into the masse.
starting with a plate full of stuff that looked like this:

and then i fussed and twisted stuff and moved things to get some balance and support etc. to result in this confection:

there were some constraints in building it, that i actually needed to try to pay attention to ... but all in all, they got handled.

so you see, this is precisely why, i need to stay on top of the organization of my world... since i have other things to make. if i were a betting person,  they might be along the line of a peacock feather as inspiration...

how tragic would it be to not have some flowers and beads to work with that fall into this color palette?
it would be so unhappy for my Canadian friend who wants a bibbery of peacock inspired necklaceness she is giving to herself for her birthday.
through the magic of organizing, i was able to find some cool things to start a fun piece for her .

also i am considering that being on the last couple of inches of milk in the jug, and having  no dog food, no peanut butter, no olive oil  and not much else to speak of other than plain pasta to eat in this house...
well, it is a problem. just a stinky problem. we keep getting hungry here. even the kid that doesn't realize a cleared driveway is helpful for a lazy mama to drive to the store to haul home groceries.
{i usually dig out the front and the driveway, but am on a torturous course of trying to get the kid to understand her life is not all school, ice hockey, selfies, snapchatting, netflix and whining}.

i am gonna get back to the beginning. i don't like the cold. nor do i like the iciness that will come when this stuff melts and refreezes. i will likely be sledding on my back again down the driveway into the berm of snowy ice at its foot. somehow, i will be brave tomorrow and pull on some boots, finish the big dig and get out of here. when i come home again, i shall set the timer for more 2o minute time spates and continue on the satisfying clean up in progress.

also, i have not been drinking, but am pretty tired... so i sound loopier than i should. forgive that please.
a good night of sleep cuddled with lots of blankets is going to cure that.

g'night all, warm or cold as you may be. if i am good, i will have a peacock inspired necklace to show for putting up with this posting.

xow.