Five Favorites: Welcoming Spring

Berlin, decked out in springtime!

There's a freshness in the air around me and I've already felt a couple rays of sunshine soaking the vitamin D back into my skin....my friends, I do believe spring is right around the corner!

In light of all the complaining I did about this long, long winter, I think it's time to be a little more positive and at least enjoy that it's finally ending. Truthfully, it wasn't all cold and rainy and depressing: I loved skiing in the alps, celebrating valentine's day and my birthday, baking up a storm, and spending those long winter evenings having fun with friends.  Actually, when I write it out like that, counting my blessings like ducks in a row, I kind of hate myself for all the moaning and groaning. What are a few frozen toes when life is as lovely as this?!

So now, I'm going to be carpe diem-ing it up a little more.  Here are my favorite "firsts" for spring.

1. The first time you're outside and realize your jacket is way to warm and have to take it off.  Such a little thing, so much joy. This happened two days ago and I swear I was walking down the street wearing a sweater and the hugest of smiles!

2. The first time you wake up on a weekday and it's light outside.  Okay, nature get's a little help from daylight saving time with that one, but still, how good does it feel to get up when it's not pitch black?

3. The first time you voluntarily spend more time outside than necessary. I took the long way to the supermarket the other day, just to enjoy the sunshine a little longer. I haven't taken the long way since October! It's a whole 'nother twenty minutes!  Whoohoo!

4. The first ice cream cone.  Woah, I might be getting ahead of myself here. I haven't crossed this milestone yet but it won't be long now and I can't wait.  It's going to be chocolate all the way!

5. The first time you leave the house in ballerinas instead of boots.  Summer clothes! Skirts and dresses and bare legs!  I tried to explain to Karl how amazing it's going to be to just throw on a summer dress and flip flops and go. He didn't get it at all. Is it just a girl thing to get excited to bust out some summer outfits again?

Zelda in Sicily last summer

Here's Zelda last summer in Sicily, rocking the summer look. At least my sister will always get me, even if the prospect of shorts doesn't exhilarate the boy in my life quite as much as it does me. Sisters always understand!

 

Look up at the Sky!

Zanna

PS. Five favorite ways to procrastinate and ways to save!

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome...

Our Family Reunion in Sicily--Staring meditatively at the ocean and the sky

Welcome to my new years resolution, begun prematurely and with the very best of intentions. I want to be a journal-er more than a blogger, to be honest, but year after year and in many attempts I have failed miserably at this task. I used to write a diary when I was a teenager, and continue to get my act together and document trips (2014: Skiing in the Alps, Paris, Prague, Rotterdam, Sicily, South Africa and Edinburgh! More on those adventures later...) but the act of putting pen to paper to capture every day life somehow eludes me. And frustrates me. Immensely. I love looking back, paging through old journals from a time I still consistently wrote in them. A different and yet deeply familiar voice sings back, of fights with parents and little sister, childhood dramas and adolescent dreams, what we had for dinner and where we went sledding, shopping, gallery-hopping on any particular day. I want my old self to look back on this youth, these precious student-y, med-school-cramming days and to know which tests I hated, which recipes I loved. Can't rely on this dusty camera in my head!

So, this is my attempt to be accountable. You are my workout buddy and my AA sponsor. I will be true, will write to you, when I'm bouncy, when I'm blue. No, no more Dr. Seuss rhymes.  Promise.

Apart from my last ditch effort to keep some words nailed down from windy time, I'm also just plain curious about blogging. Whats up with blogs, anyway? Are they just the narcissistic monuments of the selfie generation? Do we need the positive reinforcement that we're living life correctly? Or is there something really to it? Before starting this, my first blog, I looked around the blogosphere (word usuage?) and everyone who shared a  "why i blog" post seems totally enraptured by both the experience itself and the sense of community provided by this new literary art form. I was particularly intrigued--and pushed over the edge, thus my early start-- by this little list I stumbled across. Number 3 and number 12, here I come!

 So, again: I'm curious. Lets see...