Notes on a Wednesday

So, remember those projects that I alluded to several posts ago? Well, one of them is going to get kicked off on February 1st!  It's an exciting time for Hilary with One L.  I hope that you're as excited as I am when the big reveal comes.

Today, we were home again, looking at about two inches of powdery snow.  Here was my face when the call came in cancelling school:

(image)

 I kid. . .sort of.  I was kind of prepared. I had gone to the store early in the day on Tuesday to stock up on snacks and foodstuffs.  I had put in a good workout at the gym, so skipping today wasn't going to be a big deal. I managed to get in a trip to Chipotle and Starbucks before volunteering in C's class and having M's parent teach conference as well as dispatching with a handful of emails and conference calls.  I was feeling pretty productive going into the coming snow day.

The girls went to bed not knowing whether or not there would be school; it hadn't been decided by the time they had lights out.  Still, with the way the flakes were falling, I was pretty sure they'd have at least a delayed opening. I still got up at my regular time, got dinner in the crock-pot, and got the first cup of coffee ready in the light of the blue dawn sky.

The girls were up by 7:30, bombarding me with requests to eat, have hot chocolate, watch tv and go outside, all at the same time.  My plan was drag out the activities as long as possible so that we weren't all looking at each other like "What now?" come lunch time.  They had run of the house while I shoveled the driveway (who needs a gym workout) and salted the walkways.  As I flung shovelfuls of snow over my shoulder, I realized they're getting old enough to lend a hand with this chore.  Maybe not this season, but next winter? They're getting monogrammed shovels for Christmas.

In between dispensing things to do, I crossed several items off of my to-do list.  I will say, though, that I felt like I was moving through the house on permanent cleaning detail.  The girls would enter a clean room, move through it and leave a swath of debris in their wake.  I can't tell you the number of times I swept the kitchen floor, put books away, closed the toilet lid, and picked up barrettes, stray socks and crayons off of the floor.  It's like the they molt as they pass through rooms, but it's all pink and purple, glittery little girl detritus.

(image)

This is a picture from my photo a day challenge, but the playroom looked about the same today.  Ahh, the photo-a-day challenge.  The end is in sight! Tomorrow, the second to last day of January, the challenge is "penultimate".  No idea what I'm going to do, but I chose that word because when I used to go the kettle bell studio, the instructor would yell out "Penultimate!" whenever we'd get to the second to last set in our series.  The first few times he said it, I had no idea what he was talking about.  Yeah, I had to look it up. Turns out kettle bell is good for brawn and brains!

Once I've wrapped up the photo challenge and decided how to preserve the experience (poster or book of all 365 snaps), I'll be turning my focus to some photography work.  And I'd like to do some additional writing that I've been putting off.   One piece I'm working on requires that I supplement some of the work with historical background. I realized that I am way far removed from doing anything that looks like research.  I went to the library and was disappointed that I could just beeline it to the card catalog to search my topics.  I tried every combination of keywords I could think of in the library database and could not get remotely close to what I was looking for.  If I had to write a paper AND use proper citation for it? Forget it.  Thankfully, Wikipedia was a good jumping off point and I'm narrowing down resources to things that can actually help me.

I know, I'm being purposefully obtuse. I want to keep you curious and coming back for more details!