Overbooked and Underpaid: Notes from a Yes-aholic

You Did What?!!!!!

Wednesday began much like any other day with one exception; my husband was out of town.

In a universe that loves to screw with people, that was all it would take to set in motion a chain of comedic (and painful events).

My mornings typically begin like a lot of people's mornings. There is the usual routine of making sure my daughter is up, getting ready for school and making a lunch.

Then there is the driving of the morning leg of the carpool to the aforementioned school. 

So, on this particular Wednesday, I have everything under control and am heading to the car.

Now, because we have a young male dog that wants to run all over the neighborhood and "socialize" we have rigged up a sort of gate contraption at the top of our driveway. (This gate is actually next to useless as our very agile sheltie can just hop right over it at the low spot but it does discourage him from bolting down the driveway at top speed.)

If I had any sense, I would have opened that gate as I do most mornings.

But of course, I didn't.

Instead, I decided to step over it.

Which is not normally such a stupid thing to do. It's only two feet high.

But on this day, a day when my husband was 4 hours away and my teenage son spent the night at a friends house, and the only family member around was a 12 year old girl who cannot drive, on THIS day, my first foot went over the gate just fine but my SECOND foot got caught in the top of the mesh. Sending me spiraling down in what the ER nurse would later characterize as a "cartoon fall". (Ironically, he used that term having no idea my husband and I work in the comics business.) 

The next 5 minutes are kind of a blur. There was a spilled can of soda (my morning non-coffee caffeine ritual), an explosion of articles out of my purse, and a fair amount of swearing.

And possibly some wimpering.

What do you think I did next?

Do you think I had my daughter run in the house and call the girls in the carpool and tell them they couldn't go to school today?

And did I then have her call a friend to drive me to the hospital? Or maybe an ambulance even?

No. Of course not.

Because I am a fully indoctrinated, Scots/German raised "suck it up, walk it off, and get on with it" stoic.

So I did what any stoic with a rescue complex would do. I had my daughter throw all my stuff into the car (except the soda - I never did find out what happened to it), I gritted my teeth, drove over and picked up the girls, and drove the 9.8 miles (each way) to school. (Thank you google maps - I've been making that drive for 14 years and only just now found out how far it is.)

I knew I had done something significant to my left ankle - maybe a bad sprain - but I also knew all my friends were at work and even the parents of the girls I was driving were already at work. I didn't even know how to get a hold of them because - in all the years that I have been driving those kids to school, I've never bothered to get the parents work phone numbers. (Which is pretty stupid.)

The girls were terrified because I literally huffed and puffed the whole way, grimacing and letting out audible gasps every time I had to use my bad leg to depress the clutch.

Oh, yeah - did I mention the only car I had available that day was a stickshift?

On the return journey, I called my son on his cell and told him to get ready, I was going to swing by and pick him up from his friend's so he could help me get out of the car and into the house. 

I have to say here that - all that stuff about how hard it is to raise teenagers, all the conflict that gives parents migraines, that's all true - but my 17 year old son was a gem that day. Once we got home he waited on me hand and foot and only went to school once he was sure I would be OK without him. 

Since I have health insurance that could charitably be described as "catastrophic coverage only", I did what all economically challenged stoics do. I took some Ibuprofen, climbed into my bed, elevated my leg, wrapped my ankle in a nice Ace bandage, put ice on it and settled in to let it get better.

I didn't cancel my students for that evening because A) I don't need my ankle to teach harp B) the students for the day were all coming to my house rather than the University C)  I foolishly thought my ankle might be better by then and D) self employed people who don't work don't earn money.

I did call John and tell him what had happened and he, of course, dropped what he was doing and headed straight home so I knew I would be in much better shape once he got back.

With 4 - 5 hours to kill before John made it back to town and kids were home from school, I discovered the flaw in my "I'll be OK here by myself" plan. 

The dog needed to be let out to pee.

My ankle was so bad I could not put any weight on it at all so I tried hopping around on my good leg.

Which is when, on one particular hop, I felt a small twinge in my good ankle.

Great. All I needed was to screw up the other ankle.

So I resorted to crawling around my house on my hands and knees.

During one such excursion, I had to figure out a way to carry the phone around with me as I have several playing engagements coming up which now had to be farmed out to other harpists. Since my phone doesn't have one of those clip on things I had to resort to stashing it in my bra. (Note to my male readers - women are always doing stuff like this, they just don't tell you,)

Let me tell you, spending several hours crawling around your house gives you a whole new perspective. For one thing, you find out how truly filthy your floors are.

I spent all that day and the ensuing night wrestling with whether or not to go to the ER. With a deductible like ours ($7,000) you don't make such trips for things you can fix yourself. But my final student for the night pointed out that if there really was something seriously wrong and I didn't address it, I would probably limp for the rest of my life.

And I realized that I wasn't only being a stoic, I was being a stone cold idiot.

Bright and early Thursday morning John drove me to the ER.

The x-rays showed that I had not sprained my ankle. 

I had, in fact, broken my leg in two places. 

To be precise, I had broken my fibula. The big break is down by the ankle. The second break is a tiny one up by the knee.

I don't yet know the full prognosis. I meet with the orthopedic surgeon on Monday to find out if there is any way I get out of this without surgery to put a plate in my ankle.

The kicker is that I have one of my busiest playing seasons in years with a musical and two concertos on which I am the featured soloist playing the Handel Concerto and the Debussy Danses.

All of which are now on hold.

But thank goodness I got some sense and got treatment. As I go through this process, I will be blogging a lot because A) I'll have nothing better to do and B) the health care system in this country is so f****d up and I am tired of the American people being brainwashed into thinking healthcare reform is a bad thing.

Count on me to be on a soapbox in the coming weeks.

A couple of photos:

The offending gate

 
My thigh high splint and my new digs for the duration.

In an ironic twist of fate, this is today's Edison which is also Mike Peterson's Comic Strip of The Day. Please go read Mike's take on health care in America.

The Unraveling - The Tooth Fairy Is The Catalyst.....

 

The following is a piece I wrote for a book called "Pandora's Box", a collaborative project by artists and writers in Southeast Wisconsin, published by Southport Press. My Husband John did two wonderful illustrations for it that can only be seen if you buy the book.

The Unraveling

We begin when our children are small.

 
 (Too small to have any idea what we're talking about, really. How absurd to say to a six month old infant "Look what Santa Claus brought you!".)

 
And, though we know there can only be one ending to this little house of cards we are building, one of disappointment and disillusionment, we proceed with abandon. 

 
I’m not sure who it started with - I think it must have been Santa Claus because all our children were born after Easter. We stuck pretty much with the big three: Santa, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, and handled it in the usual way, with  lots of subterfuge to maintain the illusion. 

We’d send the kids out to wait in  the car as we headed to Grandma's. Then there would be a few trips back into the house "for things we forgot", so that we could add the presents that “Santa” would bring.

There were the years of trying desperately to stay awake on  Christmas Eve until the children were safely asleep so that stockings could be filled. And hours spent removing price tags from the presents from “The North Pole” because Elves don’t use pricing guns. Not to mention the cookie and milk consuming martyrdom that led to our thickening waistlines.

And we did it well.

Until it all began to unravel.

And who unraveled it?

The Tooth Fairy.

Yes, the Tooth Fairy.

She was our undoing. And I suspect she is the undoing of parents everywhere because she is the weak link in the chain. 

First of all, there are the inconsistencies of pay scale. It is all very well and good to put a dollar under your child's pillow if he or she has no friends with which to compare notes. But, add even one other child into the mix, and a discussion of the pay rates will begin. 

Worse yet, is the tooth that is lost in the midst of a sleepover. Now you are smack up against it. Do you suddenly put two dollars under the pillow because the visiting child always gets two dollars?

You see, if we really want to make this work, we as parents should be a lot more organized. We should unionize the Tooth Fairy and firmly establish the rates. Is a molar worth more than a bicuspid? Is a broken tooth worth less than a whole one?

But I suspect the biggest downfall for parents is the sheer randomness of the losing of teeth. We all know when Santa and the Easter Bunny come. We are prepared. We have a plan. But the Tooth Fairy has to be there, at the ready, at all sorts of unexpected times. 

And, because we have not planned for this, we are not capable of holding on to the knowledge that we need to stay up late tonight and take care of it. This was our undoing with all three of our children. By the time we were ready for bed we had completely forgotten that we had a job to do.

So we went to sleep. And, in the morning, we remembered...

And we tried to, very carefully and quietly, slip the money under the pillow without wakening the child. 

Oops.

Or, we waited until the child got up and went to the bathroom. At which time we flew into their bedroom like lightening to do the deed.

Only to find out later that said child had checked under the pillow before leaving the room.

 
Before the bathroom - tooth, no money. 

After the bathroom - money, no tooth.

It doesn't take a future rocket scientist to figure that one out.

So then the suspicion begins to grow. And, with raised eyebrow and a manner the chief of police would admire, they grill us about all the other little fantasies we may have spun for them over the years.

And soon it is all over. And we have little grown ups living in our house where once there were innocent children.

And we plead with them not to give away the secret to their younger sister.

!@#% Tooth Fairy.

 

Whacked!!

This has been an interesting Spring/Summer for us weatherwise. If I were a paranoid sort of person, I would think someone up there has it in for us.  We spent the end of May dodging some of the most severe storms seen in the Midwest in years (you can read about that little gem of a road trip here.) Then, right after we drove back West across Massachusetts, that state was hit by a series of Tornados. For those of you who live in the midwest where such things are common, it would probably help to know that New England is not known for twisters.

In mid June, our area was hit by a pretty serious windstorm that took out several trees along the lakefront and we took it in stride. 

Then, June 30th at approximately 7:45 we got whacked.

It had been a pretty normal day, hot but not that oppressive, high humidity, 90+ degree heat that usually precedes serious storms. I was in the backyard trying to convince our 16 week old puppy that now would be a good time to empty his bladder and let me move on to other exciting household chores. John had just finished watering the garden and headed in  to change clothes. And our daughter was at the bottom of the driveway creating her usual sidewalk chalk masterpieces.

Little things I remember:

Far off rumbles of thunder and a vague flash or two of lighting which led me to believe that my efforts to get the dog to pee were going to be fruitless.

John looking up at the sky, which had turned a sickly shade of yellow green and commenting: "Sky's looking pretty weird - Tornado weather...." (We've spent most our lives in Tornado riddled states so we pretty much know that sky when we see it.)

And, I would later find out that my daughter happened to have her camera with her and also had the presence of mind to feel that something was brewing because she filmed the clouds as they passed overhead and commented "Clouds are moving pretty fast....."

The next thing I knew I was surrounded by a wind I can only describe as "Wizard of Oz" like in it's intensity. I ran to the top of the driveway and yelled down to Kate, only to have my words whipped back into my face. I gestured frantically and screamed as loud as I could to get her attention. She looked up and give me the typical 12 year old "Just a minute" raised finger. "NO! RIGHT NOW!!" I screamed.

They say a Tornado sounds like a freight train. Well, I live right next to some train tracks and hear the freights go by on a regular basis and I can attest to the fact that this wind sounded exactly like a freight train. At that point I knew I had to get my daughter and myself into our house and down into our basement immediately.

As we ran into the house I practically threw Kate and the puppy down cellar stairs and started screaming at John to get out of the upstairs. All I could hear was stomping and swearing. Turns out he was wrestling with the windows on our addition trying to get them closed and they kept whipping out of his grasp. He also was watching our 4 cedars lean over our cars at a 40 degree angle, threatening to snap at any moment.

Less than a minute after getting into the basement, the power went out and all was blackness. Three minutes after that it was all over. We could no longer hear that freight train wind and we emerged to take stock of the damage.

This is the first thing we saw:

Followed by this:

And this:

(That would be the transformer for our bit of the neighborhood) 

One by one the neighbors all emerged like folks leaving an air raid shelter. As we checked to see that everyone was all right and started to assess the damage we encountered this:

What you may not be able to see right away is the fact that there are two giant Maple trees down and that, under them, is a house.

From this angle you still cannot see that, to the immediate right of the house with the red roof is another house covered by tree. 

Here you can finally get a sense of the damage.

This was taken 3 days later after the tree removal crew had cleared the first tree and already spent a day and a half working on the second. The good news is that the tenant in the lower half of the house was unhurt and the tenant in the upper half was away from home at the time. Which was a very good thing as the tree sliced through the roof and into the upper story playroom where the little boy who lived there watched TV and played his video games. Under that tree is small child's chair that was completely annihilated. I'm told that the plaster is cracked on every wall, the doors won't close, and the entire house was knocked back off its foundation.

Needless to say the entire neighborhood was without power. John hopped on his bike to check on our sailboat in the harbor and also see if there was any power at his office. The good news was that our boat was fine and his studio still had power so, if push came to shove, we could always relocate down there. 

We would later find out that the harbor was hardly the unscathed area that John had thought. While our dock was fine, it turns out that several of the other docks broke free of their pylons and went careening back and forth in the marina. The dock immediately north of ours headed southwards, running into our dock. It then ricocheted back north and came to rest intertwined with the next dock over. In the following photo you can only just see that some of the boats are touching and the gap between the docks is not the 20 feet it is supposed to be.

The northernmost dock actually ran aground and these boats are all sitting on their propellers. Witnesses in the marina said that an enormous wall of water - possibly a series of waterspouts - climbed over the breakwater and slammed into everything in its path. 

It turns out we were extremely lucky. Our only real damage was the loss of our ancient lilac bush,

and the demise of our driveway. At first it looked as though our cars would remain trapped near our garage indefinitely but John managed to rig up a ramp and draw a sort of map with chalk to navigate the cars through. (The rainbow came compliments of Kate. Below she has written "cheer up - it's a rainbow" - gotta love that attitude!) Another note - the neighbor has been working on his garage and hired a dumpster for his debris. That dumpster saved his deck and his garage. The tree didn't even dent it.

The next morning I headed out on my bike to take stock of the rest of the area and take some pictures:

My daughter in my immediate neighbor's yard among 2 of the 6 trees he lost.

 

An all too common sight all over the area.....

Our lakefront parks lost probably 65% of their older trees.

You cannot truly get a sense of the scope of this. It is a pavilion roof for a picnic area and is easily 50 feet across.
 

Another overturned tree - the people give you a sense of the size of the roots. This is probably a 150 year old tree.

Another view of the same roots - This tree is right along the lakefront at the edge of the park and I'd love to know how the bricks got into its root system. There are no buildings anywhere near it. Perhaps filler from an ancient breakwater?

Another of the area's oldest and biggest trees - if you look closely you can see a young man sitting on the tree.

A closer view of the same tree's roots.

Let's hope this port-o-potty was unoccupied.....

 

An "ex" garage

Here is the same garage two days later after the trees are removed. At the right you can see the neighbor's demolished red car. Which was, sadly, brand, spanking new....

The scene at historic Kemper Center where John had a previous studio.

 
 And finally, our breakfast the day after the storm. When you are about to lose all the ice cream in your freezer, sometimes you have to take one for the team.

We are all still cleaning up and digging out from under tree debris. And we lost power again yesterday in another storm so the scary season-o-storms ain't over yet. But, so far (knock wood) that twister with our name on it hasn't found us yet!

Note: a special thanks to the crews from WE energies and also all the tree removal crews. They all worked tirelessly around the clock to get our power restored and our homes free of killer trees. If I could, I'd buy every single one of them a drink!

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

Of Lima Beans And Breadcrusts

This is a tale of deception and avoidance.

A story of cunning and guile.

A confession from an ignoble past.

Our story begins in 1969 in a kitchen which, due to factors both economic and cultural, is short on fresh fruits and vegetables.

The economics of the household would best be described as "living on a shoestring" and the cultural background as anglo-saxon, northern European. Which means that, when it comes to food, we either can it, freeze it, or boil it to death.

Which brings us to a staple of our dinner table and the crux of our story.

Frozen Mixed Vegetables.

Frozen Mixed Vegetables With Lima Beans.

I don't know whose brilliant idea it was to take a perfectly good bag of peas, corn kernels and diced carrots and muck it up with lima beans, but, if I ever meet him, it ain't going to be pretty.

Here's the thing about lima beans. Their flavor falls into a category - along with coffee and cabbage - that overpowers any and every other ingredient they keep company with.

Another thing about lima beans. There are some of us (guess who) who have a very sensitive gag reflex. So sensitive that even a hint of lima bean - even the aroma of a lima bean - spurs us to upchuck.

Now, we may not have had Frozen Mixed Vegetables With Lima Beans (let's just call them FMVWLB to save time) every single night for dinner -  I mean, how could we have had FMVWLB every single night - but, in my memory, we did.

Which is where the cunning and guile comes in.

Because there came a point at which my sister and I decided that we had choked down our last lima bean. 

From that point on, dinner became a sort of chess match between us and our parents. We won, not only by not eating the dreaded lima beans, but by convincing them that we had. 

Gambit number one (and my personal favorite) was invented by my sister. It was easy and almost foolproof. You simply put the lima beans into your mouth, pretended to eat them, and then took a drink of milk. You then spit the lima beans into the glass of milk where they drifted down to the bottom and waited for dish clearing time. Success depended on two things. First, not exceeding the milk glass's capacity to conceal the lima beans (the average glass was good for about 9 beans before they would start to show at the edges) and, secondly, you had to be allowed to clear your own dishes and wash the whole mess down the drain before anyone noticed.

Gambit two was the hardest. It involved sleight of hand, timing and luck. Sleight of hand in that you had to get the lima beans into your hand without anyone noticing. Timing in that you had only a narrow window of opportunity to get those lima beans down to where the dog was waiting. And luck in that you had to hope that the dog by your feet - there were two - was the one who would actually eat a lima bean. If you got the other dog, the lima bean rejecter,  you were not only out of luck, but also usually caught, as the dog would take the lima bean, make a sort of smacking sound while he diagnosed its edibility, and then a spitting sound as he rejected it.

Gambit three depended upon the parents losing patience with your refusal to eat your vegetables and leaving the room while grounding you to the table. I must say I remember many a night when I was left by myself at the table with the words "You'll stay there until you've finished everything on your plate!" Once you were alone in the room, it was a matter of stealth. The goal was to get the unwanted vegetables back into the serving pot. To do this you had to be able to leave the oak kitchen chair, (which squeaked) tiptoe across the wooden floor, (which squeaked also) get the lid off the pot (which clanked) and back on again, and get back to your place at the table where you could call out musically "I'm finished...." If you were quiet enough and convincing enough, they would buy it.

Gambit four was the easiest but also brought the harshest consequence when you were ultimately caught. We ate dinner at an antique pedestal table that opened up so that you could put wooden table leaves in it, expanding it for company. This meant that underneath the table was a warren of nooks and crannies into which you could insert unwanted food. As with gambit two, sleight of hand skills were required. You also had to be sitting near a spot with an opening, which wasn't always possible. One tended only to get caught at this on the two or three occasions during the year when the table got opened. At that time, a multitude of dried up breadcrusts (another unpopular item around our house - we would eat the middles out of our peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but the crusts usually got stashed in the table) and other now completely unrecognizable food items would spill out onto the floor. When that happened, you hoped you had the good fortune to be elsewhere because the parental wrath was high and the punishment rarely extended beyond the child that happened to be in the room. 

At some point, FMVWLB stopped showing up at dinner. I'm not really sure when it was. It may have coincided with my mother going back to work and family dinners becoming more of a rarity. Or maybe she just got tired of the chess match.

Or maybe she wanted to - just once - open that table up without dealing with moldy bits of food.

I've never had the nerve to ask.....

What Is It With Valentines?

I don't know if you've spent a lot of time in the greeting card aisle lately, but something odd is going on.

I first noticed it last year when I was trying to pick out a nice anniversary card for John. 

(I know, I know, artistic types like John and I are supposed to be whipping up beautiful homemade cards for each other - as I stated in a previous post, "Like we don't have enough to do.")

As I cruised through all the cards marked "Husband" I was having a tough time finding a nice one. Because so many of the cards had a sentiment like this "I know we haven't always had our fairytale ending, but we're still together and I love you anyway." 

I know you think I'm kidding but I'm not. Card after card said something similar. Then I found the cards that had about 6 paragraphs about true love - not expressing that this woman feels that her husband is her true love - simply stating the fact that, ifyou're lucky enough to find it, it's really, really wonderful. After reading all the previous cards, these cards now had the aura of faking it.

So I decided to check out the "Wife" cards and see if there was a similar trend.

Nope.

All those cards went on and on about "I can't imagine my life without you" or "You complete me". "I'm the luckiest man in the world."

What gives?

I can only deduce that there are a whole lot of crabby women out there who, for some reason, feel they could have done better, and a whole lot of men who feel at least they lucked out and someone said yes.

Or else there are a bunch of crabby women trying to send their husbands a message and a bunch of men just telling their wives what they want to hear.

Or else there is just one crabby woman writing all the cards and she is saying what she thinks everyone should be saying.

I forgot about it until the other day when I tried to find a nice Valentine and ran into the same thing all over again.

It's too late for you to check this theory on Valentines because at 12:01 on the dot all the Valentine cards were spirited away to be replaced with Easter cards (I know this because of the year I forgot to get a card and thought "No biggie, I'll just grab one tomorrow" - Ha!)

But, next time you're in the store, swing on over and check out the anniversary cards and let me know what you find.

In the meantime, I guess I'm back to making my own cards :-)

 

Diary Of A Blizzard - Updated With Photos

Tuesday, February 1. 

7:30 am Bearing in mind dire, dire predictions of oncoming storm, called family we carpool with to see if we should keep the kids home. Since the weather really wasn't supposed to hit until school was over, we drove the 10 miles up and dropped them off with fingers crossed.

Spent most of the morning as usual but keeping a sharp eye on conditions. Had to venture out to get antibiotic prescription refilled for dog with bad tooth and surgery scheduled for Friday. Didn't want to take any chances of getting stuck with no meds and a dying dog.

12:00 Husband headed out to split wood for use in fireplace in case we lose power. Husband also braves frigid temperatures to fix broken snowblower. Pretty sure we're going to need it!

1:00 The winds get stronger and stronger, the waves on Lake Michigan get higher and higher, and cancellations begin popping up all through the southeast corner of the state. Cancelled all my students. Fingers still crossed to get daughter back from school. 

2:00 Receive email from daughter's school that they will dismiss at regular time but have already decided to cancel classes for Wed. Thrilled about the cancelled classes. Less thrilled that they didn't close early. The school is situated smack dab on the lake front where the worst conditions are. The drive up to school is so close to the lake that it is almost a white out from blowing snow alone.

4:00 Daughter arrives home safely. We make leek soup and hot chocolate for dinner. Definitely fine fare for hunkering down. John props up flimsy roof of back porch in anticipation of heavy snow.

6:00 The winds are really getting fierce. Spent 30 minutes just looking out my front window in awe of the power of mother nature.

7:00 We still have power so we continue to do the work we can do on the computer and also penciling up comic strips. Deadlines loom, blizzard or no. The room we work in is almost all windows so we can see the gale force of the wind as the trees bend almost sideways.

10:00 Winds are freakishly strong. The view outside my window looks like Hurricane Katrina with snow. The evergreens are bending like palm trees. Start chronicling the blizzard on twitter - view my twitter coverage here.

12:00 plug ipad in to charge for possible lifeline tomorrow and we call it a day.

Wednesday, February 2

3:00 awake to find power is off as suspected would happen. John heads downstairs to move my harps into the warmest room of the house. A note: my primary concern when we have no power in the winter is that we will lose the furnace and my harps will freeze. Unlike us, the harps can't wrap themselves in blankets and radiate their own heat. Harps that freeze crack. Not only are they my livelihood, they are each about $20,000 to replace.

Spend next hour planning for no power for the duration. Finally fall back asleep.

7:00 am son #2 bursts through bedroom door to inform us there is no power. Begins his process of internet withdrawl.

7:05 Son #2 discovers back porch door is blocked by 4 feet of snow. Desperate to access the cell phone he plugged into the car to charge last night, he bundles up (finally puts on a warm coat after two years of me begging him to wear more than a hooded sweatshirt in winter wisconsin weather) and he braves the drifts and blowing snow, heads out the only semi blocked front door, and battles his way back to the unattached garage housing said car and phone.

(A view from the garage to the blocked back door)

7:10 son #2 texts friends furiously, asks to go to a friend's house a mile away- Ha! that was a good one - receives an answer of "No!" most emphatically. He goes back to bed.

7:15 With no TV, no power to my internet computer and barely any coherent news coverage on the radio (I thankfully have a battery powered ipod dock radio I can access) the ipad becomes our only connection to the outside world. I surf the web looking for info on the power outage and a possible estimate of its duration to no avail. The best I can come up with is that our area has been declared a state of emergency and the national guard has been called out, several major highways have been deemed "impassable" and one news story that the power company repair crews keep getting stuck in the snow.

7:20 Thankfully we have a gas stove and can light it with matches to cook a hot breakfast. We also have phone service thanks to a landline with backup power. But there is still no heat and now that it has been off for 4 hours the temperature is dropping rapidly. A plan is hatched to open no doors to the outside until the power is back on. Of course, immediately everyone can think of a reason they have to open a door. The most pressing being the dog that needs to pee. That would be the 65 lb dog with a 2 gallon bladder that needs to pee. John suits up and heads out the front door with a shovel to clear a peeing space.

7:30 Dog having peed successfully, we settle in to do electricity free activities. We tent camp so this is less of a problem for us than it could be.

9:15 Woo Hoo! Power restored. Immediately crank up furnace to equalize temperature and also prepare for possible outage again later. (I'm a pessimist)

9:30 Now that we know we don't have to keep the house closed, daughter heads out into the snow to play with the neighbor kids and John heads out to clear snow and take pictures. He shovels his way from the front door around to the back porch to where the (thankfully repaired) snowblower is.

10:25 John still running the snowblower. Son #2 still asleep. What he doesn't know won't hurt him.... and trust me, he'll put in plenty of shoveling time later!

John standing in one of the shallower spots.

Off to shovel.

More later.

1:30 pm finally finish shoveling and snowblowing. For the reasons we have so much to shovel, click my earlier post here. Son #2 heads out with friends to shovel for other people. Finally has the good sense to dress warmly and take a thermos filled with hot tea. 

2:00 Sit down to go through photos and add them to blog. Those I haven't posted above you can find here.

3:00 Heading down to the kitchen to make molasses cookies with daughter. School has already been cancelled for tomorrow and, now that we know we can get the car out of the garage if needed, we need to kick back a little and enjoy some family time.

A Summation of the event - for what it's worth:

I can honestly say this was one of the most freakish snowstorms I've ever been in. 24 hours after it began, and with no more snow falling for the moment, I can still hear sirens all over the city. 

Kudos to every school and institution that took the warnings seriously and cancelled their activities. A big Rasberry to Carthage College which chose not to do that. Their reason being that it is a residential campus. Last time I checked, not a single faculty member lived on campus. I hope none of my colleagues - especially the ones who drive from Chicago and Milwaukee - got stranded in snow as a result of that decision.

Kudos to the state and city road crews who have worked round the clock to keep the roads as clear as possible. 

Kudos also to the new governor for declaring our area to be in a state of emergency and calling out the national guard to help find stranded motorists. This probably saved countless lives.

A Rasberry to our local radio stations for the lack of coverage moment to moment in the aftermath. When power is out, internet and TV coverage aren't much use. It would have been nice to have a radio station to turn to for up to the minute info on the power outages. I have a whole post about this problem planned for another day.

Kudos to the local paper - they had to cancel delivery for today but have done the best they can to put current news on their website. And special kudos for whoever decided to cancel their paywall during the crisis. The only flaw in this plan is that only folks with an iphone or ipad or power in their houses were able to get on the internet at all.

The Cat And The Toilet

We have a cat that is, apparently, allergic to water dishes.

No matter how we try, we cannot get him to drink from anything other than the toilet bowl.

He perches on the edge, paddles furiously with his paws to stir up the water, and drinks.

Needless to say, this puts a lot of extra water up onto the seat.

Waiting for the unsuspecting guest who then requests to use my bathroom.

What she must think of me.

My Thing About Shoveling

I am a pain about shoveling snow in my driveway. 

I have this thing where I want it shoveled a certain way and no one else seems to get why.

Here's why.

A) Once you drive on top of snow - or even step on it - it gets compacted and sticks to the pavement. This means that you now cannot scrape it up with your shovel. Not your snowblower either. Which will lead to ruts.

And where I live, ruts are bad. Because within 12-24 hours of every snow fall, we get a follow up temperature drop where everything freezes. And it often doesn't thaw for a couple of weeks.

Especially the ruts.

B) I live on a hill. Once the snow is compacted into frozen ruts, the van won't make the trip up the hill. The neighbors are all familiar with the sight of me getting halfway up the driveway, spinning my wheels in futility, waiting for cross traffic to clear, backing down the driveway and across the street into my opposing neighbor's driveway, and gunning it in an attempt to get all the way up the hill - all the while praying not to be t-boned by a surprise car coming down the street. (We just got new tires that are supposed to be better in snow. God, I hope so - they could hardly be worse than the tires we've had up til now.)

 

C) The top of my driveway has a space to turn around. This is crucial, because I am a short person (5'2") with neck issues who cannot turn my head all the way around when backing up. Plus, even without the neck issues, I'm too short to see backwards down my driveway. The neighbors are also accustomed to the sight of me fishtailing backwards down my driveway as I attempt to determine where it is and where it isn't. Even when there is no snow I cannot properly back down. So being able to turn around (and not make ruts) is also really important to me.

D) Another reason ruts are bad is that I play harp for a living. This means I move my harp myself quite a bit for gigs and must be able to wheel it out to my van without hitting a rut. Hitting a rut makes the harp jump off the dolly.

This is bad.

My gold harp jumped off the dolly this winter and, after a fall of only about 2 inches, broke off one of the back feet. Turns out this foot is pretty crucial. The harp won't stand up without it. It is currently propped in a corner with two walls holding it up while I determine when I can get it repaired. This is why professional harpists all have more than one harp.

E) I am a female person. This means I wear ladies boots and ladies shoes. I have discovered something. Many ladies boots have no tread. That's right - no tread. Tread isn't stylish you see. Apparently falling on your can in pretty, tread-free boots is stylish.

This would possibly explain why all the guy people around me don't understand my obsession with an ice free driveway and sidewalk. They wear sensible shoes with great traction. Their boots are like all weather tires. My boots are like those tires they sell to people in Florida. I think this may be the year to invest in some high tread, ugly boots. I can always change them after I get to the gig.

So what does all this add up to?

It adds up to me needing the entire driveway shoveled down to the pavement, edge to edge.

Which is why, generally, I am the one who gets to do it. 

Which is what typically happens to people who are a pain.

I now understand all those people who move to Florida and Arizona for the winter.

10 Things That Make Me Grouchy

I am having a grouchy morning.

Here are 10 things off the top of my head that make me grouchy.

1) The way, as I try to wash my face at the bathroom sink, the water all runs down my forearm to my elbow, messing up whatever I am wearing. I have attempted to hold my arm at an angle above horizontal. It does not seem to help.

2) The teller at the bank who won't deposit my check from a student because said student mistakenly wrote 1/5/10 instead of 1/5/11. I mean, come on - can't we have a two week grace period where we all get our acts together and wrap our heads around the fact that the year has changed?

3) The way that, no matter what system I try to implement in my household regarding the putting of dishes into the dishwasher, there are always at least 3 dirty dishes in the sink. (Getting dirtier, as people rinse their other dirty dishes over them, BTW)

4) That Border Collie/ Labradors shed by the minute. To keep up, I should be doing nothing other than vacuuming 24/7.

5) The fact that bills never stop coming. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone could choose one month a year to take a vacation from paying bills? Or even one month a decade, for that matter?

6) That no library on the planet stamps due dates on your books any more. Instead, you get a charming receipt (that you lose within 5 minutes of them handing it to you). I am fairly certain that this is one of the most brilliant plots to separate me from $ that has ever been devised. The library knows dam well that we will all lose these little bits of paper and will never again know when anything is due.

7) And, in keeping with number 6, that, while the library pretends to help you keep track of your items, they only send you an email notice about your due date after the book is due. If they really weren't in it for the money, they would send me the reminder 1 week before the book is due. Now there's a concept!

8) And, in keeping with number 7, that, before I brilliantly figured out I should give the library my email address, they only sent me snail mail overdue notices once a book was at least 4 weeks overdue!!!!! (Clearly I have major issues with my library - I may, in fact, eventually have to dedicate an entire post just to my war with librarydom.)

9) That the counselors at our local high school seem to be there primarily to deal with issues like truancy and stemming criminal behavior. How nice it would be if they actually seemed to A) know who my kid is, B) know what he might be considering for a career, C) helping him determine a career if he has no clue, D) figuring out an overall class scheduling strategy that supports his career choice and E) helping him determine what colleges he should be looking at for the next step toward said career. When I was in high school, those things went without saying. I'm pretty peeved that all of the above is now, apparently, my job. Even though I don't have access to the resources and contacts of your average guidance counselor.

10) The one that really has me steamed right now - that, while my property assessment went down by 7% last year, my property taxes went up a whopping 11%. Which, maybe I could stand, if it weren't for 6,7,8 & 9!!!

 

And with that, I must bid you adieu for now. Writing out all of the above has made me even grouchier. I'm going to go shake it off and come back later with my best attempt at levity.

 

 

Analog Time

I have a love/hate relationship with technology. 

You couldn't pay me to go back to my great grandmother's day. Automatic washing machine? Couldn't live without it. Oven/stove that turns on "poof!" in a second? Love it! Toaster, stand mixer, blender, dishwasher - all good. 

My favorite technological advance in the last 20 years? Gotta be the snowblower. After over 40 years of shoveling snow, I bought one for my husband three years ago (in a rare moment of foresight, I gave it to him the year that it started snowing in October and then kept up through April with about 6 blizzards thrown in along the way.) We used to rationalize that we had two strong boys to do the shoveling for us, but it never seemed to work out that way. Either they were away from the house when the shoveling needed to be done, or else they were doing a pretty sucky job of it. Which I'm fairly sure was on purpose.

And don't get me started on the joys of furnaces and indoor plumbing. Biiiiig fan.

Then there are the electronic advances - telephones, cell phones, radio, TV, movies, VCRs DVD players, DVRs, computers and the internet.

First the telephone. Probably my favorite electronic invention of all time. It allowed me, when I was younger and living in a city where I knew no one, to stay in touch with my friends all over the country and all over the world. Of course, the connectivity came at a price - long distance was expensive in those days - but I saved up my money and rationed my calls and kept my sanity.

Cell phones. I pretty much hate cell phones. The amount of time to myself when I am truly unreachable has almost disappeared. And I hate that everywhere you look, everyone is talking on them instead of engaging with their surroundings. Surroundings like their friends, other diners, other folks in the check out line and the road they're driving on. On the plus side, I have to travel a lot for my job - sometimes in extremely hazardous conditions - and I feel a lot safer than I did in the old days when all you could do was put a "call police" banner in your back windshield and wait for some good samaritan to help you out.

Radio and TV - love PBS and NPR. Pretty much hate everything else except old time shows like Dick Van Dyke. Supremely happy not to have cable. I would most certainly go mad. I cannot, cannot, cannot stand commercials or reality shows. (I did get addicted to "Lost" in it's 4th season, but that was courtesy of netflix. When we had to watch the 6th season in real time, I almost couldn't stand it.)

VCRs, DVRs, etc. Looooove these. For a commercial hater like myself, these inventions were a godsend. Not to mention the fact that, with a tight budget and three kids, going to a movie at the actual theater is a luxury. One time we added it up - between the sitter, the ticket price and the concessions, $50 for just the two of us. Take the whole family? You have got to be kidding. 

The internet.

Ah, the internet.

I really have a love/hate relationship with the internet.

Like cable TV, I fought having the internet in my house for years. And I mean years. While John needed to have the internet at his office almost as soon as it was invented, we didn't hook up a connection at the house until November 2005.

Yes, you read that right - 2005. My sister - a real cutting edge technology girl - was sending me emails as early as 1995. She despaired of me as I took 6 weeks to respond. (3 weeks for John to remember to tell me I had an email, 2 weeks for me to start caring about reading it, and 1 week to actually plan out a time to get my butt over to his office to send one back.)

You can imagine how deprived my kids felt. Particularly my oldest, the techno wizard. He had to go to the library and set up an email account there. I maintain that the exercise he got riding his bike to and from the library every day was probably one of the best parenting decisions I ever made.

(Nowadays, I could not get away with this. Every one of my kids' teachers expects them to have ready access to the internet for research, rehearsal schedules, parental report card access, you name it. Especially as the schools go "paperless".)

I cannot pretend that the internet is all bad. It has brought the world to me in a way no other technology has. The number of useful things I can do with it and find out from it are infinite. And I particularly love email. I have established some incredible friendships via email and have cut my phone bills down to almost nothing.

And I love being able to keep up with what is going on in the world in real time. 

But - and now we get right down to it - the internet has slowly taken over my life.

Between us, John and I have 6 email addresses, 4 websites, 5 blogs, facebook and twitter . (I am still holding out against facebook - you can read my reasoning here,)

I'm exhausted just typing all that - let alone checking it all the time. 

When I first started this blog, I tried to get all my friends to start reading it. I hoped they would love it so much that they would spread the word about it (to basically every person they ever knew). It would go viral and I would be able to buy a new house (like the dooce lady). 

Well, not only did hardly any of them read it - they pretty much only read it once and then didn't share it with anyone else.

At first I was hurt. I spent a lot of time analyzing the blog's content and the format, trying to figure out why no one liked it. And I wondered how strong my friendships truly were.

Except, it turns out that is not the problem. The bits that my friends read, they adored.

No, the problem is the kind of friends I have.

They don't spend time on the internet. 

Unlike me, they are living analog lives. Lives filled with driving their kids all over town, going to countless recitals, plays and concerts, going out to dinner together, helping kids with homework, etc. They don't blog or read other people's blogs. They are not on facebook or twitter.

So I decided to follow their lead and take a huge break from the internet for most of the month of December. I had to do some stuff - John and I have websites and businesses to run, after all - but I cut waaay back.

And it felt gooooooood.

So, my first new year's resolution is to put my life back into its proper perspective and carve out what I'm going to call "analog time".

During my analog time, I plan to do stuff with my kids - like jigsaw puzzles and board games and such - , spend more non-work time with my husband, sit and enjoy a good sunset, read books and magazines (god, I miss reading print), do an occasional crossword puzzle, and get together more often with my friends over coffee/tea etc.

Because, untrue to my fear that my friendships were not strong enough, I have found that they are, not only strong - they are priceless.