This was on my Writers Almanac yesterday. Seemed appropriate. We're going to spend the day digging out, playing in the snow, and baking cookies. Thank goodness it didn't happen tomorrow- I'd never have made my flight.

Last night we got home from visiting the sister and her wack=a-doodle husband (Hi Doug!) and the kids were exhausted. Actual exchange between Molly and TMOTH:

Molly: What are you eating Daddy?
TMOTH: (Holding a bowl of ice cream with chocolate sauce) What does it look like I"m eating?
Molly: Hmmmm...Yogurt?
TMOTH: Good guess. Try again?
Molly: (Long Pause) Tuna Fish?

"Too Much Snow" by Louis Jenkins, from Just Above Water © Holy Cow Press!, 1997. Reprinted with permission. (buy now)

Too Much Snow
Unlike the Eskimos we only have one word for snow but we have a lot of
modifiers for that word. There is too much snow, which, unlike rain,does not
immediately run off. It falls and stays for months. Someone wished for this
snow. Someone got a deal, five cents on the dollar, and spent the entire family
fortune. It's the simple solution, it covers everything. We are never
satisfied
with the arrangement of the snow so we spend hours moving the snow from
one
place to another. Too much snow. I box it up and send it to family and
friends.
I send a big box to my cousin in California. I send a small box to my
mother.
She writes "Don't send so much. I'm all alone now. I'll never be able to use so
much." To you I send a single snowflake, beautiful, complex anddelicate;
different from all the others.

The !Storm(runforyoulivesit'ssnowing)! arrived right on schedule at noon. Everything in the world is out early- except Harry's school. Picked up Molly early, then stopped at the store for necessities (beer, chicken, bread, cottage cheese...) and now have to wait 10 more minutes until we can pick him up. After that, I'm imagining that I might shovel a bit- which always feels foolish when the snow is still falling. Then again, I can shovel a little bit now, thus lightening the load when TMOTH shovels tomorrow, or I can just let him shovel all 12 inches tomorrow. In another time, I would have left it all for him. Today? I'll shovel. And grumble about why I chose to live in this damn snowy part of the country, anyway.

When the phone rang at 5:30 this morning, (the universal signal for "snow day" in teacher-speak) I gave thanks for the following:

1. TMOTH didn't have to get out of bed to call the TV station and all the teachers, because he's not the principal anymore.
2. The tree is up and the laundry is done (thanks TMOTH!)
3. There's coffee in the house.
4. The outside lights are all hung.
5. Our oil tank is full.
6. I made potato soup yesterday and there are gallons left over in the fridge.
7. My shopping is pretty much all done.
8. There's no school, which besides the *obvious* reasons for being of the good, allows me to recover from Molly's newfound inability to sleep longer than 2 hours at a stretch, resulting in TMOTH and I alternately marching upstairs to a) cover her up again, b) locate Teddy or Sheep, c) scratch her back, d) assure her that there are no monsters in the hallway, or e) open/ close her door to her obsessive-complusive specifications.

My kids, however, are grumpy because:
1. the eggs are bad and, therefore, there will be no waffles, pancakes, muffins, or french toast for the traditional (meaning, we did it once) snow day breakfast.

The snow is lovely, though. Too bad pics don't quite do it justice...

Welcome to my 2007 Thanksgiving Blog! Since it's just TMOTH, the kids and me today, I figured I'd engage in holiday spirit in a cyber-form. I keep thinking about all the noise and fun in houses where people are getting to see folks they haven't seen in a year or more, but rather than feeling sorry for myself (an easy trap to fall into), I'm going to make *everyone else* read this moment by moment account of our turkey day. I might even post photos if I get really motivated.

( Click here )

First day of vacation and it feels particularly hard-won this year. Even though it's just the four of use (which has become Thanksgiving Status Quo), I'm feeling just enough desire to make the day nice to keep me motivated. Boiler guy is coming this morning, (he's 2 hours late at this point, but I'm assured he's on the way), coffee is made, cinnamon rolls are in the oven and the kids are finally big enough to go out and play in the snow without a grown up standing guard, telling them what to do. Figuring I'll make the cranberries today and put them in the fridge for tomorrow, then big plans to play board games with the kids, make our center piece (stick with construction paper leaves tied to it) and be a big old slug. We do have to run out to the store this morning- they're doing the collection for the Community Kitchen over at Hannaford's and I try to have the kids pick out something to donate every year.

TMOTH seems to need some space this morning- he's been working hard lately, so I'll send him out for some solo Man Time this morning. All in all, it's shaping up to be a good Thanksgiving!

First snow of the season and it's quite a respectable little snow. Considering that it's a) the last day of school before vacation and b) the first day of snow, I"m amazed that they're even bothering with school today. Going to try to be productivity girl today, but have to hit Molly's school for Stone Soup day and then take Harry to the doctor and go to the fabric store and the library and...

But still- there's nothing like the first snow of the season, is there?

We didn't break the record- though I'm certain one of the Life is Good sites probably did (they've got 9 or 10 festivals now, all of the country. Bastards.) A good time was had by all, though. We went down early for the costume parade and to register our pumpkins,



then back down after dark to see everything lit.



Didn't intend to stay for the count and fireworks, but ended up sort of doing so anyway. I say "sort of" because they changed the way they did both of those things and ended up setting off the fireworks in a different place, meaning that the kids only saw the edges of them over an enormous building. Not such a big deal from their point of view, as they were exhausted at that point. Their big deals were twofold: the loss of the bouncy house (which we *never* managed to find this year) and the fact that, by the time I found out where the balloons were, they had sold them all. In fact, they sold the last two to the person *right* in front of us. There is nothing more pathetic than an exhausted 4 year old sobbing over the loss of the balloon that was *right there* just seconds before. She was still talking about it at bed time.

So today I'm going to try to make up for it with leaf raking and muffin baking. And Sunday School- which is less about "making up" than it is about easing my mommy guilt over the number of days we've missed recently.

Happy Pumpkins!

One of my most vivid kid memories is pumpkin carving. I remember begging my mom to get pumpkins everytime we went to the grocery store (I think it was an IGA, but I'm not sure. It seemed small even then, so I imagine it was postage stamp sized) from the moment they appeared there. I remember a special trip to the store to get pumpkins and I remember that the actual carving was an *event*. Seriously. I remember my dad having this enormous knife that he used to gut fish and he'd open the pumpkin and we'd dig in. Heather and I would be in grossed-out delight at the ooey gooey mess inside. I remember taking hours to clean the thing out (or so it seemed) and then I remember drawing the design on the pumpkin and having my dad attack the thing with his fish gutting knife (I think it might have actually be called a filet knife, which sounds a lot less Deliverance, but which also really eliminates the true purpose of the knife itself). This was a really big deal.

My kids view the whole pumpkin thing as a bit of a chore. Harry actually gags at pumpkin smell and is brought to tears at the idea of cleaing out his own pumpkin. Molly is brought to tears at the idea of gutting her good friend Pumpkin with whom she has bonded in the 30 minutes between store (never mind the pumpkin patch- that's way too much work from their perspective) and home.

I'm not letting go of this, though. By God, my kids will carve and they will like it. This is a memory we're making, dammit, and they'll enjoy it if it kills us all. (TMOTH had the wisdom to bail on this whole thing, by the way.) So we did it. It took 2 hours, but we did it. Here's the result:

Now, I realize that for my kids, pumpkin carving is serious business. They carve one each at school and they'll carve two more tomorrow at Molly's dance class bringing our grand total to 6 pumpkins from Casa Thomas. My workplace carved out the entire name of the college today.(Antioch University New England- one letter per pumpkin. That's a lot of pumpkins.) When you need 35,000 lit jack-o-lanterns, there's no room for fun. The pumpkin deathmarch is an annual event around here, and there's no room for nostalgia- at least not since Life is Good got into the game. Leave it to corporate America to ruin something local, good, and family friendly.

Not that I'm bitter. At least, I won't be after the costume parade, fried dough, and fireworks tomorrow night.