nesting

I am on winter break. It's enough to cause my nine-to-five friends to green a bit around the gills, but I'm not so sold on this mandatory vacation business. It's nice, since I've let all manner of things go around the house, to have a few days to scale the mountain of laundry in the bedroom. It's nice to be able to lounge on the couch with the cat. It's nice to post a few thoughts to my blog. But is this what time off is for? Is this all a vacation is? Chris is busy at the gallery or slaving away in his studio, and everybody else has jobs. And I've found myself alone, faced with the dilemma of what to do with all this time: houseold projects, reading, writing, school planning, interborough adventures?
Yesterday I finished off the lychee sherbert and the rice pudding in the course of one afternoon, nosed through a few stories in the Best American Short Stories I got for Christmas and generally avoided anything productive. And watched an embarrassing amount of television.
I'm drinking a beer.
The cat is purring on my stomach.
Chris will be home soon.
Where's that book?

the neighborhood

Months have gone by, and I've let this blog idle. We moved to Brooklyn at the end of August. We live in an area that doesn't really seem to have a name, perhaps only because the realtors haven't christened it yet. It's a sort of no man's land right on the southeast tip of Prospect Park.
We love it because our view is of the park: leafy trees until around Halloween, then a somewhat clear view of the pond once the trees are bare. In fact, right now I can see a reddish sunset reflecting on the water. When the big snowstorm hit last week, we had lots of fun playing in the snow over there.
But now the snow is gone again, so the park looks more like this:
Art shots compliments of my Christmas present from my fabulous husband: a camera. Though I think Mr. Fabulous might have stolen it, yet again, to take shots of colorful storefronts around Chinatown.