Yikes.
<sigh>
I've shoveled a lot of snow, lately. I'm tired of shoveling snow. I used to really like all that white stuff, but lately I've been thinking it's high time that someone handed God a bottle of a really good dandruff shampoo and then turned around and gave Old Man Winter a kick in the cojones (or any other body part of your choosing -- I just want to kick Old Man Winter). I like having four seasons, but I am SO over winter... and even now that it's Spring, somehow it's still feeling like Winter. There's still a small pile of hard-frozen snow in front of my house where the stuff was all-too-recently piled higher than my vehicle. The ground is so saturated with water from the melting snow & ice, trees are falling in the slightest breeze and I'm reluctant to walk on any surface that isn't paved... while those surfaces that are paved are slowly fragmenting into something one used to find only on an automobile manufacturer's test track that takes even the most luxurious sedan's suspension system right to its very limits of capability.
I haven't put my snow shovel away in two months. No, not "a long time that feels like two months," or "a long enough time for me to exaggerate a little." For two whole freakin' months, it's leaning against the railing that (along with a change from tile to carpet) marks the divide between "foyer" and "living room" in my house. Open the front door, and there it is, looking even more worn than I feel, with a bit of a long, thin rust mark on the floor from its metal front edge. I'm putting that fakakte shovel away this weekend -- I hope Old Man Winter gets the message!
Aside from kvetching about Winter overstaying its welcome, I've been doing lots of other stuff. One particularly nice thing was when the whole family was invited to share some good friends' Gotcha Day celebration, which included a lot of reminiscing (some happy, some not) of the people & events that marked The Wait for all the families represented around the table. Can four whole years really have slipped by already?!?
I have decided that my niece is powered internally by at least two small nuclear reactors. I've included a quick sample of a typical dance that can go on (and on and on and on) for 15-20 minutes at a stretch; not only is Miri able to out-do the Energizer Bunny, she's got better moves than her uncle! Meanwhile she has continued to amaze us with unexpected off-the-cuff actions and remarks that seem appropriate to someone several years older. She was recently bumped up to (re)join the five-year-olds at daycare; even though her birthday's not until June, most of her friends are slightly older and were moved up into that group at the beginning of the year, leaving Miri with the Threes and Fours. AJ spoke with the teacher, whose response was something like, "Sure, no problem -- she's smarter than a lot of those kids anyway!" (Okay, I stopped kvetching, now I'm kvelling. But I won't apologize. <g>)I (we) have also become familiar with the "Frozen" movie and characters. I don't mean "oh, yeah, there's these two sisters and a crazy snowman, and a guy whose best friend is a reindeer" familiar; I mean "we watched the full movie several times and Miri is singing along with most of the songs from memory and can almost quote entire scenes" familiar. Things have gone so far, she's already told Mommy that she'll have an Ariel birthday party next year, this year she's going to have a Frozen party, and after the party everyone will come back to the house and watch it on the TV there. (She's also told this to several of her little friends, a couple of whose mothers have already had to ask AJ when the party is supposed to happen because now their kids won't stop talking about it!) To be honest, it's actually a pretty good movie and we like its many messages about love and caring and family and being true to yourself and being accepting of others... but just once I'd like to go to sleep without hearing "Let It Go" echoing in the back of my mind.
Ah, to be young again...!
And, using that last comment as a segue, I'll share A Watermark Moment that I had this week. Mom & Dad had taken me to a doctor's appointment (more on that in a moment), and on the way home we discovered all three of us had a hankering for pancakes so we stopped at an IHOP for lunch. Lo and behold, Yours Truly was noisily shocked to discover he now qualifies for the "Senior" menu at that fine culinary establishment. The shock wasn't quite as bad as when I first realized I was 30, or the even greater shock when I realized I'd reached the half-century mark... but I think it left a mark. (Dude, weren't you just in
And as for that doctor's appointment... It was a pre-op exam. To make a long story short, what I thought was a brand-new honkin' big floater in my eye has turned out to be a case of my retina going on walkabout, so an otherwise nice gentleman will be doing some rather drastic things to my right eye bright & early this coming Monday morning. I'll be offline for a while while we try to convince all the different parts of my eye's internal anatomy to play nicely together.
I'll have to wait to see how long it is before my next post, but I can pretty much guarantee that it won't be until mid-April... so, until then, I'm sending you all wishes for a happy Spring & a pain-free Tax Day, and a reminder to get your eyes checked regularly!
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