A vacuum abhors Nature

Though in fact our vacuum cleaner coped surprisingly well with the tsunami of pine needles I asked it to deal with after we finally dragged the Christmas tree out. 

I got the worst of them up with a dustpan and brush, but I was still about an hour hoovering up the rest - and even after all that, I fear it will be many months before we stop tracking odd needles from room to room via our socks.

I don't know why each year I'm so hell-bent on bringing a real tree indoors to die in my sitting room.

Regaining our ski-legs

Back to the slopes for us all today, on the first day of our ski season at Willard Mountain. 

I've signed up for another series of lessons.  I'm in with two other women who have skied before but, like me, feel the need for more instruction.  We're being taught by the same guy as last year.  He's possibly the oldest ski instructor in the world, but we like him.

While we took some gentle turns down the Bunny, the Man and kids (who are not taking lessons this time) did their derring-do stuff on the trickier slopes.  The Boy fell a couple of times, but got up and carried on undeterred.

We had a lot of fun, including at half time when we all tucked into our now traditional mini-festival of sugar, salt and fat (except the Man, who was enjoying being able to fit again into his twenty year old ski salopettes).

My legs feel like they've had a good stretch.  I expect to sleep well tonight with or without restful breathing exercises.

Trojan market

Among other things today, the Man and I made a visit for the first time to Troy Farmers' Market.  We're missing our own local one, which closed for the season just before Christmas.

In winter the Troy market is held indoors in a large upstairs, downstairs space called the Uncle Sam Atrium (many things in Troy seem to be named after Uncle Sam).  There's a great variety of stalls and it's well attended.  It was very enjoyable just wandering around, chatting with friendly stallholders.  I ran into someone I knew, and also met a friend of friends, a guy who sells fair trade coffee from Guatemala.

We could have brought sackloads of goodies home, but in the end opted for some interesting home-made pastas, spinach-flavoured hummus, a few veggies and of course a bag of Guatemalan coffee.  We will, I'm sure, be making another visit before too long.

Goodbye to some of that

I had a good night's sleep, implementing yesterday's breath-counting technique.  Getting off to sleep at bedtime is usually fine for me anyway, it's when I wake up in the middle of the night that I have problems getting back to sleep again.  When this happened last night I did the counting exercise and drifted right off.  It really does seem to work.  I called my friend this morning, and she also reported having slept well, which is quite unusual for her.

So, well-rested,  I was in a good mood to take the long walk home from school after accompanying the Boy there this morning.  The last two days it has been too lung-freezingly cold for long walks, but today the temperature was more comfortable.  So I had a good two-miles-plus constitutional, with added exercise value because I was wearing snow boots, which weigh down your feet like deep-sea diving gear.

I spent the day at home, working through a mountain of winter-break laundry, and making a small beginning on what may turn out to be a year-long assault on all the drawers, cupboards, closets and bookcases in the house.   We don't have horrendous amounts of stuff, just more than I can be bothered to offer a home to anymore.  A gradual weeding-out process has begun...

Breathe easy

I have a friend who suffers from insomnia.  It's something I experience myself, but she has it much worse than me.

I have another friend, from India, who likes to share a breathing technique that helps people overcome anxiety, depression and...insomnia (among other conditions). Today I got my two friends together, and joined in myself with a "counting breaths" class.

It's incredibly simple.  Bend each of your fingers in turn into your palm.  Breath in and out three times per finger, counting each breath.  Carry on until you fall asleep.

That's it.

Basically it's just a means of blocking out all those thoughts and/or worries that tend to crowd in and whirl around when you can't sleep.  Apparently it's extraordinarily successful.

My insomniac friend and I are going to try it, and we'll report back to our instructor next week.  Of course, I'll report back here, too.  Meanwhile, if you're having trouble sleeping, or you're worrying about something, or you just would like to try this very basic form of meditation for yourself,  there are more details here.

Needle work

So, back to school for the kids, back to work for the Man, and back to various sorts of busy-ness for me.

Driving around today on my errands I've seen many a Christmas tree lying by the edge of the road, awaiting collection.  We'll probably stick with keeping ours up until Twelfth Night, but even the Boy has noted that it's looking rather sad already - ornaments on the bottom branches have sagged so low they are sitting on the carpet, along with half the needles.  I'm not looking forward to the mess when we finally drag the thing outside.  The Boy suggests we keep it an extra long time, until all the needles have fallen off - "so at least they'll all be in one place, not spread all over the house."  There could be something in that...

Beginnings and endings

The Boy and a friend took in a bit more sledding at the golf course today to start the New Year, but our main outing of the day was to Willard Mountain to get measured for rental gear and pick up ski passes ahead of our skiing season, which starts this weekend.

The mountainside looked promisingly snowy - a very different sight from this time last year (in fact anytime during the whole of last winter) when there was only ever homemade snow to ski on.

So, now we can look forward to Ski Sundays again...but before that, back-to-school (*groan*).  Yep, the winter break is over. We're none of us too excited about getting up in time for the Girl's bus tomorrow morning, especially as the temperature is predicted to be -8C.