Friday, January 28, 2011

Photo Finish Friday - What a Difference.....

.... a week makes!

Remember this (from last Friday?):

The Bag Lady took this picture yesterday:


The weather warmed up and it was very mild all week. (Of course, it is snowing gangbusters even as the Bag Lady types, so it looks very different outside yet again!)

She also took these pictures yesterday. A mini-glacier, slowly inching it's way off the roof of her woodshed!


Here's a closer view. Doesn't it look interesting? The Bag Lady is intrigued by the way it has sagged in the middle, like when the comforter slides off the end of the bed.
(What do you mean, that never happens in your house? She thought it happened to everyone!)


She wonders how long it will remain in this position, now that the weather has turned cold again!
She also wonders if she should post warning signs so some darned fool on a snowmobile doesn't try to climb the mountain, triggering an avalanche....

Monday, January 24, 2011

I Have Come to the Conclusion.....

.... that I need to find tall friends. Really tall. So that I have to keep my head tipped back at all times.

How, you might be wondering, did I discover this fact? Well, I decided to pluck my eyebrows today. I have one of those little lighted makeup mirrors (older than dirt) that you set on a table and plug in. It has a magnifying side. As I was leaning forward, studying my rather sparse eyebrows, I noticed the jowls around my mouth were looking very pronounced. Using both hands, I pulled the skin back toward my ears. This resulted in the disappearance of the jowls, but gave me a slash mouth straight out of a horror movie (Attack of the Killer Scarecrow?) So, I lifted the mirror above my head and tilted my head back (fortunately, there is a back on my chair, 'cause I had to tilt back quite a distance!) This gave me the desired result, but sadly means I have to drop all of my short friends. Sigh. One of the problems with being at the taller end of the scale is that most of my friends are shorter than I. Perhaps I should start hanging around with basketball players. It also ruins the chances of ever being "on top" again - at least, with the lights on! If I had known this would happen, I would have enjoyed that position more frequently in my un-jowled youth, let me assure you!


Must go finish my facial. I had planned on using one of those peel-off facial masks until I remembered the last time I did that..... when it came time to peel it off, all that loose facial skin refused to let go, resulting in a look that resembled reverse G-force 3. I swear, if the damned peel-off stuff wasn't blue, I would have just left it, shiny or not.

Oh, and I'd appreciate any hints on getting rid of massive quantities of fine, blonde, baby-hair sideburns that are creeping ever closer to my mouth. (My experience with the peel-off mask has left me rather wary of waxing....) I am sure the plan is for the mutton chops to meet up with the Fu Manchu that has recently sprouted!

One of the blessings of failing eyesight is that one cannot see what all the younger, sharp-eyed folk can see - the evidence that, as we age, we slowly become androgenous. Of course, with men, the hair-creep occurs from their heads down onto their ears, shoulders and backs, making it's way to meet up with the stuff on their butts (turning their heads into shiny bald butts, and their asses into a veritable forest, albeit a gray, slightly curly one. Upside down babies.)

Please don't think I won't miss all you short people, because I will, but in the interests of vanity, I'm afraid you simply have to be replaced.... at least until the inevitable shrinkage stoops all of us to the same height, and we are all peering through our cataract-clouded eyes, wondering whether that's Mr or Mrs Jones hobbling up to us.

Friday, January 21, 2011

Photo Finish Friday - Abandoned

This is what the Bag Lady used to use to feed cows. She now uses the Rancher's new tractor, so her trusty old loader sits abandoned and snow-covered. This is how much snow fell in the recent storm in the Bag Lady's region.



(Just visible in the bottom of the photo is the bucket for the new tractor. It has a fancy easy-on gadget that makes switching from the bale fork to the bucket a cinch. The Bag Lady is now also able to plow snow off her driveway! The bale fork on the loader in the picture weighed about a ton and was tightly bolted onto the bucket, making it impossible for the Bag Lady to plow snow.)

Monday, January 17, 2011

Heavy Snowfall Warning in Effect

Also seems to be having an effect on the ability of the satellite signal to penetrate the heavy cloud cover.
Can anyone see the picture, 'cause the Bag Lady can't, even though Blogger assures her it's there.
Sigh.

EDITED TO ADD:


The resolution isn't very good on this first picture, but the Bag Lady forgot to try to fix it.


As of approximately noon, the snow has finally stopped falling, and this is how much accumulated on the back of the Bag Lady's truck over the weekend.

This was plowed out yesterday!


Friday, January 14, 2011

Photo Finish Friday - Sunrise

One the only? good thing about winter is the glorious sunrises.....


(this was taken awhile back, but the Bag Lady didn't get around to posting it.)



Photo Finish Friday is the brainchild of Leah at the Goat's Lunch Pail.

Monday, January 10, 2011

Coping with Cold

It's cold in the Bag Lady's neighbourhood. Oh, not cold enough to make brass monkeys cross their legs, but cold. The kind of cold that makes you shiver before you go outside. The kind of cold that makes you put on an extra pair of socks. Long-john weather.

This Arctic system rolled down in the wake of a heavy snowfall, which is not at all uncommon. Most of our warm weather comes across the mountains to the west, pushing warm, moist air. What was rain on the coast turns to snow when it meets the cold air here. Eventually the cold air from the north wins and pushes the snow out of the way, freezing everything in it's path.

All of which brings the Bag Lady to the point. (of this post, not the point of despair, although sometimes that happens, too! Especially when it remains cold for weeks and weeks.....)
....err, the point of this post... the point of this post... quick, think of a point, stop wasting these people's time!

Coping skills. That's it! How do you cope with bad weather? The Bag Lady tends to hunker down in the warmth of her house sitting at her computer, playing solitaire for hours, moving very little and attempts to find engrossing tasks to keep her occupied. She will clean closets, re-organize kitchen cupboards, do some kind of craft, read many, many books, or bake and cook. Baking and cooking serves two purposes - the heat of the oven helps warm the house, and the results are usually comforting.

Yesterday, she did a variety of things. She read a terrific, engrossing book ("Alex Cross's Trial" by James Patterson & Richard Dilallo) and cooked. She made cookies to put in the Rancher's lunches, and dessert for supper (a mixed fruit crisp with an oatmeal topping) and she cooked a Prime Rib roast. She also made Yorkshire Pudding and was very pleased that they rose to previously unheard of heights! She remembered to take a picture (after she started eating, ahem) but the angle she used doesn't show the Yorkshire pudding to the best advantage (she was trying to hide the fact that she'd already eaten part of one)


She was so excited about the pudding turning out so well, she forgot to cook another vegetable! (Which was just as well, because she couldn't eat even half of the baked potato on her plate)
And she needs to explain that she cooked the Prime Rib roast, which is ordinarily something she reserves for company, because it is rapidly coming up on time to take another load of beef-on-the-hoof to the abattoir to become frozen beef-wrapped-in-brown-paper, and she needs to make room in her deep freeze.

Friday, January 7, 2011

I Can Haz Box? Photo Finish Friday

The Bag Lady's old cat spent a very long time sitting in this box. He may have been waiting for someone to remove the boots so he could lie down......


Photo Finish Friday is the brain child of Leah, at the Goat's Lunch Pail.

Monday, January 3, 2011

Health Philosophies, Bag Lady Style

The Bag Lady just read an online news article about a poll that reveals Canadians are deluded about how healthy we are. The article itself made the Bag Lady a little sad (she knows full well that she is overweight and not exactly healthy) but the comment section distressed her even more! So many of the commenters were busy making excuses, or comparing us to Europeans or Americans, or were complaining that the article was outdated/incorrect/something else; they seemingly ignored the whole point. We in the Western World (generalizing, of course) are unhealthy, and most of it can be blamed on over-consumption and inactivity.
The Bag Lady, naturally, has her own opinions on the reasons for the obesity epidemic, and has a myriad of solutions. Wanna hear them? Of course you do!

1. Stop making excuses.
2. Get off your ass.
3. Stop eating fast food, or those frozen things from the supermarket that contain not one ounce of real food, but are "only 275 calories!" Stop with the artificial stuff. Soda pop, artificial flavouring, sugar substitutes (reduce your sugar consumption, by all means, but if you have to sweeten something, use real stuff - not chemicals. You get enough of those in the "fresh" produce and other products you buy!) And reduce your sodium intake while you're at it.
4. Get off your ass.
5. Eat simple, nutritious food, prepared with your own loving hands in your own kitchen. (and NO, it's not more expensive than a burger at McD's - and doesn't take any longer than it does sitting in the drive-thru, choking on the exhaust fumes of the 4 gazillion other people who had the same idea at the same time!)
6. Include a variety of things - fresh veggies, lean meat, whole grains. It doesn't have to be fancy to taste good and be nutritious.
7. Get off your ass. And get your children off theirs, too.
8. Try growing a garden. Even if you live in an apartment, you can grow simple veggies in a pot in front of a sunny window, or on your balcony. There are even urban gardens where you can rent a plot. At the very least, check out the farmer's markets.
9. Yeah, the Bag Lady lives in the frozen north, too - that's not an excuse.
10. Get off your ass.

Now, the Bag Lady also feels that people need to slow down a little, get more connected to the earth and take the time to educate themselves on where their food is actually coming from. She feels great pity for people who live in highly congested cities (which are jungles of concrete with no greenery and all traces of nature erased - in her imagination, of course, since she has never actually been in a really, really large city like New York, or Chicago, or any of those huge American cities..... although she has been in London, England, which qualifies as a really, really large city, doesn't it? But there was greenery there, so she is mostly talking typing just to hear see it herself and is probably pissing off a whole bunch of people who live in those big cities....) and don't get to connect with nature. (if you take out all the digressing in the parentheses, that sentence actually does make sense.)

Move more. You don't have to join a gym, or buy fancy equipment. Seriously, get off your ass, climb up on a stool and clean those damned light fixtures (err, yeah, the Bag Lady is talking to herself, what of it?) or on your hands and knees and scrub the floor. Take a walk, jog around the living room, do some stretching. Get moving. The more you move, the more you'll be able to move and the more you will want to move. The first step is often the hardest - after that, it gets easier. Sorta.

(This post has been brought to you by the Bag Lady's conscience and her unverbalized resolution to be healthier this year. Regular irregular posting will resume..... eventually.)