Shack Happy Parte Dos

Ya know how they say,
"It's not the heat… it’s the humidity."

What-ev-er

Well up here one might change that saying to:

"It's not the cold, it’s the never ending length of time stretching into oblivion that the white blinding snow covers everything in sight. Snow that removes every trace of any other possible color in the palette that might exist other than white and gray. A colorless void that sucks the warmth out of the world and lasts for months and months on end."

Yeah yeah yeah... it's friggen beautiful.

Alright already.

I take back what I said about not being shack happy, I think we are there.
I must have been confused, irritable, and socially withdrawn.
(see below)

The above symptoms seem to apply to both of us… one little difference. David does not get cranky but he gets a bit blue and quiet. However, I don’t really get blue… I get cranky.

Imagine that.
I am sure anyone who knows me is very surprised by to hear that.
Poor David.

Artwork by Erin Smith @ erinsmithart.com

We fought hard against it... I think we put up one heck of a battle. We are kind of a funny pair. I think neither of us wanted to admit it to ourselves or each other that we were starting to get a little loony... (like we did not notice it right?)

Anyway, when we went to the Snowmobile Club meeting the other night we heard plenty of gripes from the locals about their own shack happy lives so I think we felt much better. A bit of relief actually, we are not alone and we did pretty good for a couple Northern Californians.

What also helped was for a few days this week we got close to 40 degrees and look what I found on the way home from work one day!

ROAD!!! BLACKISH GRAYISH ASPHALT WITH PRETTY YELLOW LINES!!!

NOT WHITE COLORLESS SLICKERY ICE!

How very lovely!

While driving with the dogs I even rolled the window down and let the air blow through the car with the stereo up loud singing at the top of my lungs! What a nice afternoon it was! Well, actually a nice few days. We had a blizzard last night and.. well... a little one today.... but that does not count as it should be close to 30 again here in oh.... 72 - 96 hours or so. It's almost over I can feel it! The grass is just about to pop through that 4 feet of snow layer out in the yard any moment now! There are buds on the trees and shrubs! I can almost hear my daffodils gathering strength to pop up into the sun!

Speaking of boots.... (note the art piece by Erin Smith above)... one of my sisters and I were exchanging emails the other day when we realized we shared an odd appreciation.

Umm...

I am talking about the BOOTS... geez.

I mean check these boots out!
These are a sly red pair... sly kinda like a mullet.

Business on the bottom party at the top!

and these! This gal is ROCKIN' those red boots!

I dunno what it is... they just look kinda fun. Sorry guys. Women and shoes. I just don't know how to explain it.

I have noticed however, that the my favorite red boots lean into the western cowboy boot kinda style... which to be honest is not normally my thing.

You see you have to be a little careful with red boots... the western ones are ok. They are fun and a bit spicy peeking out beneath a pair of faded jeans, but when you start looking at other styles you quickly start to lean over into the stripper or clown boot category.

Despite the fashion pitfalls I always wanted a pair. I nearly got some many years ago until I saw that chickie Lori Singer in Footloose wearing some and that was it...

Sorry. I could not find a picture of Lori with the boots. She kept turning sideways in front of the camera during the filming of the movie and would disappear. If you happen to have a copy of Footloose laying around I am talking about the red boots she wore particularly around the tractor chicken fight scene. Since I could not find any of Lori, you will just have to deal with a picture of Kevin Bacon dancing a jig instead.

Dang... Lori needed to eat a sandwich or nachos or something when Footloose was filmed. I guess they did not feed movie stars back in those days... and by the way... if you do have a copy of Footloose in your DVD collection, I have other questions for you that we will have to approach at another time.

Anyway, I was done. I did not want folks to think I took the whole red boot idea from her. Dang, it just took all the fun out of having them...

Well.. almost. I mean just look at this next pair.

THESE babies are Italian...
Dig on the turquoise stitching and piping on the sides!

The Italians were (and still are) always very stylish with their "western" anything.
"Strike a pose Clint and gimme a little pout...
Umm... Ok... then how about a grimace and squint!?
Ahhh, sì molto bello!"

Phew.... anyway...
I was glad to know I was not completely alone in my penchant for red leather boots.

One thing that has been kinda fun lately is that David and I have been selling off stuff we don't need anymore on eBay and many of our old unwanted books on three different sites. eBay takes a bit of work if you want to do it right but the books sites are great! You type in a list of the ISBN numbers and they tell you if they will buy them or not. You don't get a lot but it is better than a sharp stick in the eye. And they pay for shipping! So all you have to do is box them up and drop them off in the mail! We have sold books on Powells.com, Abebooks.com, and cash4books.net . My suggestion is to type up a list in your word processing program (word or whatever) and save it on your computer somewhere and then just copy and paste into the different sites if you have a bunch to sell. They don't take everything, and sometimes it just depends on their inventory on that particular day so check back frequently.

It was a fun diversion and we got rid of a bunch of books (three large boxes) that we loved but did not love enough to keep lugging around from home to home.

And now for a little comic relief. This article I scanned below was in a nearby Wisconsin newspaper. You see in this area the DNR (Dept. of Natural Resources) keeps telling people that there are NO mountain lions... cougars.. whatever you want to call them in this area. People who live here keep reporting sightings, hitting them with cars, shooting them in the yard but apparently according to the DNR there are NO Mountain Lions here. The articles below were in the paper the other day and each and every big and little headline made me crack up about the whole thing. I posted the article twice, once to see unaltered and the other with my notes. Click on them to see them up close and then hit 'back' button to return.

Ahhh.. ya just gotta love our government agencies.

And now for your moment of Zen:

Yes that is Mount Rainier in Washington.

Hmmm. I think I will go find my seed packets from last year and get to planning my garden.
After all spring is just around the corner!

Right?

Right?