This is not Going to Help

Fuh-fuh-fuh-freezing

OK, even I cannot write three posts in a row about the weather, but the weather has completely taken over my personality.  I am freezing people out.  I'm giving them the cold shoulder.  I'm the ice queen.  I'm frigid? 

Seems like it has been ages since I've posted gratuitous photos of the children.  You know why?  Because it is too damned cold to take pictures!  AAAAAAAAAAArrrrrrgh.

Here we are making our way from the car to the house after school today.

 

 

In the mud

I know I've been complaining about the weather, and it is still too damn cold for my taste.  It has, however, gotten warm enough that Franny is back to digging in the dirt beside our garage for critters.  She finds these little salamanders I never knew existed.  I finally got around to looking them up online for her, while she was standing at my knee.  They are called red-backed salamanders, and they don't seem to live as far south as where I grew up digging in the dirt.

Anyway, we clicked through a few results and found one that showed a young woman who was literally armpit deep in sludge.  I don't know where exactly she was, but it looked like a small river of mud.  She was covered, hair, shoulders, everything in this mud.  She was looking for something.  Just as I was about to shudder and recoil, Franny says breathlessly:  "Oh!  I wish I could do that!"

Bless her little heart.  Or something.

So, apparently, at some point I need to send her to some sort of summer camp where she can be surrounded with like-minded folk who want to swim in mud looking for slimy creatures to coddle, adore and release.  Don't get me wrong, I'm not afraid of getting dirty or of letting her get dirty.  And I'm not squeamish in general, but I do have my limits.  And our yard only has so much to offer. 

Deafened by adorableness

Can we puh-leeze just break 50 degrees fahrenheit for one motherfucking day?  Shit!

Welcome to my blog, where I shake my fist at mother nature and the universe and am rewarded with four separate rounds of the stomach virus since October.

It was about a week ago when I saw the first signs of a forsythia budding, and I let myself smile.  I shouldn't have let my guard down.  When the weatherman claimed that it was going to be 52 today, I wore only an insulated vest instead of my down coat.  It never got above 43.

This was the winter I coughed from Christmas until nearly St. Patrick's day.  The worst, most gagging, strangling, body-contorting cough.  A cough that made me wet my pants and throw my back out and that improved in only infinitesimal increments over the course of, oh, ten thousand days.  I experienced one of these coughs today, in fact.  But one per day is a vast improvement.  And, in fact, I think there wasn't a single one yesterday.

I've been listening to children all day long.  Happy, lovely children whom I adore.  And it has made me so, so tired.  I'm going to take a shower, finish my book, count my many blessings.  And tomorrow, or very soon, I'm going to write something less whiny.