Thursday, April 12th - what a difference in a day

Yesterday was sunny and very mild - a beautiful spring day. Today we will reach a high of 5' and we may receive up to 3 cms of snow before morning. The weather says it's 2' right now at 5:30 but it feels milder than that. Of course there is sometimes quite a difference in temperatures between here and town.

It's tricky this time of year to keep the temperature inside moderated. Some days you need and fire going, and some days you don't.  I didn't light it yesterday morning as it was going to be mild and sunny and it was fine last night when I got home. I didn't light it last night either, although I did have the fireplace in the living room on for a bit. I fully expected it to be quite chilly inside this morning and I was surprised to find it's once again quite comfortable. But with it only going up to 5' today I've lit it this morning to get ahead of the cold. When Patti and the kids were here, the weather was also up and down and we had to re-light the stove each day. At one point,  as I was crumpling up paper to put in to get it started, Meghan asked, "Do you have to do that every day?" It must have looked like a lot of bother to her to have to do that every time you wanted some heat. I assured her that in the dead of winter, when it's cold all the time, you just kept feeding it wood and it kept going. I suppose it must seem pretty primitive to the kids, who only know that flicking a switch makes the house warm. They helped bring in some wood when they were here so now they have a bit of a connection to how it stays warm inside. I'm sure in their minds, they think they are visiting pioneer days when they come to Grandma's house. And I don't think that's a bad thing.

It's pretty quiet around here this week as Brenda is gone to Boston with Bernie. It's kind of sad to know that there will be no more tulips. Last week we received 4 bunches and they've lasted the longest of any I've received so far. They are still quite beautiful after almost a week.  I'd forgotten that she was going with Bernie this week and tried her house phone and cell yesterday  and when I didn't get an answer on either one, I figured it out.

So last night when I got home I searched the fridge for something to eat. I had taken a ball of pizza dough out of the freezer in the morning and I had some mozzarella cheese, but that was about it. What to do? So I rolled out the dough, spread salsa on top, chopped one lonely jalapeno pepper that was sitting in the crisper drawer, a slice of red onion and grated some cheese, piled it all on top and called it done. After baking for a few minutes, it came out looking not too bad. In fact it was quite tasty. I cooked a minute longer than it needed so the crust was a little crisp but it was tasty and easy to eat as I read my book at the table.

I'm giving some serious thought to taking myself out for a burger tonight but then that wouldn't be fair to my tasting partners, so I guess I'll just have to be patient and wait. There are a couple I'd like to try before the end of the month. One in particular that we should have tried when Lloyd was here - sorry but I just read about it yesterday. The burger at the Delta has a real piece of lobster on top so I would like to try that one and the one at Red Shores also intrigues me. Obviously more research is necessary.