My Thoughtful Spot

fashion fridays: christmas tanks

This week has been an odd one weather-wise for us. Normal southern California winter weather is about mid 50s, especially in December. Which is perfect sweater-don't-really-need-a-jacket weather. Excellent timing for me to bring out my ONE Christmas sweater -- the one I only wear around the house and at mom's.

But I can't! Yesterday I was driving around and the car thermometer said 80. That's 80 degrees Fahrenheit. On December 17th. Clearly sweaters, Christmas or otherwise, are not in my future, at least until things cool off to the mid 60s sometime next week. But it's Christmas! What am I supposed to do about my festive attire?

Then I got to thinking... what do they do in the southern hemisphere? Christmas... tank tops?? That must be it. But I asked a bloggy friend who lives in New Zealand, and she said they don't really exist. (But that she'd love an American Christmas "jumper"!) Bummer. They'd be a big hit; maybe we should go into business together.

I did some searching on google and found that they already exist. (Guess I'll have to stick it out in the medical industry, such as it is.) Here are some cute ones I would totally wear.

How cute is that little chick?!?

I really love that Seinfeld episode. So I would love wearing this one.

I guess I qualify as a baby yogini now, so I could wear this one, too!

Tell me, truthfully... you want a cheesy Christmas sweater that lights up, don't you? Alright, maybe not that far. But anyone can wear Christmas socks! (I have at least a dozen pair!

our four seasons

The first day of autumn was yesterday and we entered into a heat wave thanks to the Santa Ana winds. We also officially entered "fire season." Here I am, missing cooler temperatures, the smell of a crisp autumn morning, and hopes of apple picking. All of these from my six years in New England, of course. If it weren't for me changing the scent of the Yankee Candles I burn, I wouldn't even know it were fall.

The large fire that was all over national news, known locally as the Station fire, is 94% contained. (We need to name the fires because there are so many going on at one time.) But a few days ago, a new, smaller fire popped up. Not from arson, like the Station fire, but from a spontaneously combusting pile of manure. Yes, you read that right. Spontaneously combusting cow shit. If fires weren't so destructive, it would be kind of funny. I don't know it's official name but... well, I'm sure you can guess what I think we should name it.

We don't really have an autumn or a winter and I don't mind skipping on winter so much. I like it cooler, definitely... 40s is good. But I'd rather not shovel snow and deal with ice on the sidewalks, ya know? If it rains here in the winter (and in the last several years, that's a BIG if), all the land that was fire scorched a few months prior turn into mudslides. So then the rain becomes both a blessing and a curse.

So I've come up with a revised list of seasons for Southern California, effective immediately.

Spring, Summer, Fire, Drought/Mudslide.

a worthy adversary

Every May, after the peak of the strawberry season has passed, I take a good hard look at the produce department every time I'm in the store. I'm waiting for the first fruits of summer... peaches and nectarines in white and yellow, apricots, mangoes. Not the ones from Chile that are small and dry, but the ones that are grown right here in California and drip when you eat them.

They were there today! I picked out apricots, yellow nectarines, and white peaches, some of which were destined to become a fruit salad for my lunch. There is a very precise method for getting as much fruit as possible off the pit. It involves cutting along the natural crease in the fruit and then twisting the two halves in opposite directions. This twisting has varying degrees of difficulty based on the fruit and how ripe it is. Nothing is more frustrating than being foiled at my attempts and having to carve the fruit off the pit. Messy and inefficient.

It was imperative that I start the season off right and successfully twist all my fruit. I was setting a prescedent, after all. Well the fruit decided to fight. The first victim was a yellow nectarine. I struggled and twisted with all my might. Once, twice, and finally on the third attempt... POP! Success! I chuckled a little and said, "Ha! I own you!" Just to prove that it wasn't a fluke, I chose next to try the other yellow nectarine; no doubt his commrade. This one was easier. White peach... no problem. And the apricots; well, they're not even a challenge. Give in as easy as the French.

So I stood in the kitchen, on 2 hours of interrupted sleep, staring at the halves of my fruit and I uttered, "I own all of you."

Then I realized I was talking menacingly to fruit. I finished cutting it up, ate it, and took and obviously much needed nap. :-P

stopping to smell the flowers

Even though we don't have much of a winter here in Southern California, we still get many of the benefits of a new Spring. I hear the little birds chirping outside my window as I get ready in the morning darkness. The trees have tiny leaf buds that open almost overnight. And there are flowers blooming everywhere. I get to see these gorgeous signs of the new season every day... They're just at the bottom of the stairs to our apartment. The next installment of Spring is baseball; the wait is nearly over! I'm glad I stopped to appreciate these today; it's so easy to get caught up in our own list of things to do and be oblivious to the simple beauty nature provides.

the frozen state

It's been really, really cold here recently. And not just here, but throughout the rest of the state. Much of California almost never gets below freezing temperatures, which makes it possible for us to be the fruit basket of the country. I grew up in the Central Valley, which is where cotton, strawberries, avocados, corn, citrus, and pretty much everything is grown. While I never lived on a farm per se, many of my friends had orange orchards in their backyards. If I went to their house, I would often leave with one or two big grocery bags full of big, juicy, tree-ripened oranges. Then when I was a teenager, me and my friends would get in our car and go out to some orchard and pick a bunch of oranges and throw them into the back seat. Then we would drive back to town, all the while throwing the oranges in front of the car and laugh when they hit and splatted on the windshield. (Hey, gimme a break. There wasn't much to do there if you were a teenager. At least I wasn't drinking or doing drugs. :-P )

So it makes me really sad to know that most of the orange crop for this year has been destroyed by freezing temperatures. This makes the oranges not fit for eating; only juicing, if that. It's going to be at least a $1 billion loss. And it will affect trucking and food service industries, not just the fruit growers and harvesters. There was a similar freeze in 1998, and after that, a lot of the orchard owners purchased insurance. (Who knew you could buy insurance for weather freezing your oranges?) So many of the farmers are better equipped to handle it this time. But these freezes are not only affecting the citrus; it has ruined many of the avocado and strawberry crops this year, too.

Global warming, my ass.

(Oh, these pictures are courtesy of the Fresno Bee. Governor Schwarzenegger is on crutches because he broke his femur skiing over Christmas.)

honeycrisp

Okay, there's no use in denying it anymore. The regular baseball season is over, the mornings are quite a bit more chilly than they were, I need to have my lights on for the majority of my morning commute, there were pumpkin bars and ginger cookies at Corner Bakery last night, Halloween candy is everywhere, I can't find mangoes at the store, and honeycrisp apples have made their appearance in the produce section. Autumn is officially here.

I actually love autumn. Halloween is so much fun, the Fresno Fair starts, and fall foliage is beautiful. Well, we don't actually get any fall foliage in Southern California -- the leaves stay green until late November, then turn brown and fall off. Another great thing is the abundance of apples at the store. After living in New England for six years, I'm kind of an apple snob now. The most amazing apples I have found at the store are honeycrisp apples. I don't know much about them, but they seem to be only available for a few weeks, unlike granny smith, or even pink ladys. I picked up my first honeycrisps last night, and they were just as good as I remeber them. I've heard that there are a few places in Southern California to pick apples; maybe someday when I have some time, I'll investigate and we'll go. Or maybe we'll just fly back east and head up to New Hampshire and Applecrest Orchards.

So, to quote Dawn, yay for October!

happy spring!

Spring is here! And while it doesn't mean as much now as it did when we lived in New England, I'm still very happy. Here are my main reasons for loving this season:

1. Longer days. The sun is up longer and I suddenly have more energy. Not that I spend time in the sun (afraid of cancer and wrinkles), I just like looking outside and seeing it.

2. Easter! I love Easter, especially after a good, penetential Lent. Easter brings Cadbury Mini Eggs, Whoppers' Robin's Eggs, Peeps... oh, and Jesus' resurrection. ;-)

3. A new fashion season. Time to evaluate the closet contents, pour over fashion magazines, and figure out which items I need to update my wardrobe.

4. Baseball!! I can't wait for baseball season to start. Although with the Red Sox deciding to trade Bronson Arroyo, a great pitcher, for some outfielder, I'm not sure I will enjoy this season as much as last year. I'm still waiting for the official analysis by Dawn, a fellow Red Sox fan.

5. Nature wakes up... I love hearing those little chirping birds in the early morning in the beginning of spring. I don't know what kind they are, but they are so little and cute... ;-)

6. Tulips and daffodils. I don't know why, but I love these flowers and I have since I was a kid.

Hope everyone had a great day! :-)

i hate january

Girls' Night Out was a lot of fun. Well, except for the fact that I went to the wrong restaurant first. But after I found everyone it was fun. There weren't a ton of people, which was actually good; getting to know people better in a restaurant setting is kind of difficult. I can't wait for next month's GNO!

My call on Saturday wasn't bad. I've had much worse, that's for sure. Daniel even brought me dinner and the cordless drill to finish putting up the shelves in the call room. It's pretty homey in here now, which is good, since I'm in here a lot studying for the ABSITE.

Yesterday, I was able to nap for a bit and went to the gym. I went with one of my friends, who asked me to teach her how to lift weights. I'm not sure if she really knew what she was asking and I warned her that I really love weight training. But she said she really wanted to get healthier. Then she said she was sore even thinking about going! I gave her my total-body weight lifing routine, including abs and stretches. It took us a while, though, because I was trying to work out at the same time. A normal 60-70 work out was somehow stretched to 2 hours! oops. I hope I didn't scare her away from the gym.

When I came home, Daniel finished putting away all the Christmas stuff. Gone for another 11 months. At church that morning we celebrated the feast of the Epiphany and they still had all their decorations up and we sang Christmas hymns. The last one was "Hark the Herald Angels Sing." I was happy as could be -- church was over, I was going to have a nap when I got home, when WHAM! I started to cry. As everyone began singing the last verse, it hit me. That was it. For another whole year. I couldn't sing anymore; I was just listening and staring at the poinsettias and Christmas trees. Daniel knows; he gave me a hug and a kleenex and let me mourn the season being over. Silly, yes, but I do it every year.

Yup, I hate January. Christmas is over and the freaking ABSITE is looming ever closer. It's easier to take in sunny Southern California, but I still hate it.

missing New England

We lived in New England for six years from 1997-2003. Once I had experienced a "real" winter, I couldn't get back to California fast enough. Now that I am safely here, I can vow that I will never live that close to Canada again. Not that there's anything wrong with Canada, it's just too cold there. The phrase that I hated to hear from the meteorologist was "We have a cold high pressure system moving in from Canada." That meant get out your gloves and scarves, cuz it's going to be cold out there!

Now that I'm back, I don't really miss New England -- except now. Here in southern California, the temperature is firmly in the 80's (last week it was in the 90's), we still run the air conditioner at night, and no leaves are changing colors.

This is what I miss the most:

1. Crisp autumn mornings.
2. Fall foliage.
3. Picking apples. And if you can't get to pick your own, the grocery store has the best selection.
4. Everyone decorating the front of their homes with pumpkins, wheat sheaves (really big ones), and scarecrows.
5. Fresh apple cider without preservatives. Much better than the "safe" kind.
6. Crunching leaves beneath your feet.

We would pick apples from the same place every year -- Apple Crest Orchard in New Hampshire. On the weekends, they would have a fall harvest fair with a bluegrass band, roasted corn on the cob, homemade apple pie, cider donuts, and a pumpkin patch. The air was heavy with the scent of apples.

We're going to Fresno this weekend, which is more north in the state. Hopefully it will be a little cooler there and some leaves will be falling. Granted, they'll not be vibrant in color, but at least they'll be off the tree.