http://www.blogger.com/html?blogID=1755139666841541603 about a dream: February 2015

Saturday, February 28, 2015

How old am I again?

I was in the bathroom with Maggie and she was talking about something, then turned to me and said:

"Wait, were you born in the 2000s or the 1000s?"
"Uh... I guess the 1000s," I said.
"Wow you are old!" she said.

Well yeah, when you put it that way, I doth feel like thine olde mother indeed!

Wednesday, February 25, 2015

Kill me. Kill me now (snow, of course)

Well, the good news is we got a 2 hour delay. That's why I'm chillin in my bathrobe, posting here on a Wednesday at 8 am. The bad news is:


6 inches of fresh white stuff, blanketing the 3 feet of old white stuff. That swing you see is one that Nina had put really high up. See how it's almost as high as the trapeze bar? See how the snow is as high as the trampoline? I had just cleaned the roof off of the playhouse over vacation, silly me.


Here's the patio table. I've cleared it and the chairs off numerous times, which is why it's not totally buried. But there's no more "clearing off" when the snow is higher than the table and chairs. I quit.


I have a car. It's red. Have you seen it? I guess I should be dealing with that instead of blogging. Well, I'll be quick, but I still have a few minutes before I need to get out there.


But look at this happiness! Girls and dogs, cuddling. Moments after this Moxie threw up on Nina, so I got to do floors and a load of laundry. Woot. Good thing it's a snow day!

Now off to clear off that car!

Sunday, February 22, 2015

Cousins! (And snow!)

The girls and I quickly jaunted down to Newburyport on Friday morning to get some much-needed Joey time. It was wonderful!!

Here they are on the couch in the morning. The girls were a little hesitant to get too close, because Joey's entered that teething and drooling stage of little boyhood, and they're very nervous about that stage. But there was less drool early in the morning, so the closeness returned. 
 

He's getting bigger and bigger every day! We got to see his first ever fully independent pull to a stand on Friday too. Go Joey!

The girls spent a lot of time outside with the neighbor girls, jumping off Aunt and Unk's shed and into a snowbank, over and over and over. Fun times!

Then we saw SpongeBob the Movie at Chunky's, the place where you sit in old car chairs and get dinner with your movie. It was... um... not bad for an hour and a half of SpongeBob. The girls loved it anyway!

Then we raced back home in time for Courtney's party for her mom's 5-year cancer survivor anniversary. Great party! After that we were pooped. Of course it snowed overnight, but just a couple of inches, no big. Supposed to be warm today, we might even (dare I hope!) hit 40 degrees today! It's 28 right now at 8 am, so it seems possible! Please, gods of spring, give us some hope!!

Thursday, February 19, 2015

More snow!

Wow this is just so beyond exciting! Not!

Today I tried jumping to my death from the trampoline. I'm here, it failed, but at least it was fun. This was after I shoveled that fresh 6 inches of snow from it that fell last night. Then I shoveled the decks. Wait first I raked the roof, then I shoveled. I was feeling so good I went and shoveled mom and dad's lower deck. "I'll just use the shovel to push it off the deck," I said to myself. "This will be easy!" Then I noticed that the snow is as high as the deck, so pushing it "off" wasn't going to work. I shoveled for a while, feeling the burn, thinking about how toned my arm(s) will look when (if) the weather gets warm enough for a sleeveless top. Wow the snow at the bottom of a 4 foot pile is packed and heavy! The dogs enjoy standing on my shovel, so eventually I gave up cursing and shoveling snow on them, cleared off the BBQ, table, and Adirondack chairs, and went home.

Home, where I cleared off the car, after I cleared the boat that is.

Then I went to check on Fred and Nancy's house. "That's a lot of snow on their deck," I said to myself. "I'll just push it off with my shovel." (Clearly I'm losing my mind at this point). I shoveled for a while. It's all fluffy at the top, but heavier and heavier with each shovel full. Oh well, I don't work out, this is good for me. I quit after a bit of that too, but if they need a nice corner of the deck to stick two chairs on, by golly they've got it!

I'm done shoveling for the day now. I tell you though, raking the roof is harder than any shoveling. Give me an hour of shoveling over 15 minutes of raking any day.

Of course there's more snow and cold in the forecast. Of course there is. I got a kick out of a headline I saw on the channel 6 website this morning--apparently there's a snow dump pile near the Portland jetport, and they have to stop using it because if it gets any higher, it'll violate FAA regulations.

OUR SNOW BANKS ARE SO HIGH PLANES MIGHT CRASH INTO THEM!

It's almost March though. It WILL get better! Not in the 10 day forecast, that's filled with storms and cold. But it has to, eventually....

Monday, February 16, 2015

Today's little project

And by "little," I mean 5-hour.

It started like this, the girls' computer and play area at the top of the stairs:


The last time anyone  moved the table and desk around  was when the girls were playing school about a year ago. Nina did add that lovely little lamp you can see on the corner of her desk, but pretty much it's been neglected (but oft used) since then.

Here's a look at the opposite wall. I took this picture after I moved the black steel filing cabinet in the very corner.

What a sad-looking bookcase! Would you want to read a book from that book case? No one had, not in ages. It needed a pick-me-up too.

I'm not just a rearranger, of course. I like to sort, organize, and wipe down each and every book, so it took a long time. But I put some of the girls art into storage, pulled some things aside for Joey, and got a whole bag of clothes for my co-worker Emily. The cleaning and sorting were the real bulk of the work.

But now, behold!


Nina's big desk, a smaller desk for Maggie (tablecloth because it just doesn't match, but I'll probably paint it this summer), then Kit and Marisol's bed. You also can't tell that there's a little throw rug on the ground, but there is.

Here's the wall on the left:


Anna, Elsa, and a bunch of adorable drawings Nina had done. Opposite that and next to the bathroom door is an angry birds poster, to set the gaming atmosphere. (The girls play a lot of minecraft up there).

Finally, I moved the book case to the family room for toy storage:


So necessary in there!

All of this was made possible by an extraordinarily long play date for the girls at their friends Grace and Rose's house. What a productive vacation so far!

Oh joy of joys!

It missed us! Boston got hammered with about 18 inches (and it all fell overnight), and we got just a couple, maybe 4 or 5 total. Hooray! Of course, it was freezing and blowing and the path to mom and dad's mostly filled in so there's still shoveling, but I don't care. No plowing, no 2 feet to shovel off the decks and trampoline!

It's cold today, but 6 already at 9 am, so not really any colder than we've been having. The water in the back might freeze for the first time that I can remember, take a look:


Very large ice floes, and they're even bigger down in mom and dad's direction. You know those can't fit through Oven's Mouth, so they're just gonna sit there getting bigger and bigger until it gets warmer or they cover the whole surface. We'll see!

Today the girls will go play at their friends' Grace and Rose's house. What to do with a few hours to myself?? Yesterday we baked a lemon meringue pie (excellent as always) with a homemade crust (we're hooked, never a store bought crust shall pass through my oven again). So no baking. We'll see!

Friday, February 13, 2015

Friday the 13th and weather

I really do hate winter. Maybe it's time to rethink living in Maine?

First, though, today is Friday the 13th. It was supposed to be winter carnival day at the elementary school, with all kinds of fun-in-the-snow activities, but that got postponed, because it's too cold for winter fun.

Really. Right now it's about 13 degrees, but there's a nice wind to go with it ("feels like" 1 degree). Fun! The sun is shining, that's nice...  the kids are going to do fun stuff indoors though. Valentine's day parties, games, movies, stuff like that. And yesterday we had fun cheering on the girls' and boys' basketball teams. Girls won, boys lost, I was helping my junior class advisees at the concessions downstairs and the girls were mostly playing with their friends, but Nick enjoyed himself.

Just T-1.5 hours until vacation starts! So excited! And what waits for us this week? Surely a bit of relief--warm weather, sun, maybe even a little thaw?

Ha! Ha hah ha ha!


We're in that bright pink 18-24 inch band, just FYI. Noaa weather has us at just 12 - 16 inches. One can only hope. All locations are pretty sure the temperature will hover right around the 0 mark, with wind gusts up to 50 mph driving the "real feel" windchill values deeply below zero.

So not excited. The only silver lining is that surely, this winter will go down in the girls' memories as the most epic ever. Because nothing beats 4-5 feet of snow on the ground when you're a kid.

Update: Even noaa is onboard with 18-24 inches now. Wind guts to 55 mph. It's a cold, cold morning (about five below), but there's a lovely mist rising up from the water and the skies are still clear. I'd never believe there was a massive blizzard just hours away if it wasn't forecast.

Thursday, February 5, 2015

Oh shock, MORE SNOW!

I might as well just copy and paste the last post. It's Thursday, no school, about 7 inches of snow on the ground. Cold.

I had a fun start to the day. Marley threw up just after 4 am, so I cleaned that up, which took a few minutes. It took me a bit to fall back asleep, but I was snoozing by 5 am. My phone rang at 5:25--a 2-hour delay! Yay! Best of both worlds; time to get out, but we don't have to make  up a day. Excellent.

I couldn't fall back asleep, so at 6 I went downstairs, started my day, threw in a load of laundry, the usual. At 6:30 Maggie called for me, and I went into the girls room and got in bed with them. Ahh. At about 7 I fell back asleep and didn't get out of bed until almost 8. So, not too bad after all.

Then I got the call from Honeywell Instant Alerts--school was cancelled! A highly unusual move, to extend the delay into a full cancellation. Nick wept, the girls rejoiced. Then we went outside!


Check out those snowbanks! Taller than the girls!


Here you can see the bank to the left of the front door is almost up to the (low) roof over the entry way. There's my roof rake too. The roof's pitch over the entryway is low, and I'm not sure it's built as well as a regular house roof, so I rake that. Where the entry roof meets the regular roof, there was a good 5 feet of snow built up. Joy. Raking the roof is SO hard! I'd already shoveled the trampoline so I was tired (but I hadn't yet shoveled off the decks. At least my muscles are getting big).


The snow banks on the way to mom and dad's are just as tall. I'm sure they'll be here until May.

So we're watching some SpongeBob, blogging, playing outside, and now hanging out at mom's. Ideally we'll be back in school tomorrow, then we have one week until our desperately needed Winter Recess (sarcasm).

Oh, and what's in the forecast, you ask?

Snow.


Tuesday, February 3, 2015

Well, it ended up being about 14 inches...

Yay. So much fun. Can you read my lack of excitement in the lack of exclamation points?

Not excited.

We had a 2 hour delay this morning, which we needed, because this was waiting for me when the sun came up:


Hello car. Hello driveway not plowed out. I see you there!

So the girls at least got to play in the fluff. I brought out a ladder and they jumped into those banks you can just barely see in the foreground abouve. You can almost make out the path that cuts through the banks. The snow is about 4 feet deep on either side of that path, but we only (only) have about 3 feet on the ground everywhere else. There's some drifting/banking going on on either side of the path.


Forget the car, you can barely see the house! "There it is girls," I say when we get home from school. "Walk toward that strip of green between all the white!" Ok not really.

There are flower boxes under those windows next to the door, remember those? Seeds gently slumbering, waiting for the warm sun to wake them? Yeah, in May or June. This stuff's not going anywhere for a loooong time.

But the girls had fun. We even found their slide!


There you are slide!

At least we finally got back to school today. We've all gotten so stir-crazy, even the high-schoolers were happy to be back. I'm not even kidding!

We were also treated to a lovely sunset today:



It's hard to photograph a sunset, but it was all pink and purple. So nice. And yes, that is facing southeast. In the winter, even the eastern sky gets beautiful at sunset. So there are some nice things about living in Maine in February. Sunsets and no ticks.

Off to bed now, wake me up in June!

Monday, February 2, 2015

ANOTHER SNOW DAY!

ZOMG! Enough! It's 5 degrees out, windy as heck, and snowing. So over this. SO DONE WITH WINTER!!

Here's the snowfall prediction map:


Truly, abandon hope all ye who enter here. It's never going to be nice out again.


So gray. See that big chunk of ice floating in the ocean too? That happens when it's been right around 0 for a week. Forecast isn't much better... maybe we'll hit 32 one day, but the rest are highs in the low teens. Joy.

Girls are super happy at least. Besides no school, I bought them their first ever TV dinners yesterday and they're making them for lunch, right now, at 10:23. Adorable!

Sunday, February 1, 2015

A beautiful day!

It's a balmy 20 degrees (Fahrenheit!) out there. The sun is shining, the sky is blue, and not a cloud in it. Can there really be another storm on the way?


It sure is a pretty view, isn't it?


So very blue!

Nina was still at her friend's house this morning and Nick was playing basketball, so it was a quiet morning for me and Maggie. The dogs finally got a chance to take some important naps too:


Maggie rediscovered some my little pony games online this morning. Marley got straight back to getting hair all over the couch. Same old same old.


This is my favorite. Old dog napping in the sun. He's such a happy guy!

And here's my favorite photo of the morning:


I call it "hope." Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment, they're still predicting 6 to 10 inches of snow beginning overnight and not winding up until late Monday. They're going to cancel school again, I just know it. The girls have never been happier at least.