Whomping Your Winter Woes

Beyond avoiding ditch-bound cars on icy byways as well as the occasional influenza outbreak, most everyone owns a mental list of winter “comfort” activities —those little things we do to push back the ever-present specter of Cabin Fever. This week, MountainTops shares a few tricks for staving off wintry, Jack Nicholson-esque “Here’s Johnny!” insanity.

Melanie Davis: My crafting corner

My favorite winter activity is one I learned from my grandmother. Quilting is a relaxing way to stay warm. I use a hoop ring, rather than the large frame. When I am quilting, I have the fabric and batting all laid across my lap, stitching while I am watching a movie or watching it snow. All the warmth of a quilt even before it is done.

In general, I enjoy crafting in the winter. Quilting is a favorite, but I enjoy creating holiday decorations or gifts as well. There is an office space in my house, but you won’t find a computer in it. Instead there are Tupperware containers of beads, bags of fabric, coffee cans of odds and ends, a sewing machine and a hot glue gun.

My craft corner reminds me of my father’s garage. He would pick up anything – broken lawn mowers, scrap timber, leftover shingles, anything “that might come in handy.” I will grant him that the old gas meters did make for some very interesting living room lamps, and one mower would eventually fix the other. Whatever he picked up gave him something to tinker with later. The car never stopped running for longer than a couple of hours because a part could be found or made from something in the garage.

I like to think my craft corner as a scaled down model of that. It occasionally is rummaged to fix something practical, but when it comes to a car – I need the manufacturer’s parts.

Just as quilting carries on a family tradition, I need my tinkering corner. Where I go just to put something together or to take something apart for the pieces.

Jeff Eason’s Triple Crown: Movies, Books and Food

I like cooking just about any time of year, but heating up the kitchen when it’s cold outside has a certain rightness to it. In a way, culinarians like myself have to be creative at this time of year because of the lack of fresh locally grown produce. Root vegetables like potatoes and onions take on an added importance in a winter kitchen, and it’s good to remember produce such as apples that have a long shelf life.

You don’t have to be fancy to be a good winter cook, and comfort foods like chili, nachos and roasted chicken can put a smile on guests’ faces quicker than an unpronounceable dish that you recently read about in Postmodern Gourmet magazine.

This time of year is also good for revisiting my favorite holiday movies. Along with perennial favorites such as It’s A Wonderful Life and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, I’m also partial to Tim Burton’s Nightmare Before Christmas. This year marks the 25th anniversary of the release of A Christmas Story, the fantastic film detailing the exploits of Ralphie, the kid who wanted a Red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. If you love that movie, you should check out some of the other works by its author Jean Shepard. I just finished a book of his memoirs called A Fistful of Fig Newtons and plan to reread his other classics including In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash and Wanda Hickey’s Night of Golden Memories: And Other Disasters. Shepard is one of my all time favorite writers and nothing is better on a cold winter day than curling up with a book I know that I’ll like.

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Jason Reagan: Downtown dollars dull the doldrums

When your household includes two children, one beagle and three cats, having a winter sanity plan is as essential as Britney Spears having a regularly scheduled media meltdown.

Around the Reagan household, our all-around tactics include simple getting out from under the same roof for an afternoon.

This sounds really corny and smacks of “newbie-ness,” but we still enjoy just walking around downtown Boone, despite the howling winds (I swear Tuesdae Rice is not holding a pistol to my head as I write this —honestly).
My daughter, Shelby, enjoys building stringed creations at the Bead Box and begging her father to buy “just one more.”

Stacy, my wife, enjoys looking for the yesteryear tools of her profession —a math instructor — at the huge antique mall and smaller shops. She’s still seeking an old slide rule, by the way, but she has an abacus.

My teenage son, Justin, is content to browse Indo, Green Eggs and Jam or the local rock shops as long as there’s the possibility of a Capone’s pie in his future (and so long as he doesn’t severe his iPod connection).

Me? I’m happy to just enjoy the characters I meet up and down Howard and King streets. Whether it’s Josh Watauga hawking poetry and stones or another street musician shivering in front of Boone Drug, I can spend three or four contented hours downtown without spending a dime (OW! OK, Tuesdae, ease back on the Glock. Don’t pop a cap!).

I meant to say: My favorite winter downtown pastime is simply enjoying a hot beverage or three at a coffee house, whether it’s over a cup of green tea and chess board at beansTalk or a mug of Jamaican at Espresso News while browsing the esoteric magazine collection.

In short, we fight off the winter blahs the American way —by spending our way to serenity (OK, Tuesdae, put it on safety and back away slowly).

What’s your favorite vaccination against winter insanity? Send your MountainTops to reagan@mountaintimes.com.