So, how's your day so far?

6am - wake up, check to see if school is closed. Everything in our county is closed, but Liza's charter school in the next county doesn't have a close notice yet. Get dressed and clear driveway while Jason gets ready for work. Curse Avon's snowplow drivers, who now have decided to plow 6' from the curb instead of 4' like last time.

6:20 - check school closings. Nope.

6:45 - leisurely breakfast, because normally I'm not even out of bed yet. Check school closings. Nope.

7:00 - look at school closing listings, email, facebook - nope. Damn. Tell te kid to get dressed and brush her teeth.

7:30 - leave house to drive my kid the 15 miles to school. Usually this takes 20-30 minutes, depending on traffic lights

8:00 - pass exit that's five miles from my house. Realize that I probably made a bad decision and should have kept Liza home today.

8:05 - wipers freeze over, so I spend the rest of the drive peering through the 3" gap at the bottom of my windshield. See, that part of the driver ed simulator film came in handy after all!

(Not that you can tell, but the sign said it would take an hour to drive 10 miles to I-71)

8:15 - off the highway, but finding only major thoroughfares have been plowed or salted at all. Can't take first two turnoffs to the school because they are blocked by cars that got stuck.

8:25 - "it's ok, mom, I'm pretty sure they won't give out tardy slips today." Yeah, because THAT'S my main concern as I slide around a corner at a 30-degree slant. Grumble to myself about schools that cancel for cold when the roads are perfectly clear, then don't cancel on days when nobody has plowed the 6" of snow from the surrounding streets. 

8:35 - finally drop the kid off at school. Wipers are a little better, so I don't stop to whack the ice from them. In retrospect, this was a mistake.

8:50 - finally make it back to the highway, which is....almost completely unplowed in this direction. Seriously? Or maybe it just looks that way to me - hard to tell through the 3" stripe of clear windshield at my disposal.

9:10 - driving through slop in what I can only hope is the road and not the median, I see a car pulled off to the left side of the road. The guy in front of me - who is driving 15 mph in the only lane that is even remotely cleared - STOPS IN THE TRAFFIC LANE NEXT TO THE CAR AND GETS OUT TO SEE IF THE PERSON IS OK. Doesn't pull over to the side of the road, just stops in the middle of fucking I-90 in a blizzard and gets out of his car, to see if someone is ok in a car that hadn't hit anything and is still running. I contemplate just running him over, because really, what jury would convict me? I manage to stop 6" from the asshole's bumper and pray the guy behind me has ABS, too.

9:15 - Jason texts to see if I made it home yet. I laugh quietly, and try not to notice when it turns to wailing. I may never be able to sit up straight again. Wait, I can sort of see through the top 3" of the windshield now! Happy day! I carefully unfold myself from the contortions  I had to perform to see out the bottom.

9:20 - I abandon the highway in search of a place to pull over and de-ice my wipers. Hard to search when you can't see jack. I point the car in the general direction of where the Burger King driveway should be, and pray.

9:21 - 14 pounds of ice removed from wipers, I get back on the road. It is mostly plowed-ish. Compared to the highway, I am ready to drive forever on this stuff. Whee!!

9:30 - oh, look, Avon's stunningly efficient plows have cleared to 6' from the curb here, too, which leaves an open lane that isn't wide enough for two cars to pass ... On a semi-major road. I get why that might happen in the bowels of our unfinished development, but Case Road? Fuckwits.

9:33 - apparently the snow emergency ban on street parking doesn't apply to contractors. My (mostly unplowed) street now has trucks parked down both sides, because THAT will really help the plow drivers. Idiots.

9:35 - I pull into my driveway, which has 6" more snow than it did when I left. Realize we really need a snow fence...or at least some grass.

2:00pm - I get to make the trip again to pick her up. Yay.

Snow Day

Today I find myself taking the adult equivalent of a snow day - the roads were so bad that my boss texted me and told me not to bother trying to come in to work.  Since it had already taken me 10 minutes to travel one mile, I thought that sounded like a fine idea.  Another 15 minutes and I was safely home again, snow boots cast aside and scarves back in the closet, watching the snow fall.  Well, it's not so much falling as it is shooting, given the strong sideways wind we've got right now.  It's coming in at about a 30-degree angle to the ground, which will lead to some interesting drifts by tonight, I'm sure.

At any rate, I have a day unexpectedly free.  Sure, I'll have to go out two or three times to keep the driveway clear (a Sisyphean task if ever I saw one), and make sure the kid and I get fed lunch, but otherwise, I've got about five hours of unexpected free time.  You would think this would be a good thing, but really, I'm sort of dreading it.

It's not that I'm sick of being home with Liza - we were travelling so much over break that we haven't had much time to just sit around and do craft projects and annoy each other.  So I want to take some time to do stuff with her, obviously, now that I've got the time.

Which isn't to say that I'm above parking her in front of a screen somewhere so I can get some time alone ... these blog posts don't write themselves, you know, and they don't happen at all if I'm on "Mom I need a snack Mom I need help with this Mom I can't get my finger unstuck" duty all day.  So she can spend some time online playing the math games she's supposed to work on for school, and I'm sure there's a Mythbusters in our future at some point.  There are worse ways to spend a snow day than that.

But back to the dread.  You see, I spend a lot of my life with a tentative mental schedule in place.  Things like, I have to work on Thursday, so I'll have to wait until Friday to do the cleaning, and the Christmas decorations can come down over the weekend when Jason is home to help out.  Generally, things go according to plan, or close enough that it doesn't cause a problem.  But sometimes - like today - the schedule gets altered at the last minute or due to things out of my control, and that throws me off.

In my mind, I have lots of options for what to do today, and no matter which one I pick, I'll feel guilty or deprived or angry, or some other negative emotion.  For example, today I could:

1. Do something useful around the house, like put away the Christmas decorations or clean.  Doing any of these things will make me feel resentful that I'm spending my free time doing "work" instead of something I enjoy, guilty that I'm not spending my free time with Liza doing something fun, and grumpy that I have to do it on my own even though I'm not the only one who lives in this house, thankyouverymuch.
2. Do something just for me, like knit and watch something on Netflix.  This will make me feel guilty for not using my extra hours to do something useful, and ashamed that I'm not getting some exercise or something.
3. Do something just for Liza, like do craft projects and watch her choice of television all day.  This will make me feel resentful that I'm spending MY free hours doing something for HER, and guilty that I'm sitting around painting butterfly magnets when there's so much that needs to be done around the house.
4. Work on my writing.  This will make me feel bad I'm not working on housework, guilty that I'm ignoring the kid, ashamed that I'm not getting some exercise, and annoyed that I feel bad about myself when I'm doing something I'm supposed to enjoy.

I'll end up doing some combination of the above, trying to balance the guilt and annoyance equally among all of the categories.  It's frustrating to know that no matter what I do today, it won't ever be right, it won't ever be enough.  There will always be more cleaning, more craft projects, more writing and knitting that could have been done. The only answer, obviously, is to say screw it, drink some cocoa and go take a nap to rest up for my next session with Grunhilde the Snowblower.

From the couch, wrapped in an afghan

I've started reading Simple Abundance (again!), and I was struck by today's entry - it listed the six graces of Gratitude, Simplicity, Order, Harmony, Beauty, and Joy. As often as I've read the book, I get something new out of it each time. I think this is the first time I've actually started the book on January 1st - usually I pick it up mid-year and rush through the early parts to get to the entries for whichever calendar month I'm in - and I'm trying to make a practice of actually sitting down and thinking about the entry each day.

Got up early this morning to get the kid to school. We go back a day ahead of the local school district, so it seems like we are the only people on the planet up and moving this morning. Solstice has come and gone, and the days are gradually starting earlier again. Here in the frozen north, that's a good thing - another month or so and we won't have to stand in the dark while waiting for the bus.

No bus today, though - stayed in bed for a few last-minute snuggles before I sent her on her way. So nice to not start the day in a rush - I didn't even have to nag at her to get her out the door on time! It's like some sort of miracle for the new year.

The sun was just rising above the trees and houses in our neighborhood when I got Liza headed for the car - syrupy light just touching the fronts and tops of the snow drifts in our front yard. Our mornings can be a trial, but the chance to see the sun rise, or a rainbow form in the morning mist, or dew or frost on the lawn - it almost makes it worth it. Almost.

Even now, an hour later, the light is picking and choosing what it wants to illuminate. It's much more particular about its job than the all-encompassing light of July. I think I'll take a lesson from that today - I'll just dwell on the things I want to highlight, instead of trying to control everything all at once. Sometimes a little selective attention makes all the difference ...

Like icing on the neighborhood

Friday we had enough snow to make everything look pretty, which conveniently melted off by 10 am. My kind of snow!

Hah! Screw you, Phil!

Okay, so the groundhog may be under the impression that we're in for six more weeks of winter, but some of the crocus in my front yard have different ideas.

As do the ever-dependable sedum.

And even the Japanese maple tree is giving Phil the finger.

Also - apparently I need to moisturize more. In hi-res, that photo of my hand is downright disturbing.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go dig out some shorts and a tank top. It is 35F, after all.

I hate the hole in the Lake Erie ice pack

Last night after dinner, on the local NPR station: "Tonight's weather forecast calls for a possible one inch of snow accumulation tonight, followed by another inch tomorrow, tapering off in the afternoon."

Two inches, my ass.

By 10 am I had to clear 6-8 inches off the driveway, and it kept snowing heavily all day, at least in our neighborhood. Jason works downtown, which usually sees heavier snowfall than here, and he said it didn't do a thing there all day. Everything we got was that insanely light stuff that just flies back in your face when you try to shovel it (yay!), but at least it was decorative:

I can't decide if it looks more like some form of virulent mold, or a feather boa.

Check out the weather report summaries for the past couple of days and notice how nobody seems to know what the heck is going to happen. My personal favorite quote was from the forecast at noon today, when they said,"The total snowfall from this storm from overnight to this evening will probably reach 10 to 18 inches." Yeah, that's like NINE TIMES as much as you were saying yesterday. Slight difference there, folks.

This, combined with the 40.5 inches of snow we got in January - yes, that's only 2" shorter than my daughter, and 2.5" short of an all-time record - and the lack of thawing means that the ends of my driveway look like this:

And according to that damn groundhog, we've got another six weeks to go. Really, really wishing that Jason's conference in Orlando next week hadn't been turned into a videoconference, because we were this close to being in Florida this month. Florida. Where, you know, you're able to wear something other than snowboots every single day for months at a time.

Slogan you'll probably never see in a brochure

Kia Rondo - the perfect winter car for people who like to pray frequently while driving!

I think there may be a special edition with a rosary and St. Christopher's medal embedded right in the steering wheel, designed for days like today when steering and stopping were more suggestions than commands, if you know what I mean. It wasn't just me sliding around out there, but it does seem like this car is more touchy than our previous cars.

Oh, well - I needed a little excitement in my life anyway.

Dear Township: plow our street already

It's been snowing pretty steadily since yesterday, and the almost complete lack of wind meant that everything came straight down and stayed where it fell. It's a much easier-dealt-with snowfall than the nasty swirly drifting ones, as at least you know pretty much what depth you're going to be shoveling or blowing for the whole driveway. Plus, it looks cool.

Behold, the marshmallow effect:

Don't believe me about the lack of wind? Here's Liza's disc swing, which moves if you breathe heavily nearby:
I've been up since around 8am, and while the streets were obviously plowed sometime overnight, nobody's done squat with them as the snow piled up all day today. There are up to 8" of snow in parts of our street, even in the areas that were "plowed" last night. The mailman apparently drives some sort of all-terrain assault vehicle, because he managed to bust through about 18" of snow along the sides of the road so that we could all get our useless catalogs today.

When I was out dealing with the snowfall for the second time today, I decided to make life a little easier for the mailman by clearing away the worst of the snow on the street near our box. Can't you tell? (also, here's a bonus view of the tunnel-like path to our side of the box):

Sometime around lunch the temperature went up a degree or two, just enough that some of the stuff on the exposed areas started to thaw a bit, which is how we ended up with The Icicles Of Doom hanging over our back door:

I'm just itching to reach out and break one off, but I know if I open the back door a foot of snow is going to collapse on the hardwood floor, and that's just not an acceptable tradeoff.

Festive bits

I braved the cold on Friday to install our brand spankin' new LED Christmas lights around the gutters on the front of the house. I think they look quite festive, don't you?
" One inch of snow accumulation," my ass. The new lights are little white globes (see the one poking up below?), and I guess they're right about how much cooler they are than regular lights, which would have melted holes in the 2.5" of snow on the roof.

Today we dug out the interior holiday decorations and spent many grueling hours making our home suitably festive. Of course, it went faster because we had help from a fairy ...

I wish I could have caught the "I have Christmas stockings on my legs" frolicking before she decided she was done. It was classic.

***

Completely unrelated ... but ... I really admire how bad the Dolce and Gabbana magazine advertisements are. This month's GQ (which I read for the articles ... ahem) has an ad for their "cruise" line this season which features a huge group of people in pink and black. The concept of the ad is odd enough, but the guy who is third from the left has the largest eyebrows I have seen since my religion professor in college, and his required their own zip code. I mean seriously, this guy did NOT get any dates in high school - check him out: http://www.trendhunter.com/photos/28772/2

This is also the company that regularly (like, every month for the last year) buys space for an ad that features a reclining David Gandy in a white swimsuit where the only thing your eye is drawn to is his enormous crotch. See: http://www.flickr.com/photos/archivowilhelmina/2057879550/

I'd post it here, but Jason would kill me - he hates the ad, and occasionally I taunt him by taking a photo of it and sending it to him at work. I'm charming like that.

And no, I didn't know the name of the model before I just spent 15 minutes trying to find the stupid photo online. Just be glad I didn't link you to one of the 8 billion David Gandy gay fan sites I found once I was on the right track.

Feature my car needs

So the other day it started to snow as I was driving home from The Good Yarn Store, and the closer I got to home the worse the roads got. It was snowing a pretty fair blizzard, but the roads were mostly just slushy because they had warmed up earlier in the day. At any rate, they were worse than I thought.

I was approaching a traffic light and braked when it turned yellow, in plenty of time to stop with only light brake pressure ... only I didn't. Aside from that ominous ABS chattering, I got bupkis for stopping power. Pretty soon I was standing on the brakes and muttering wordless prayers that the people in the cross traffic lanes would notice that - hey! She's not actually slowing down! - and maybe keep from ramming into my daughter's car seat.

Luckily, I was "stopping" while sliding straight ahead, not at some weird angle, and the people in the cross traffic were polite enough to not even honk at me as I slid by. Maybe the look of panic on my face was enough to stay their honker hands. In any case, major bullets were dodged, and the rest of the trip home was uneventful.

For the past two days, though, I've been reliving the moment and trying to figure out what I would have done if the other traffic hadn't noticed my predicament. I've decided that I probably should have started honking like a maniac to let them know there was a problem, although that probably would have backfired and made them think that the people behind them were getting antsy so they should pull out right into the side of my car.

I think we all need a new feature on our cars. I'm calling mine the "OhHolyHellTheCarWon'tStopPleaseDearGodDon'tLetThemPullIntoMyLaneBecauseWe'dAllEndUpDeadAndItWouldBeMyFaultKindOfAndThatWouldReallySuckSoPleasePleasePleaseStayWhereYouAreAndPreventMyCertainDeathFromAStupidWeatherConditionFuckFuckFuck" button. Pushing it would turn on a revolving light on all sides of the car and a recording of a primeval scream. I think the button should be near the "emergency flashers" button on the dashboard, and the icon should show somebody screaming and waving his arms over his head. I'd like mine to be acid green.

Dear Mother Nature,

I respect that autumn is a season of transition. I understand that it is a woman's perogative to change her mind.

But could you just make an f-ing decision and stick with it already?

It was sunny and 45F when I dropped Liza off at preschool at noon. My neighbor was raking leaves (again) with no hat, no gloves, and her coat unzipped. The cats were basking in the front window.

Now?I'm going to have to dig out Liza's snowsuit and gloves before I pick her up in 10 minutes.

Note to self: Park in the garage in the winter, even when it's sunny and you're only going to be home for two hours anyway. Where is that ice scraper, anyway?

Weather update

So after a few too many days of the weather looking like this...

(Yes, that's snow. It always snows before Halloween, at least in Cleveland.)

... the weather broke today and it was in the upper 40s, which meant that our neighbors were raking leaves in their sweatshirts and the kids were running around in shirtsleeves. We're all wackos around here.

Especially me, since my response to the "warm" sunny weather was to ... clean the basement. Yeah, that makes sense.

Well, actually it kinda does, because I was planning to clear as much space as I could so that Liza could have a small indoor playground once the weather turns nasty for good. We've got the little plastic slide, and I think I should be able to locate the rafters in the ceiling of the basement so I can put in anchors for a swing or trapeze. It will be tight, but I think it will work. Heck, by February she'll be so desperate that anything will be acceptable, so my standards aren't high.

Anyway, after a solid hour of trying to clean out the Black Hole Closet Under The Basement Stairs, I was trying to keep Liza entertained and out of trouble. Look, it's Mommy's wedding dress! Let's open the box to make sure the mice didn't get into it! Look, it's Mommy's trombone! Let's open it so you can take a look at it! Heck, let's take a break and play for a while, shall we?

I'm fairly certain that it hasn't been out of it's case since we moved ... to Kentucky ... in 2003. Yes, I know I suck. It was fun to haul it out for a while, though, and Liza was duly impressed.

You can see where this is going, right?

You should have seen the look on her face (and mine, too, probably) when she managed to produce a tone on the first try. It's not like it's hard or anything, but come on, she's 3 1/2 years old. The mouthpiece takes up half of her face, for god's sake!

I'm not claiming she's a prodigy or anything - sort of sounded like a hippo in heat, to be honest with you.

But come on, how cute is that? My little Bone Babe in Training ...

Adventure

First, we had to blaze a trail ...

... because somebody wanted to ride on the swing. That was a little problematic ...

... and so was going down the slide. But alternate entertainment was available ...

... and refreshments were easy to come by.

Staying on our feet was problematic, too ...

... but that didn't bother us much.

It's about 18" deep, not counting drifts or where the snowplow or snowthrower piled stuff up in case you were wondering.

The fun never ends

The back door, 8am

The front door, 8am

The "window" in Liza's room

The iceberg hanging off our front porch roof

Cleveland Gothic (snowshovel is just out of frame)

Illustration for the dictionary entry for "futile"

That last shot was Jason taking care of what accumulated overnight. He's cleared the driveway twice since then, and he's hoping the snow stops soon, because we're running out of places to put it. Here he is after clearing #2 for today, next to the waist-deep pile of snow next to our front door.

Did I mention the snow?

Not a drift. We actually had 13" of snow at 9am. And it kept snowing!

I'm not sure, but it might have been a good idea to clean off the car yesterday, rather than waiting until we ran out of food today and had to go to the grocery store.

Snowpants required for a trip to the grocery. You can tell she hates it, right?

Artsy from etsy

See, dear? This is why I needed the mobile, so I could have something cheerful to look at in February when I am procrastinating the snowblowing by cutting out 400,000 swaddling blankets for the shop.

8" deep and counting (sigh)

Breakfast

When it looks like this on my back deck ...

... the only suitable breakfast is toast dipped in hot cocoa. The nipper agrees.

Snow Day

Liza's reward for making it through storytime at the library without raising a ruckus: a trip to the river next door. This week I remembered to bring the camera ...



I can't figure out why it takes so long to walk down to the river ... oh, yeah - we have to stop to contemplate every single leaf that isn't covered in snow.

Sycamore

Perfect hiking clothes - bellbottoms with inset paisley velvet panels!

Compare with earlier video of the same area.

For my mother - yes, I kept a viselike grip on her 90% of the time when we were anywhere near the river, and I showed her how to scrape off the snow to make sure we were standing on rocks, not ice.

The other 5% of the time - come on, it was too cute to pass up.

Squeaky snow is perfect for snowmen ...

... and throwing snowballs (joke's on her - the snowballs kept sticking to her gloves, so she'd try to throw them at me and they'd just sort of plop off 2" in front of her) ...

... and eating, of course. From the pristine snow on top of the bridge, which had no tracks or discolorations anywhere near it, and was only sampled 1/2 of the way through so we didn't get any bridge scrapings. And it tasted exactly the way snow tasted when I was a kid, pollution be damned.