From where I sit

Gorgeous hoar frost this morning. It's been warming up and is supposed to be above freezing during the day for the next week or so. Can't say that I mind all that much. :)

Closer to the window. I loved looking out this window early last week when the snow was fresh and unspoiled. There's that poem about life being like a field of newly (driven?) snow- be careful how you tread it for every step will show. There's a lot to be said for learning from our mistakes (and how sad if we don't)... but what about learning from others' mistakes? And what about asking and seeking and knocking until we find, receive and are opened to? And sometimes we have a fresh snowfall that covers it all up and lets us 'start again'. Life truly is special.

This must have fallen from a floor above us. Someone must have a clothes line off their balcony/out their window. I don't know- I think I'd go claim it if it were mine! It's been there for days and looks more lonely and forlorn with each passing day! ;)

• The remodeling is progressing. Mr Renovator Man has taken to opening the window (again) and smoking 'out' it...only, as he sheepishly said today 'It doesn't always work out'... No, it doesn't. We're not nagging him about it- he knows we don't like it but does it anyway...so what to do? I can't figure out why anyone would want a newly redone room to have the lingering odor of cigarette smoke in it from the very start...
• We've been battling ants (little tiny ones. Tiny and hardy.) for nearly a year now. Ugh. K first noticed them last spring- she thought she'd brought them home in a box of cereal; I've come to the conclusion that they have a whole metropolis with suburbs and outlying areas in the walls of our building. We found a smallish anthill (not kidding) on our top cupboard shelf underneath the stash of disposable dinnerware- that was enough to give us the heebie-jeebies, I'm telling you. After that, we've waged a serious war- homemade ant poison and vigilantly checking the kitchen. Often. We lost 2 house plants to them- they must have moved into the pots and eaten the roots??? We found one ant highway that led to a crack under the windowsill and provided them with plenty of doctored food in that vicinity. Sigh. Did you see that thing that was going around the web earlier? About pouring molten aluminum on an anthill and seeing cool things? (Google 'anthill art')- that just always made me feel slightly sick, actually. I mean- ants outside in their anthill doing ant things. Why do you have to kill them for the sake of seeing something cool? But these ants? The ones in our kitchen. Grrr. If I could have reached their main colony, I'd have gladly taken it down. We are slowly winning the war. Months after putting out the first poison. (Wouldn't you like to come visit us? :) )