I just napped here in my computer chair. It's barely 7:00 p.m. on a Friday night, and I'm falling out of my desk because I'm so damn tired. What a lame Friday night. I'm too tired to open a beer. I'm willing to bet I can rally, though.
It all starts Thursday afternoon. My daughter works a mile from my house, and the giant snow storm makes it too dangerous for her to drive to her house and then try to be back to work at 6:45 a.m. She decides to stay at my house (her old house) for the night. The problem is that we already have a foot of snow on the ground and no one has plowed the street yet, so I start shoveling, and I keep shoveling until she arrives and is safely inside my house.
I decide to play with some new software that connects my cell phone to my computer. Then I decide to put my phone pictures into computer files. Then I insist on showing my daughter a slide show. She goes to bed at a reasonable hour, but I am too worried about the storm and getting her to work safely in the morning, so I stay up late and watch the news and the weather on every station I can locate.
Once I get worried and watch the news, I can't sleep and piece together about four hours of sleep. I am awake when daughter's alarm goes off at 5:00 a.m., and I get up with her, get into my snow clothes, and walk with her to work. There's no way anyone is driving -- my street is snowed in. We walk to Dunkins so she can grab an iced coffee (yes, iced coffee in a snow storm where the temp is 2 degrees with wind chills of -20 because this is what hearty New Englanders do). I walk her another quarter mile then leave her to go on the last quarter mile alone while I start trekking back to the house.
Eventually I shower, lest I have to call in a hazmat team. I head off to the grocery store for the few items I desperately need (paper towels, Gatorade, and Cheez-Its, because in this house we know our priorities) and then to the liquor store to return bottles and buy more beer.
By this time, daughter has informed me that I will not be picking her up at 3:00 because she is pulling a double shift so might I be able to pick her up tonight at 11:15 p.m. I tell her that I can bring her car up to work, but I am not really up to walking the mile home again because by now I am just damn cold through my bones even though I am currently sitting in the house in front of an electric heater and with the gas furnace blasting out Florida temperatures. Youngest, who owes me since he slept through the shoveling, drives his sister's car and I lead him along with my own car, run in and drop off keys and dinner (leftovers) and an extra fleece to my daughter, then I come home and make dinner for me and the boy.
Dinner consists of leftover lasagna and some kick-ass chili dip that I throw together without a recipe that turns out to be one of the best things I have ever eaten, but I have no recipe because it's just mish-mash. I run a load of laundry and I run a load of dishes and I start going through some of the Christmas stuff that I've no real intention of putting away just yet. But my computer calls me. It's making that biiiirrrrrrriiiip sound that means someone is messaging me or posting on my Facebook page.
The next thing I know I am nearly crashing to the floor in a dead sleep.
The bad news is that I am practically ready for bed on a Friday night at 7:00 p.m. The good news is that I've taken a mini-nap and can probably go straight-on for another few hours. Good thing, too, because I have a dryer full of laundry to fold, a dishwasher full of clean dishes to unload, and will not be able to fall into a rhythmic sleep until my daughter tells me she is finally home, at her home, safe and sound. That should be around midnight.
I just have one simple question, though: IS IT SPRING YET?
Wishing everyone a safe and warm ride through the bowels of winter. Oh, that almost sounds warm in a really hideous way. (Insert any version you want of smiley face here.)
