Girls on the town in the Minneapolis Deep Freeze

The people you knew years and years ago...are they still in your life? Are there people who know stories about you that you wish no one ever knew? And can you just reach over and steal a bite of their food, even if you haven't been in the same room for months and months? Old friends. Good friends.

Now, the winter where I live is dreary. The clouds hang on for weeks. It rains. We all get a little gloomy, no one wants to go for a walk in the rain. No one wants to just hang around outside. But really? We're all crazy. The flowers are blooming! It's in the 40s! And in February we start to get real spring planting moving, and the sun comes out for days and days! So what did we do?? My family made the brilliant decision to come to Minnesota for our mid-winter break. It's 11 below, the actual temperature, with a 25 below windchill. It hurts to breathe and anything exposed freezes. But we came here to see those old friends.


In fact, Suz even came from Florida because there was a chance that all five of us girls would be in one room for a day or so. Well, maybe it was more than that, but she came to cold weather so cold it's dangerous; willingly, even bought a plane ticket. We just fly standby.

So there we were, staying in downtown Minneapolis for an overnight, the five girls who share a brain. Now we're all 40--the baby of the group just climbing that milestone this month. And it was cold. The skyways were closed. But it didn't matter. We shopped--at Target. We ate at a nice restaurant, we went to a niche pub. We laughed over nothing and drank a bottle of champagne.


And then as we each leave, one by one, to go back to our lives, a little piece of me rips off again. It's like that really strong velcro that holds super tight, but when it rips apart it makes that huge noise.....rrrriiiiiiiip. And in a couple of days I'll leave too. Rrrriiiip. It makes me think that maybe, it would almost be worth it to move back here to live in the super cold to be nearer to some of these pieces of myself. But of course, when you live close together you hardly ever take a whole week to hang out with your friends. And now we have those friends that only know the stupid stories about us from the last five years who live by our new home, and that's a piece we'd have to rip off. And it's really, really cold in Minnesota. I don't want to live someplace where the very air you breathe is dangerous. Volcanoes, earthquakes...now that's a reason for danger. Air, not so much. So I'll wear goofy wool socks, and be cold inside buildings and out for a while. It's OK. I'm happy to do it--but, really, I'm not moving back.

YES WE CAN!

YES WE CAN!
So, I went to the Obama Rally today. Two of the kids went with me, I think public school has totally ruined Michael and no matter what I said this morning, he would not skip school and come with me! Peter said "He's making grades while we're making history."
I don't know if we were really making history, but being in a big arena with 20,000 people who are actually letting themselves feel hope for our country was a little exciting. For so long I've felt nothing much good about being living here in the states and what we are doing to the rest of the people of the planet through our government.
But Barak Obama says things that make me hope. Like, that americans can be counted on to do the right thing. And that if things are going to change, we all have to do hard things, and that's OK, we can do that.
Cool.
I want to live in a country that takes care of it's old and sick, and does not give tax breaks to oil companies. I don't want a president who said "I hate all gooks" and would stack that suprememe court with even more judges with shameless political agendas.
Tomorrow I'm going to my caucus and I'm speaking my mind. I know I live in a very, very red neighborhood, but I don't care. Let 'em fine me for having moss on my roof (in SEATTLE??! MOSS??! Oh my!).
And if you were there, and you got stuck in hours and hours of awful traffic like the 58 mile back up on I-5 and if you stood outside for an hour and really really wished for just a little coffee, well then we'll say together after the swearing in, "hey, maybe we made a little history there on that grey February day..."
I'll host the post election party.

Next Week

So, I caved. I subscribed to something more commercial and more mainstream than any blogger site or social networking site. It's bad.
I joined Weight Watchers.
Well, because even tho I lost almost a whole 2nd grader worth of weight years ago, when I moved back in with my husband INSTANTLY I gained a whole bunch of weight. Seriously. It was like that day, the moving truck, boxes, cleaning and bam, here's a whole bunch of clothes that don't fit anymore. And no matter what I did it didn't want to go away, even after we decided we were married and happy and we planted gardens and everything.
OK, maybe thinking that nachos are kinda sorta healthy was part of the problem. That might be it. AND that thinking that red wine and dark chocolate are healthy...that's part of it too. Ww makes you stand up and weigh in and admit that even things you eat while standing-up... count.
It was funny, I kept hearing people that I thought of as "normal" size talk about belonging to ww--some for 20 years, and I decided that this is what "normal" sized people do when they start not fitting in their clothes. So, there I sit, in the chair at the meeting, every week and I don't eat nachos and I only eat "little" bits of dark chocolate. And yes, it's working, slowly.
There's a pile of clothes on my closet floor that I can hang back up when they fit. It's shrinking. That's good. If you're like me and can actually talk yourself into believing that nachos are kinda healthy, sometimes, you might have to stop eating standing up, too.
It's OK. We'll all be fat old people on the golf course someday, but for now....hey for now, I'm off nachos, I'm planning on a "clean" closet floor soon.
And if you are one of those naturally thin people who can look at chocolate cake and think "um....I'm not really hungry" I'll try to accept you as a person next week. Promise.