Wishful Slacker

Winter?

We are playing in the living room with the windows open, and earlier I left my coat in the car when I picked Eleanor up from daycare. Oh- one detail to add. It is January 6th. Does anyone else find this odd to the point of concerning?

Snow!

Still hard to believe this happened on Lake Shore!

One week ago!

Snow Day, continued

 
The snow finally stopped yesterday, and we bundled up Baby Girl and took her outside for her first snow walk (no worries, we were out for approximately 3 minutes.  There's only so much a 12 weeker can take, after all!).

There were many people out shoveling their cars and just walking around, taking it all in!  I love how muted and hushed everything sounds when there is that much snow over everything!

Some small improvement on Roscoe Street! 


But not so much for this car...








After all that, it was time for a nap!


We did not make it as far as Wolcott with the baby, but my husband took this picture earlier in the day.  It will be some time before people on these side streets will be able to get anywhere by car!

IT'S SNOWTACULAR!

We are in the middle of Snowpocalypse 2011!  I have never experienced anything quite like the snowstorm that came in yesterday afternoon.  You know, everyone always talks about the horrid winters in Chicago.  And yes, there is no denying that Chicago winters are crazy harsh, but it's more because of the wind and cold temps.  This is our fifth winter in Chicago, and we really haven't had lots of snow here.  It always seems to skirt just north or south of us, and we seem to be pretty protected by the lake's influences.  So that makes this especially insane!

At 2 am I looked out the window, and instantly thought that all the cars across the street had been moved!  I have never, ever, ever seen cars so covered in snow in all my life (my poor husband has heard me exclaim this at least 20 times this morning.  Really.).  At the moment the snow total is at almost 21 inches (and it seems to be winding down).  Wind gusts at the lakefront measured in at 70 mph last night, and Lakeshore Drive was shut down after hundreds of people got trapped in their cars during their commute home.  We even got some thunder and lightning!  Trusty Tom Skilling from WGN News just announced that this is now officially the third largest snowstorm in Chicago record-keeping history.

Here are some of the pics I've taken.  Everyone in Chicago has the same scenes out their own windows, but I thought that you folks outside of the city might be interested. :-) 

This was taken around 4 pm from our place, about an hour and a half into the snowfall.  Note those cars parked across the street...


Then it got crazy!



And here we are this morning!


WHERE ARE THE CARS?!


You can barely see the outline of a car, just to the right of the light pole.


I took these from our building lobby (where I could stay warm and dry!):





Digging out!  God bless our indoor parking!
 


That hump across the street is indeed a car. 


Now I want to get all bundled up and go tromp around in all this! Be safe out there everyone!

Winter: We may hate it, but it sure can be pretty

We ran into snow last Saturday on our drive from Chicago to Rochester, Michigan.  Which, this time of year, often cannot be avoided along the stretch of Indiana and western Michigan that receives so much lake effect precipitation.  I would rate last Saturday's experience as a "medium" along the white-knuckle-I-hate-driving-through-this-much-snow scale, so it really could have been worse.  But as we were going through the soup, my sister text to tell us that it was sunny and clear where she lives in Kalamazoo, about an hour and a half out from the snowy mess we found ourselves in at the time.  Sure enough, blue skies beckoned ahead, and before we knew it the dark clouds were gone.  The bright sun reflected off the freshly fallen snow which coated all the tree branches, and everything was suddenly really, really pretty.    

It was one of those moments that you knew wouldn't last long and that soon the bright sun would melt the trees down to their stark wintery nakedness.  Perhaps we appreciated the sight even more knowing that it had a time limit :-)

Winter's Cruelty- aka, the hotter the shower, the drier the skin

I have the winter itch.  The colder the temps, the more I itch.  The colder I feel, the longer I stand in a steamy hot shower.  And the longer and hotter the shower, the more I itch.  How is this fair?

In our new apartment, we have one of the most amazing showers I have ever seen in my life.  Do you see all those shower heads?  When our lease is up, I may handcuff myself to the towel bar.  I love me a hot shower or bath.  Sometimes during the day when I am cold, I imagine myself walking around wearing a large box full of hot water.  An opaque portable bath of sorts.

To be totally honest, my wish for this portable bath was a desire of yesterday.  In actuality, I really haven't been very cold during the day recently, mainly because I am now addicted to my long johns.  I bought a pair of long underwear from REI last year, and it was probably the best $30 I've ever spent.  They are thin and breathable and the best accessory ever invented.  I've become so addicted, that even after the temps creep back up into the 20's and 30's, I can't take them off.  If I leave without them, it feels like the tundra.  I almost accidentally wore them to my pedicure last Saturday. 

So, back to dry skin.  When we were at Ikea last month, we were surprised to see that they have come out with a line of toiletries- body and hand lotion, and shampoo and conditioner.  Having left my chapstick at home, I had hoped with all my might that there was new Ikea chapstick, but I was not that lucky!  All of their products seemed to be very decently priced at less than $3.  We bought a body lotion to try out, and I have to say that we've been very pleased with it.  It is pretty thick and is fairly quick-drying.  I would definitely buy some more in the future, but Jim and I have forbidden ourselves to return to Ikea for at least a few months! 

 While I love finding nice lotions and other toiletries for cheap, I've also discovered a deep down desire to splurge every so often.  We took a Chicago staycation last spring and stayed at the Hotel Monaco downtown.  If I could, I'd say that it's the best hotel in Chicago.  But I am far from having been in every hotel in the city, so therefore this is a claim I cannot support.  You get the idea though, I loved this hotel.  The soap freebies at this place were L'Occitane products, the verbena scent.  Oh they were just lovely.  The scent is so fresh and lemon-y.  I happened to have a ziploc bag with us and actually brought home the used soap that we had used while at the hotel because I could not BEAR the thought that it'd be thrown away (ARGH I'M MY MOTHER!!)!  As for the other unused L'Occitane travel products that we brought home from that stay, I found myself using them slowly over the next few months when I really needed something nice.  Since I loved them so much, when it came time to ask for things for Christmas, I put it down on my list.  I received L'Occitane bar soaps, lotions, shower gels, and shampoo and conditioner.  Oh, happiness.

Let me finish by sharing a really nice website, Real Food Rehab.  I saw Dana Joy Altma on our local news a few months ago, and really like her message.  She is all about promoting healthy living through eating good, pure foods and practicing self-care.  I particularly liked her blog post from after the New Year, Ten Ideas to Make Your Life Better in 2010. 

Quality trumps quantity.  After I run out of my L'Occitane Christmas gifts, I may actually head out and buy some for MYSELF!  Shocker!

Winter blues and hat hair

Hello, my name is Lindsay, and I have the winter blues. 

There.  It's out.  I've said it.  Just a few weeks ago, I was truly looking forward to January.  Truly.  I hoped for white Saturday mornings with frost on the windows and a windchill frigid enough that it would be INSANE to leave the building.  I wanted to curl up on the couch and catch up on our Netflix movies while I sipped tea and knit socks.  I wanted to rush home after work to heat up the big pot of leftover soup that we'd made, and shuffle around the apartment in my slippers.   Ahhhhh.....  Doesn't it sound nice?

But you see, days ago, I got cranky.  Really, really cranky.  And moody, which may be the same as cranky, but I was too cranky and moody to objectively differentiate between the two.  I became the Debbie Downer incarnate.  Work.  Home.  Bed.  Too cold.  No fun.  Work.  Home.  Chores.  I've even been cantankerous while reading a book on World War II.  WORLD WAR TWO.  I mean, while reading a story about everything that people had to endure back then, you'd expect me to think, WELL GEE WHIZ, IT'S SWELL THAT I DON'T HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT YET ANOTHER AIR RAID IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT! OR WONDER IF I HAVE ENOUGH FOOD STAMPS TO MAKE BREAD!  AND HECK, LUCKY THAT I DON'T NEED TO REMIND ALASTAIR MCINTYRE TO PUT THAT LIGHT OUT AGAIN!  But no, the moment I close the book I seem to forget that life could be far, FAR WORSE, and my thoughts return to how my winter days are composed of nothing but work and nighttime, and, hmmm, should I have my pity party begin a 2pm or 3pm on Sunday afternoon?

And then it occurred to me- forget the sweaters and matching scarves.  Forget the hot cocoa and winter stew.  I just want sun.  I want long evenings and birds chirping and aimless walks through the neighborhood.  I want outdoor seating and a warm breeze that gently melts the ice in my sangria.  I want to leave work and have 5 hours of freedom before it's time to go to bed.  And, I want to just give my hair a chance to reach its fullest potential.  Which brings me to my second point, which addresses another dreadful and miserable consequence of daily subzero temps.

Hat hair.

Each morning we women wash, dry, and style our hair.  And within minutes of this, we squash it all with a hat.  And for the rest of the day it sits like some lifeless flat being on my head, making me seem like one of those girls who does nothing with their hair but really SHOULD.  Now, I've tried to be brave.  I've tried going without the hat.  But no, the cold air and wind can be as equally disastrous, and I value tremendously the warmth provided to me by my balaclava.  This weekend, when I was having my winter pity party, I may have felt in the dumps but my hair looked FANTASTIC.  And that's because I didn't leave the house to go trudging along the sidewalk or smoosh myself into a train.  I've been going to the same hair stylist for the past couple years, a cool guy named Denny, who I think can tell I'm not a total girly girl and likes to fill me in on his high maintenance clients who watch him every second to make sure he highlights every strand of their hair as directed.  Me, I just sit there and go through my fill of celebrity gossip magazines, letting him do whatever, while exclaiming out loud to him from time to time, "THEY'RE PREGNANT?  WHAT, HAVE THEY BEEN DATING FOR LIKE 3 WEEKS?" 

I called Denny last week after coming to the hectic conclusion that my hair needs to be chopped off as quickly as possible.

"Hello can I help you?"
"Yes, hi, I need to make an appointment for a hair cut and color with Denny."
"Okay, when are you available?"
"Wait- is this Denny?"
"Yes."
"Hey Denny!  It's Lindsay!"
"Oh hey.  How are you?"

"My hair Denny.  It's driving me crazy."  And then suddenly I found myself just spewing out all my problems to him on the phone.  Not real life problems, but my hair problems.  I think I frightened him a little bit in fact.  And I hope he doesn't think that I didn't like my last hair cut.  Because I did.  It's just WINTER.  It screws everything up.

So, now that I've got that out of my system, I suppose it's time to wrap up this here blog post and turn on the electric blanket before bed.  Tonight, I hope I will dream of summer.  And when I wake up it will be June.

If only I had coupons for sunscreen....