The Marci Rating System

Me, looking at the forecast for today, which includes a high temp that's a boggling 24F degrees above average: so... no long underwear?

(I'm genuinely not sure I remember how to dress for warm-to-hot weather.)

(Thank goodness!) March is what I affectionately call "a challenging month." (This is probably because for many years I had to be very careful at work about 'sounding negative.') No matter how much I think 'this year will definitely be different! there's Literally NO REason for March to be harder than every other month!' SOMEHOW it always seems to be.

But now it's almost over! HOORAY! Soon it will be April, and I can start complaining about bugs and allergies and mud again. I already almost feel motivated to do something!

Based on my past entries, it's entirely possible that I first tried snowshoeing in 2018, and then never did it again. UNTIL NOW!

And it turns out that a frozen river covered with snow is an excellent place for snowshoes! No elevation, no terrain obstacles like rocks to figure out how to climb over, and nothing for the snowshoes to get caught under. (I definitely did almost trip over the snowshoes themselves SEVERAL times, but that's on me.)

Snowshoeing: achieved
River: walked
Winter: winning

Somewhere within the space of this room (or perhaps one closet in another room) are several pairs of long underwear. Probably.

Here's the thing. I started the week VERY CONFIDENT that these pairs of long underwear existed, and that I had a general sense of where to find them. Then I looked in all those places, and they weren't there.

I did find one lightweight pair that I definitely remembered leaving stashed with my other 'it's summer but it's New Hampshire and you never know' things, which was a nice victory. But then I also found a much warmer pair in a stack of things I would have sworn I'd already looked through, which was a nice yet baffling second victory.

There is a very small chance that I was frustrated enough at the end of last winter to get rid of all the rest of my long underwear except for what I've already found. There's also a (honestly, much larger) chance that I simply stashed the rest of it somewhere that seemed very logical at the time, and now is a complete mystery to me.

SILVER LINING: I could find all sorts of things I forgot about while I'm looking!

The skeletons are proliferating around the neighborhood, since as we all know, September is the start of the Halloween season. (I guess?!? True in this part of town, at least.)

This includes four brightly colored skeletons making their annual appearance on a nearby porch -- currently, they are all posed in a way that makes them appear to be watching the work that's currently being done on the outside of the house. I'm sure that's not weird AT ALL for the work crew! (I hope they are amused; it's a tricky spot of road to be parking work vehicles on, and who couldn't use something to smile about?)

The first leaves are starting to change color (though many will blame this on 'drought stress' for at least another month), and that means it's time! Time for SPOOKY SEASON to begin!

Me, looking out the window: well, that sure is... some weather

It's sort of a rain / snow / sleet mix, I think? Combined with wind, none of which sounded that bad when I was looking at the forecast. The reality is that every few minutes the wind swirls just right to pelt the roof and windows with clumps of icy snow, which is surprisingly unpleasant.

Good news, though, the power is still on! Posting this quick in case that changes!

It MUST be spring now; the neighbors have put out their scare-wolf!

Notes on the scare-wolf:

*it's a flat cardboard picture of a wolf that has lil' stakes on it so you can stand it up in your lawn

*technically we were told it's a coyote, but it does not look like a coyote, plus 'scare-wolf' is way more fun to say than 'scare-coyote'

*it's supposed to be scaring away geese

*I am not sure any geese have been fooled by this

*but to be fair, it did startle me (a lot!) the first time I looked out the window and saw it

Note to my future self: it IS possible to do three 5Ks in one month. The hardest part isn't the physical challenge, but the temporal one -- weekends are already so short!

(Added note: consider becoming rich, so as to not need to work a job to make money to live. This would free up a significant amount of time that could be spent doing more fun things!)

Anyway, today is 5K #3, and the warmest of the bunch! WHO KNEW?!?!?!??? Before we knew the forecast, I was planning to bring my bright orange puffer jacket, very appropriate for a pre-Halloween event! Now that it's not exactly jacket weather, I've swapped in a veeeeery light orange, veeeery light fleece shirt. Totally appropriate for a pre-Halloween-but-unexpectedly-still-kinda-summer-like event!

In the spirit of neighborhood Halloween, I've been particularly delighted by the inflatable witch-hat-wearing, jack-o-lantern carving dinosaur. (looks a lot like this one on ye olde amazone)

Because my first instinct is to ask 'what do dinosaurs have to do with Halloween?' and 'is that dinosaur a witch?' But the dinosaur looks SO CUTE and SO HAPPY to be wearing its little hat and holding its little pumpkin, and you know what, sure! Dinosaurs are Halloween now.

And THEN I went poking around the internet to find a link to share the delight with a visual aid, and apparently there are a LOT of Halloween dinosaurs! It's a whole thing! Along with -- wow, just so many other things I did not consider to be part of the Halloween pantheon. Now I really want to see one of these inflatable skeleton unicorn with bonus purple main and tail show up in town.