Baby, Baby......

Turn up the volume.

Now we can start shopping for those little boy clothes. Little button down collared flannel shirts, tiny jeans, teeny hiking boots - what fun!

CABIN FEVER

I've got it - no doubt about it. Dreaded cabin fever with full blown symptoms. First there's the horrible "being stuck in the house and you can't open the windows" thing. I'm a fresh air person and a day without it takes it's toll on my psyche. So, at various points throughout the day, I stick my head outside and take some deep breaths. Right now the temperatures during the day are hovering around mid teens, so standing out there for very long isn't advisable. OK. Yes, I could bundle up and go for a walk. Yes I could and you know what - that's what I'm going to do - starting tomorrow. I'm not going to let Old Man Winter sock it to me anymore. I'm going to put on lots of layers and head over to the city path for a vigorous jaunt. I'll let you know how that goes..........
Then there are the long evenings that drag interminably on and on and on... I find myself in my pj's around 7 p.m. clutching my latest library acquisition. I gather my various pillows and my soft blankie then plop down on the couch for a good read. If I make it 30 minutes without conking out, it's unusual. Most folks watch television, but that isn't an option here as we don't pay for it, and have no antenna. We do rent the occasional movie, though, and that might keep me up until 9p.
I'm an artist, so I should be doing art, right? Well, if only it were that easy. Due to the lack of fresh air which in turn fuels my creativity and also the fact that I feel like the day is over when the sun goes down, I find it terribly hard to create this time of year. That's a real shame since I have so much time to create right now. In addition, the holidays took the stuffing out of me with all of the usual stresses and I find that I have to recuperate for a month or more before I can really get on with life.
Blogging. I can do that - like right now. It's dark out, has been for several hours now and I've spent the time in the fairly useless activity of blogging. I made a fairly useless movie for this blog too. Here it is (it has music).

Lest you are wondering about the picture at the beginning of this post, let me explain. Merle and I were simultaneously suffering the effects of cabin fever earlier today, so we decided to go for a drive. We headed up in the hills, went to Starbucks in Estes Park where we each indulged in our favorite pricey caffeinated hot beverage and then drove around in a somewhat aimless fashion. Off one side road we drove by the above pictured tableau consisting of an old diningroom set in the forest.

I call it "Dining with Old Cold Ghosts".

Very Belated Happy New Year!

I have been very negligent about blogging so far this year but will be working on correcting that in the future.

OUR FRIENDS, THE GENTLE MULE DEER.
(Turn up the volume, this is my first video with music.)

This is one of several small groups of mule deer that come and go in our neighborhood. It's been fun as we've observed them through the years. We have seen some that are lame probably from either being chased and bitten or by injuring themselves when jumping over barbed wire fencing. We had a partial skeleton on the property one time and other day there was a mule deer leg in the middle of the street. It disappeared the next day and then showed up again the next. I just realized that it may have been a different leg. So, there are also predators around, We haven't seen those. I imagine that drama takes places in darkness. It's either coyotes or a mountain lion. I think we would hear coyotes, so it makes me wonder if there is a mountain lion in the vicinity.

Yesterday, the little herd nestled down in a protected grassy spot on our hillside. I was able to clearly see the head of one of them as it studiously chewed it's cud. Yes, deer have multiple stomachs, like cows. Chewing the cud is how cud chewers are able to get the maximum amount of nutrients from their vegetative meals. This link provides a lot of good information about mule deer. After living with these gentle creatures for so many years, I finally know something about them. It would be so cool to see a fawn sometime, but we never do although we do see them after they are more like in the juvenile stage.

Well, this is a short one. Merle went to get us Subway meatball salads and we are going to watch "3:10 to Yuma" - again. We already saw it at the theatre. It's a good movie - pretty violent in parts, but nevertheless very entertaining.

Be a "deer" and come back for a visit................