Snow, slush & sniffles

DK and I spent Christmas in bed. Christmas Eve, too. Ditto the day after.

It almost sounds luxurious now, but actually, we were bedridden because after weeks of sprinting towards a sorely needed winter break, we both got really, really sick. We subsisted off of homemade egg-drop soup for a few days because it was the only thing I had the energy to make (meanwhile, the crazy-expensive ingredients of what was supposed to be our Christmas dinner wilted in the fridge); we watched a lot of soothingly narrated nature documentaries (o, Sir David Attenborough, your voice was such a salve!); we lolled and lounged and whined.

I, at least, would have been able to get better a whole lot faster if we could have somehow resisted running outside after the big blizzard that hit New York. My fevered mind and childish soul convinced me that three hours of subfreezing sledding = a good idea. Turns out... not so much.

So, I've spent most of my holiday week off under the covers with Netflix Instant View, although I did perk up pretty dramatically today. And I've even found a way to enjoy all the snow inside: snow slushies! Specifically, lemon-rosemary snow slushies:


It's just simple syrup infused with lemon peel and rosemary, dribbled over fresh snow--and I know that the idea of eating New York City snow isn't exactly palatable to everyone, but, well, I've been doing it for years, and everyone's fine with me! Except for the plague I'm recovering from, I mean.

I hope you're all having a wonderful--and healthy!--holiday. It's time for me to crawl back into bed now. There are some PBS documentaries that I need to attend to before I fall asleep at 9:30.

Start, stall

I swear, I have 10 posts sitting in my queue, just waiting to be finished... but lately, I've had a really hard time finishing anything I start. (By "lately," I, of course, actually mean, "always." Story of my life.)

An illustrative example: yesterday, I left the apartment determined to find some nice string lighting. I knew exactly where I was going (Pearl River Mart) and exactly what I wanted (either this, or this). We got back home five hours later after going to a grocery, a butcher shop, three furniture stores, a restaurant, a bookstore, and an estate sale.

We now have a large jar of sesame oil, some unneeded Sriracha, some very fancy cuts of meat (I am all about homemade duck confit now), some new-to-us vinyl LPs (to swell DK's collection of roughly 10,000), and some other little sundries--but no string lighting.

However, I now have an adorable framed picture of some pencil-and-watercolor horses, in the exact style I used to render them as a child (seriously--I only drew horses with one one foreleg crossed over the other):


And (another) copy of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass:


In my defense, I've been making due with a terrible paperback version for the past 12 years, and I think this one set me back all of 50 cents.

I'm beginning to feel guilty again, though, because this is such a silly post. True, string lighting would have made just as silly a subject, but at least the darn thing would have been topical.

In conclusion, look out for my forthcoming stocking stuffer suggestions! Going by my track record, they should hit this blog in, um, March.