I should supplement this post with pictures of the outside, but word pictures will have to do for now.

I have friends who’ve lost power and trees during Snowpocalypse 2010, but we’ve been fortunate to be snug and happy. The Virus has passed for the most part, and it looks as if the parents dodged this bullet. We’ve been in the house nonstop since Wednesday, so we’re a little cabin feverish, but we’ve also hit our stride, I have to say.

R took yesterday off so I could get some work done. There wasn’t anything pressing at the church, especially since I was almost certain that worship would be canceled, but I’ve had several writing deadlines looming. I finished my monthly article and supplemental study guide for Denominational Magazine in record time—only five days past the deadline rather than 15 or more, as is my custom. I still have one more article for Feasting on the Word, on Zephaniah, bleh, but I am all gung-ho after receiving this note from the section editor, a former professor who now runs a Th.D. program at Little Old Southern Divinity School:

I’ve read your first two essays–they are wonderful, as I expected. You’re done with them. I thought you might like to hear that as you squeeze in your work on #3.

I made only one change in wording that I wanted to run by you. [blah blah blah].

Thanks SO much for your great work in the midst of family challenges and a time crunch.

Now, about that Th.D. program in homiletics……

Heh heh heh. Not.

While I wrote, R played with the kids, did a couple of minor projects around the house, and made these:

They’re peach pies. The star-shaped ones are even better. For dinner I made a black bean soup that was awesome and basically consisted of sauteing some onions and garlic and then opening cans. My father-in-law calls that Maximum Impact, Minimum Effort, which is my favorite cooking philosophy.

This morning we woke up to another marshmallow world. J and I were the first ones up, around 6:45. The snow had stopped but there was at least 16-17 inches on the table on our deck, and varying depths elsewhere. It started again soon after waking and snowed until just a couple of hours ago, around dinnertime. We have easily two feet of snow.

The early morning was pleasant. The girls were snuggled on the couch under an afghan that R’s grandmother knitted for him so many years ago (that would make her so happy). Each girl had a Tinkerbell doll and were dreaming up some game…

M: [rolling a ball, singing a song] The moonstone is rolling away…….
C: No it’s not.
M: [reversing course, continuing to sing without missing a beat] The moonstone is not rolling away……

J requested his Bin O’ Vehicles and picked out a small plane to fly around. He would count before liftoff, which sounds like “Too, Fee, Fee, Fee, Fee!! [airplane sound that every boy seems born able to do]”

I made myself some chai and sat in the corner with my feet up, working on a knitted tank top I started for M two years ago. Thankfully I made it big at the time, knowing how I am. It was going to look like this but I cannot find the ruffle anywhere in this house and all I have is the body of the tank. So I’m knitting some i-cords to attach and tie over each shoulder. It’s the only way I get this thing done before she outgrows it. Her belly already threatens to pooch out a little at the bottom…

Speaking of outgrowing things, I knitted a sweater for C three years ago that she just now can wear… as a somewhat cropped style. Yes, I’m a knitter of splendidly imperfect projects.

After R woke up we had his homemade multigrain pancakes which are awesome. Then he went out to shovel which just happened to coincide with the kids’ first whiny/cranky moment of the day. ??? I had resolved that every time they got into that state that I would get them doing something physical—dancing, red light green light, whatever. This morning it was “YMCA,” “Greased Lightning” and “Jump Around” by House of Pain. This afternoon (after a long bath and lunch) it was energizers: “Istanbul” (which I have on video) and “500 Miles.” If you don’t know what energizers are, you’re either not Presbyterian or you’re over the age of 50 or both…

While J napped and R did some computer stuff, the girls and I watched The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. It was on my mind since we seem to be experiencing one hundred years of winter, albeit with no Turkish Delight in sight. I was a little worried that the girls might find it too scary, but R read the book to them and I was able to prepare them for some of the intense scenes. When we did most favorite/least favorite at dinner they both said the movie was their favorite thing about the day.

Tomorrow’s plan will be more puttering, playing outside (finally) and a couple of home projects, including moving my desk to the art room. I also gave R a gift of service at Christmas in which I offered to clean out our spices, throw away the old stuff (some of which is a decade old), and replenish his stock at the Penzey’s near Tiny Church. I’d love to really organize stuff too, but I’m not sure how effective that will be in the current cabinet, which is the only space currently available.

I said after the significant snow we had in December that I enjoyed the weekend at home together, just the five of us, so much that I’m tempted to schedule a “snow weekend” each year during which, regardless of the weather, we just lock ourselves in and enjoy one another with no outside distractions. That said, some of my teacher friends are predicting that we don’t go back to school until Thursday. Help me Rhonda.

BONUS CONVERSATION:
While tucking M into bed:
Me: I can’t think of anyone I’d rather be snowed in with than you three children and your daddy. You all are just so special.
M: But Daddy is the specialest because he shovels!

It’s been a wild week at the reverendhousehold. Tuesday night J and C threw up almost simultaneously and have been puny since then. M threw up yesterday afternoon but seems a little better off. I was very worried it was norovirus so I’ve been bathing every surface with bleach spray stuff and my house smelled like a swimming pool.

Today everyone is looking better, and the symptoms have not moved to the southern hemisphere as of yet, so I’ve been a little less vigilant about the bleach, while still being uber-vigilant about the hand washing. Yesterday I washed my hands 30 times, easy. Body Shop Hemp Hand Protector=Worth Every Penny.

I’m reading The Happiness Project and enjoying it. Lots of fun little tidbits about what makes us happy, and not. For example: venting one’s anger does NOT dissipate it, it makes it worse. (Damn.) Also, people are made happier by change and novelty, not by routine. Heh—sure would be nice to convince the institutional church of that! Which goes to the point I’ve seen expressed many times, that people are terrible at predicting what will make them happy.

We had our third snow of the season this past weekend, our fourth two days ago, and our fifth is predicted this weekend. It will be another Snowpocalypse. Goody! I’ve already got Tiny Church people saying we should go ahead and cancel church. Can we wait until at least one snowflake falls?

R and I met for our “monthly” sit-down to plan family stuff. I put monthly in quotes because we’re not real regular about it. The next few months are about boring stuff like taxes and setting up 529 college savings plans. Bleh. But it will be so huge to have some of those niggling financial things behind us.

C has been bringing home books from the school library that are from the Black Lagoon series. The idea is that the principal (vice principal, school nurse) has the reputation of being really scary and mean and eating children and decorating the office with kids’ bones and such… until the kid has to go to the principal’s office or the nurse and realizes that they’re actually nice. The books manage not to be preachy and are kinda cute.

Anyway, the girls wrote The Mommy from the Black Lagoon today:

We have a mommy and she is from the Black Lagoon.

Her room has seaweed hanging in it. And if you come in without knocking, you get spanked 100 times.

If you don’t clean your room, our mom will put spiders in your pillow.

There’s supposed to be skeletons and bats and spiders and yucky bloody butterflies in the basement. There’s also a yucky bloody lamp that has a blood light in it.

And always outside there’s supposed to be bloody bloody flowers. [most of the preceding came from M and C finally told her to cool it on the blood because “you’re freaking me out.”]

There’s a trolley on the road that’s black black and filled with spidery kitties.

She also feeds you bananas that are green or brown, not yellow.
And guts.

I threw up in the middle of the night, and I had to go in Mommy’s room.

I was worried there would be dripping pictures of Aurora on the wall.

Instead, there were sweet-smelling candles in my mommy’s room.

And my mom looked pretty normal.

She brought me to the potty, and then I threw up.

She cleaned up my bed and gave me a bowl.

I guess my mommy is pretty nice after all.

The End.