Friday, Feb. 11

Br-r-r...cold when I got up this morning. Frigid outside, and even the house felt chilly. Of course, the fact that I was wearing shorts and a t-shirt for a treadmill session later didn't help. So I wrapped in an afghan until after breakfast. A brisk exercise session quickly warmed me up.

The temp outside rose today, too, helping to melt the snow and thaw the road. But we decided to give it one more day before venturing forth. We'll need to shop for groceries soon, since we're running out of staples.

Once I was ready for the day, I didn't do a lot before lunch beyond playing on my office computer. For lunch, we finished the potato soup at Mother's house. She'd made scones to go with it. These were made from a very old recipe that she used years ago when I was a child, during our hand-to-mouth days. It's a basic recipe that calls for very few ingredients. They were good, slathered with low-fat margarine and Mother's homemade strawberry preserves.

After lunch, I came back home and gathered ingredients for stir fry. Mother insisted she wanted to make supper, so Hubbie took the ingredients to her. I spent the rest of the afternoon doing a few household chores, playing on my laptop, and watching TV with Hubbie.

We can tell things are starting to get back to normal, because both the mail and the newspaper were delivered today. By afternoon, traffic was zipping by on the highway out front. We're glad to see the clearing road, because we're getting a serious case of cabin fever.

Around 4 p.m., I went over to Mother's to see if I could help get supper ready. Good that I did, because shortly after she started the stir fry, she got woozy and had to sit down. So I finished cooking the meal.

After supper, I stayed at her house for an hour or so to make sure she was okay. By 6 p.m., she seemed fine and was walking around without a problem.

So I came back home to join Hubbie in watching the 2004, R-rated movie, "The Door in the Floor," starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. A children's book writer and illustrator (Bridges) invites a 16-year-old young man, who aspires to be a writer, to be his assistant for the summer. The deaths of two teenage sons has placed a strain on the the writer's marriage, and the teenage assistant (Jon Foster) soon gets caught up in the family dynamics, to the point of being seduced by the beautiful wife (Bassinger). A four-year-old daughter, played by Elle Fanning (sister of Dakota) adds another dimension to the story. The movie is adapted from a John Irving novel.