Snow Days

It started during the wee hours of Tuesday. Rain. Then sleet. Then sleet mixed with snow. Then temperatures dropping to the 20's and teen's. Then the wind with gusts of 40-50 mph. Then the windchill in the negatives.

That all equals calling off work with a vacation day because: I don't drive on ice.

So I spent the day lounging in my jammies, watching tv, and doing a puzzle:

Wednesday there was still ice. It was still bitterly cold. The schools were still closed.

Another vacation day. Lazy Non-Teenager had a birthday the day before, so on the pretense of checking road conditions in preparation for me going to work on Thursday, we went and picked her up and went to lunch and a movie. Hubby drove (so he could play on the ice in the parking lots) so I didn't have to. The roads were slightly passable so I tentatively planned on doing a "late start" on Thursday. That way I would miss the morning traffic.

Thursday morning came and there was still ice. It was still bitterly cold. The schools were still closed. I decided I didn't want to do a late start. It just wasn't worth the risk of an accident.

Another vacation day. I was feeling a little guilty for not doing anything productive during all this at home time. So I caught up the laundry while watching all six Harry Potter movies. In my jammies.

I was definitely going to go to work on Friday. I made up my mind.

Until I got up Friday morning to this:

And it was still bitterly cold. And the schools were still closed. And while I know it is easier to drive on snow than ice, there is still quite a bit of ice under all that snow.

And I figured by this point, what the hell - vacation day.

I would like to report how productive I was Friday. How much organizing and rearranging and cleaning I did.

I would really like to.

But...yeah, another day in my jammies.

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

I have had the short hair cut for a few weeks now and...

The Good

I got lots of compliments on it.

I only need a dime sized blob of shampoo and not a fifty cent piece sized.

I don't have to hardly do anything to it, and it looks "styled".

It is much easier to color.

It feels lighter.

I don't have to continually push it behind my ear to keep it from falling in my face.

The Bad

I do have do something more than run a brush through it in the mornings.

My ears and neck are always COLD.

It never looks the same from day to day, I am just not good at hair styling, so when someone compliments me and says how they like my hair the way it is fixed today - oh well.

I really like the sensation of wind blowing through my hair and it really isn't the same with short hair.

The Ugly

I wake up with some seriously scary "bed head"

I know...The suspense has been killing you....

I haven't completely decided yet how I feel about it. I still startle myself if I just catch a glimpse of my reflection out of the corner of my eye.

Uh-Oh

My hair fell off.

I finally gave into The Urge.

Misreads

In a book:

"You ever see one of those crazy movies about cats and trucks that turn into robots?"

"Transformers. The science..."

It was at this point I said to myself, what do cats have to do with Transformers.

Then I reread the sentence.

"You ever see one of those crazy movies about cars and trucks that turn into robots?"

Oh. Yeah, that's better.

On a sign:

Fresh Today!

Vampire Tomatoes!

I was driving past a farmers market and I caught the sign out of the corner of my eye as we were going past. I couldn't stop because there was too much traffic, so Surly Teenager turned around and read the sign to me.

Fresh Today!

Vine Ripe Tomatoes!

Oh. Yeah, that's better.

To this day she likes to remind me about Vampire Tomatoes.

Whew!

Job Of The Day: I took down the Christmas tree.

That's not as impressive as it sounds. Because this was the Christmas tree this year:

See the little boxes in front of it? Decorations that never made it on the tree. Surly Teenager thought the tree looked a little naked with just lights. So I bought some little ornaments for her to put on, and she never did.

All done:

Whew! Who's ready for a nap?

'Round And 'Round She Goes

This probably isn't going to be as funny as it seemed at the time...maybe it is, I'm getting giggly again thinking about it...

Aunt Martha is a long time friend of the family, to my in-laws. She's in her 80's and is a talker, hard of hearing and missing part of a leg to diabetes.

She called Christmas evening because she was having problems with her electric chair and had gotten wedged in somewhere and couldn't maneuver herself out.

Hubby went to rescue her.

When he got back he said the connectors to the battery were dirty so he cleaned them as well as he could. He told her, "You got a lot of carbon scoring here. It looks like you have seen a lot of action." (In case you are not a Super Nerd like Hubby, that is a quote from Star Wars) Of course she only said "What?"

By his 3rd trip to rescue her, he was going to make her put the chair up and switch to her walker. Even though he had cleaned the connections, it still wasn't maneuvering correctly.

It was going in circles.

And that is when the silliness began. With us all sitting around the kitchen table, picturing poor old Aunt Martha spinning in circles and laughing our asses off. There were jokes about her chasing her cats that way - about her spinning like Gretchen's new Stir Crazy - and about how of course she would go in circles because she is missing a leg.

I know. We are awful, horrible people.

But I can just see her. Going in circles. Oh my.