Rainy Day

It's raining. On a Saturday! After a whole week of beautiful sunshine interrupted occasionally by just-as-beautiful snow storms it manages to rain and be dreary on the weekend. It figures.

Not to worry though. I can make good use of a rainy day, by spending it at home being lazy.

I've mostly spent this rainy day looking through old magazines so that I can pare down the piles that reside in various baskets in the house. Mark, on the other hand, is flipping through channels between the basketball tournaments and funny movies. I have the fire on, and popcorn to munch, and a cat on my lap. You'd think that would be a relaxing and benign way to spend an afternoon. But even being lazy has its costs:

1. Of course I had to make blueberry muffins after finding a recipe in an old Better Homes and Gardens magazine - yum! (That probably wouldn't have happened except that I also have been doing spring cleaning and cleaned out the freezer the other day and found some frozen blueberries from last summer that really needed using...)
2. An old Sunset magazine had a wonderful pictorial on Lake Quinault Lodge in Olympic National Park so, yes, I did, in fact, call right away to make reservations for the 4th of July weekend. (It is one of the beautiful lodges of the National Park system and I didn't know it existed - and is right near our favorite but rather inaccessible Ruby Beach. What a great find!)
3. Naturally I dashed off to the internet (who wouldn't?) and ordered the DVD of a Little Rascals movie that Mark found on TV that was just wonderful - sent it to my mother who I hope will enjoy it too.
4. I found a great idea for making place cards for a dinner party - using big Hershey bars and rewrapping them in your own printed wraparound paper - in a Martha Stewart magazine - which I had to cut out and then figure out where I could store such a great idea and actually find it again, creating more of the 'debris' that this task (of going through old magazines) was supposed to be eliminating. Oh well. I just hope I remember this great idea next year when my son is getting married and there might actually BE an occasion for place cards...
5. Thanks to nearly ALL of the magazines, I added extensively to my wish list for plants in the back yard - reprising the old romantics like peony and bleeding heart and hollyhocks, and adding agapanthus and daylillies and on and on. (Mark groans...)
6. Back to the computer and internet after another article in Sunset, I ordered a bee house to attract Mason Bees to our garden.. because bees are declining.
7. I also learned (from Sunset magazine as well - that subscription really pays for itself) that cinnamon can lower blood sugar and bad cholesterol and can be significantly helpful in inflammatory disease like arthritis. Darn. I should have made snickerdoodles instead of blueberry muffins!

Oh well. Good thing we decided to stay home today. Better for the economy.