I was very upset

and I wrote a lot of not nice things here. That was how I felt when I wrote it. But.....I'm a little better.

I love my neighborhood, fort Greene, Brooklyn. I have a back yard which is now full of snow. This weather reminds me of my childhood spent in Michigan, during the winter. You'd go out at 6 AM and the wind would cut your skin, it was so cold. It pierced your neck and your legs froze.
But the worst was your toes, my toes, which would always get wet somehow, and turn to ice practically. We had to move our toes constantly to keep from getting frost bite. In Evanston, where I lived, we'd walk to school in two feet of snow, dragging our feet in and out. THe lake was half frozen, with mostly chunks of ice, which my friends and I would walk on. My friend was the one who wanted to do it. How we didn't get hypothermia I don't know. I don't know how the fish survived. THe cold was so extreme it went right through us. THis probably has something to do with why I avoid the cold as much as possible now.


Also, apple season. My mother would take us to get Michigan apples which were so sour your mouth would start watering when you ate them. Everything in the northern US is sour, where in the south it's sweeter. But these apples are the best for pies. I learned how to make apple pie from Mother. She makes the crust homemade, and she was taught by her grandmother. Her own mother, Donna, hated cooking. My grandmother was in her day very beautiful, and smart as well. Her father, Grandpa Beardsley, was himself very well educated.....and he left when she was about a year old, and her mother remarried. My grandma, Donna, didn't get her period til she was seventeen, and it was the depression, she was super skinny. She was probably malnourished. This was Michigan, so they were used to being cold and hungry. My mother's side of the family is extremely cheap and frugal. A dollar to my mother is extravagant (to buy seltzer water) and yet they are always buying clothes they end up not wearing or wearing once, plus fancy gadgets. To me, a $200 cell phone is extravagant, but whatever. But generally money is spent very carefully, and seldom given.

I've been listening to a lot of classical music and reading the lyrics in German and Latin. This is how I'm learning languages. Usually you have to spend time translating, which gets tedious. BUt eventually it sinks in and then you sing it and hear it and then it makes sense. I was listening to Mozart's Requiem which gets very depressing and creepy but I love this music anyway. That and An die Freude (Ode to Joy) which are all sort of pop songs, not that different. But I need to listen to something livelier. So, now I'm listening to Nozze di Figaro. And then Peaches. Then Hall and Oates. THen the Clash.