My new project is to make mini cupcakes. I bought the pan, I have foil liners and I have a recipe for cupcakes from the Cupcake Cafe. If you haven’t been and you are in NY you should go and treat yourself to one or two. The cupcakes are beautiful with butter cream icing flowers. Almost to beautiful to eat. Almost… This weekend I hope to make my first mini cupcake attempt. Who knows, I may even try some butter cream icing.

A lot of my free time is being spent playing soccer these days. I haven’t played soccer in about 15 years and now I have school on Tuesday, I will be an alternate for a game tomorrow and a pick up game in the park on Saturday. I am glad for all the exercise. I am not great about making myself go to the gym and run on the tread mill so this has been perfect. I get to run around and spend time with friends for a few hours a week. I like Tuesday’s most because I get to work on my skills and then go have dinner with friends after.

Silly us. We set our Aero Garden to go off at 6:00 am not thinking about the fact that we live in an apartment in Brooklyn and the light would blast all the way from the kitchen to the bedroom! Since we don’t have doors to stop the light we are going to have to get a little creative about where we put this thing and the timing schedule. For those of you who live in a studio apartment, you may be out of luck.

Knowing that I do not have luck growing plants, my mom and Bill got M & me an AeroGarden for Christmas. It was back ordered and just arrived so we put it together today. It is a cute unit that will give us fresh herbs for 4-6 months. The funny thing is, I had been thinking about getting M an herb garden for Christmas, although I was just going to give him the pots soil and seeds. The problem there is no one sells seeds in NY in December. Duh. The whole system is really amazing. There is no soil and water streams through the seeds constantly so if you look inside you can see the water dripping down. I have been peeking in because it is just so neat. In 3 days we should have our first sprout. Stay tuned.

Last night was yoga night. At the end of yoga there is a time of relaxation in a pose called corpse pose. Now, pretty much all you have to do is lay there and relax. The teacher was walking us through the pose which involves laying with your back straight on the ground and letting your mind go. My lower back wouldn’t get on the ground without a lot of effort, which makes it terribly difficult to relax. I decided that I would let her know after class and see what she said. Well apparently for the last 30 some years I have been curving my lower back in a way that now feels right, but is really all wrong. And all this time I was thinking it was all the padding I have in the rear that was the problem Oy. It is fixable and yoga will help.

So last night was soccer school night and for some reason I was just on fire! No not literally. I mean I was scoring goals like crazy. I don’t even know how many, that is how many there were. So much so that the other team would get panicky when I got the ball. Sure it didn’t really count for anything and sure there is a very large chance I would never be able to replicate that type of playing in a real game, but let me have my moment of glory.

Today on Aimee’s Happiness Blog she talked about cartoons by Natalie Dee. I especially like this one entitled “Orange Cares About Your Health”, not only does it fit in well with my post about oranges and tangerines, but it also brings to our awareness a very serious medical condition. I would not recommend browsing this site while drinking or while in a place where you are going to feel self conscious about laughing out loud. Hey maybe you want your coworkers to think there is something a little off about you… that is your business.

M & I are in Florida right now visiting family. It is a good time to not be in NY since it is about 20 degrees. It is amazing to me that no one here has to by citrus fruits. If they want an orange, they walk outside, and pick them off a tree. It is amazing. There is a lovely bowl sitting on the breakfast table of the nicest color tangerines and oranges you could want, a lot of them with lovely green leaves still on them. We head back to NY tomorrow. I am already sad I won’t get to wear my open sandles until spring.

I sometimes forget that I live in New York. I don’t mean that I forget where my apartment is or anything like that, I mean I get up after snoozing the alarm one time too many, I trek to the subway, I get to work, I trek back to the subway and I go home. This doesn’t sound very fun does it? When I was in high school in the middle of nowhere NJ I dreamed of one day living in New York. It was so glamorous and cool and fun to visit. NY is still all that, I just don’t take advantage of it. I need to remember to stop and smell the roses or as the case may be, look at the skyscrapers or drink a martini at the uber cool place to be of the moment, or go to one of the many museums or well you get the idea.