Old Faithful

Random detail: Old Faithful erupts roughly every 90 minutes. We watched it twice today on the live web cam here. I really want to go there with my kids. When I was 8 or 9, I visited Yellowstone and had the time of my life. My little people need to experience that, too. It's really much more exciting in person.

Funniest Headline Ever

Police: Teen with knife, drugs, bongs captured in igloo

A 17-year-old New Castle area boy faces drug and weapon charges after he was found hiding inside a homemade igloo in the Wilmington Manor Gardens community, police said.

Here's the link to the entire story. I don't know where to begin with this one, but I can be relatively certain that any igloos found around here would be homemade. I doubt he bought it on ebay. It's probably difficult, but not impossible, to import an igloo. A few of the online reader comments are funnier than the story itself.

Blizzard

I decided to track this tree across the street. Here it is during a steady snow.

Then I went outside to shovel, which was fun. Shoveling snow is a funny thing because I don't know why I do it. I'm not going anywhere, and no one is going to randomly park in my driveway. The most amusing aspect begins with Tuesday morning.
You see, Bubby still wants to be my baby, which is fine with me AT TIMES. Part of the whole charade is that I carry him down the steps every morning. That came to an abrupt end Tuesday morning when I fell down the stairs. Nothing is worse than falling down steps with a child in your arms because you do everything in your power to protect the child and nothing at all to protect yourself. Any time my children fall, I find myself yelling, "Use your arms! Don't land on your face!" Too bad no one was around to yell that at me. "Use your arms, Mom!" Tootsie, who was behind us watching the whole thing, matter-of-factly declared, "I'll just take the other steps." It's nice to know my endless compassion rubbed off on my children. Anyway, I pulled all kinds of muscles I didn't even know I had. Truly, I felt like my spleen was hanging out of my skin above my hip. You know, when you squeeze an under-inflated balloon and part of it blows up between your fingers? Kinda like that.

Anyway, in that pulled, strained, unable-to-turn-my-head state, I went outside to shovel. Truly, the idea of icing the back of my neck to alleviate the pain from the previous day's fall was far more torturous than going outside in a blizzard to shovel the driveway. When I reached the halfway mark of the driveway, the kids thought it would be funny to try to lock me outside (I outsmarted them and blocked the garage door eye--yes, I take the fun out of everything.). Then, the wind kicked up, and all the snow I scooped away blew right back at me, so I giggled and went back inside to take this photo of the same tree:

Later, I tried to capture the beautiful blowing snow, but my photography skills are just about on par with my walking down the steps skills, so here's a nice, dark shot of the back yard:

Today, we will go outside and shovel the rest of the driveway for no other reason than, well, for no reason.
Enjoy your hot chocolate!

More

Guess what? We're getting more snow.
yippee.
woo.
hoo.
can you sense my excitement?
I did, however, order a new sled, which should arrive before the snow melts because (and let's be real, here) three-and-a-half feet of snow takes a long time to melt. It's pretty, though. I'll take pictures of the blizzard conditions later because that's supposed to be rare for our area.

Here's the cynicism and sarcasm:
Yes, we usually have enough milk to feed a Dick Van Patten's family (kudos to you for understanding the reference), but we are currently down to only three gallons. The Mennonites down the road have a dairy farm, I believe, and we can walk there if the need arises. I never see any cows, but they ship stuff out every day, so either they have well-hidden dairy cows or they're raising veal. The other possibility is they're doing something very illegal and being extremely secretive about it. I did conjecture a while ago that they were raising the hens to supply the eggs for flu vaccine, but when the road went unplowed back in December, I threw that idea out the window. The state would take care of the secret vaccine farms.

We are also running dangerously low on sugar, and we have no raisins. I know what you're thinking: how can one possibly survive without raisins? Well, I don't know. We'll just have to be strong. A side note: we never eat raisins. Ever. However, I just found an awesome granola raisin cookie recipe, but I can't make it. Bummer.

It's time to move on now and watch the snow. I'll also get sucked into a game of Lego Batman Wii, for it is the current favorite of the boy. Enjoy your flakes.

Now, thanks to Wii Fit Plus, two odd phenomena have occurred in my household:

1. Instead of going outside and throwing real, honest-to-goodness, authentic snowballs, they prefer to throw and dodge fake ones on TV. It's not like we have 25 inches of snow or anything unusual like that.

2. Now, they walk around declaring, "I'm not unbalanced."

The latter is completely debatable considering the former.

Hmmmm...

It appears we got some snow, and while we were out shoveling it, the dog ate the loaf of bread, the one for which we fought the panicked crowds at the grocery store to buy. Now what?

It's ok... we have more snow coming on Tuesday night, so we'll rush to the store, all a-flutter, to get another loaf.

Update: the fondue was fantastic, but I haven't made the lava cakes yet.

Snow? Oh, No

Well, it's snowing, and a state of emergency begins in 2 hours, which means I had better rush to the grocery store and purchase at least $150 worth of comfort foods and batteries. Milk, bread, eggs, meat, brownies, cookies, cupcakes, frosting, chocolate, gum, candy... Wait, I have most of that stuff in my pantry. But, what if I run out while I wait for DelDOT to plow the road?

Oh, back it up! What am I thinking? DelDOT doesn't plow that road. The neighborhood is beautifully clear because we shell out an arm and a leg to have it plowed, but no one cares about the road outside the hood. We pack down the snow until it's a 4-inch layer of ice, and then we enjoy driving on it with all our hearts! Hurray for my monster SUV's. Unfortunately, my excessive gas consumption wasn't enough to keep Valero open and save all those jobs. Neither were all of my neighbors' SUV's, or all of those SUV's driven by tons of people I know. How could it lose $1 million per day? How could that happen?

Sorry about the rant. Needed to get it out. I didn't even mind the smell of the refinery--I kind of liked it. So what if my life will be a few years shorter. They wouldn't have been very exciting years anyway. I see my grandmother with that oxygen tank, and that doesn't look very fun. I've heard about incontinence, too, and that's not really my thing, either, so bring it on, Valero.

Anyway, back to the snow. I did go to the store because I wanted fondue and lava cakes. We already had all of the bread, milk, eggs, cookies, brownies, etc., anyone could possibly consume in a month. Seriously, we have at least six gallons of milk in the house at any given time. Lactose intolerant people can't even look at our home without feeling ill. For some bizarre reason, I stock up on brownie mixes all summer long, so if we run out of everything else during the ONE day during which we will be confined to the house, we can survive on brownies. There was one other thing that I absolutely had to buy: deodorant. Yes, I ran out of deodorant one day before our horrendously crippling snowstorm. I can't be confined to the house for a day and stink the whole time. Seriously, that would not be cool.

So, the next step in our plan is to sit here and wait for the snow to get really bad. We have flashlights, batteries, fire-starting utensils, blankets, food, sleds, mittens, everything. We are good to go. My flashlight is so awesome that it even came with a warning not to look into the light. Of course, you know, what's the first thing every person does after turning on a flashlight? Everyone in my household has now experienced temporary blindness on multiple occasions. No one can resist. I can safely light a road crew at night with that thing.

As of now, here we sit and wait. The sledding will be great! So will the lava cakes and fondue. Enjoy your snow, and may your bread and milk be delicious.