The Month that Time Stands Still

January is just a dreary, dismal month.  I'm pretty sure it's the longest month of the year.  Starting next month, time will slowly start to creep by a little faster.  Once June hits, time flies.  It sort of slows a bit during October and November, and I start feeling melancholy about the changing season.  Then, the holidays go by in a blur.  Suddenly, it's January again, and I'm flat out depressed about that.  Every year.

The girls had no school yesterday, because of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday.  What do you do with a break like that?  They can't go play outside because the world is suffocating under a blanket of 3-week-old snow and ice.  It's not the kind of snow you can play in anymore, because it's too wet and melty--but not melty enough to go away.

So my plan was to spend the day baking with the girls.  We need to stock up our freezer with cookies for brown bag lunches, and all sorts of muffins.  However, my plan was thwarted by two problems: a) I needed to go to the grocery store, but who wants to leave the house during this yucky month?  Not me.  b) I'm trying to avoid sugary stuff this month.  Talk about adding frostbite to the freeze.  The best way to cheer me up when I'm stuck at home for a long time is to do some baking, and/or eating.  But if I can't eat the stuff I bake, that kills a lot of the fun of that activity.

Blogging is also pretty dead this month, because as you can see, I don't have many nice things to say, and one lesson my mother did her best to instill in me was, "If you don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all."

To add to the bad humor of this month, we cancelled our t.v. service.  We do have Netflix, but I'm not much of a movie watcher, unless I'm sitting in a dark theater with popcorn in my right hand and Junior Mints in my left.

So what have I been doing?

• Marking my 2011 calendar.  Now there's one January activity I do enjoy.  Check.
• Reading books.  Right now I'm enjoying "Same Kind of Different as Me".  
• Laundry.  Lots of it.
• Playing Settlers of Catan online.  It's pathetic how that game never gets old for me.
• Organizing my recipes.  I'm contemplating starting a recipe blog...
• Painting fingernails, and daydreaming of the day when I can paint my toenails and show them off in a pair of sandals.