Snowpocalypse 2017

Snow is still careening headlong from the sky, as it has been through the night and did all day yesterday. The least that can be said is that its alarming, but also blanketing the landscape with a sense of being on holiday. It is very, very hard to get up and think that anything should be done about anything. All one Feels like doing is sitting in a chair and watching it all come down.

Unfortunately, as a person who is dumb enough to edumacate her children at home, there is no such thing as a snow day. The stuff we’re doing online is in no way effected by the weather, and there’s no reason everyone can’t do the minimum number of subjects and tasks that will keep us having to add days in the summer.

As you can imagine, we all feel great about this.

And therefore yesterday we really only did the absolute minimum. I kept thinking all day that the children would be clambering to go out in it. And some of them did, but were back inside about a minute and a half later. It is so cold and blowing that no one can really play or try to pack it into anything. Even the dogs just decided that they’d be, um, ‘remaining’  in the house. We spent part of the day wandering around looking for their ‘mistakes’ which implies that they didn’t mean to do it, which of course is a huge lie.

While we struggled to pay attention to Lorenzo the Magnificent (heard the soul of the child whispering, ‘what kind of jerk gets called Magnifacent’) Matt dug around in the freezer (in between shoveling) and, finding some Bear, cooked it into a pie.

Of course, we didn’t come by this bear through violence or evil. It was a gift. Someone, I have no idea who, gave us some bear, nicely minced, which turns out to be delicious. Tastes like…buffalo, I think. And, of course, we had to have pie because it was pi day. Only one child thought it was funny–pi day, pie, pi, get it? Get it?

Here is a child contemplating the outside and thinking better of it. You needn’t worry that she’s going to fall off the stool. Children need to climb, its good for them. If they don’t go up to high places it makes them sad, and I’m all about making children happy. (That was just a little joke.)

Really, on the subject of the safety of children, its never the thing that really should be dangerous that gets them. There is Marigold, rocking back and forth on a high stool, from which she climbed nimbly down and did three carwheels through the kitchen that I was sure would land one of her siblings a broken jaw (she is very short and when her feet are in the air they are about the level of her sisters’ chins), but all remained unscathed. But then later, walking through a room that should have been no big deal, Gladys whacked her knee on a wagon and felt that the world had come to an end. ‘Why was there a wagon in that room?’ I asked. Everyone stared at me blankly. What is that? Is that like a trick question?

Fortunately for me, Matt happened to lay in these flowers last week, before we even knew the Snowpocalypse was on the horizon, and which I’ve been carrying around from room to room as an act of hope. March is just a touch too late, psychologically, for this amount of snow, and makes me want to give up and move to Tasmania. But if you just pause and look at the bright yellow, you think maybe its not Armageddon after all.

This, of course, is just another picture of snow. Like we need more of those. But what’s interesting is that its so deep. The back garden is somewhat protected from the wind and so its like a big basin just filled with snow, almost half way filled really. It’s ridiculous.

And here is the snow piled up against my window, making me feel just a tiny bit claustrophobic.

So there you are. Snow snow snow snow snow. It’s almost eight o’clock in the morning and everyone is still asleep because one, we had to have DST, and two, somehow, when snow continues to plunge from the sky its twice as hard to do things like get out of bed and do any more than find a pair of thick socks. Hmmm. Isn’t that a thing now? What is that called?

I’m KIDDING. Of Course I Know What It’s Called. We are the Living Embodymnet of Hygge, or however you spell it. All that’s missing is a murderous Danish crime drama. Now, where are my stupid slippers?