Now That You Mention It...: January 2009

Some of you are getting a little bit naggy about my lack of updating. Good news for you -- naggy works! I do have an excuse, though. Oh yes I do. It's called a 21 day winter break, stuck in the house with two very grumpy short people.

See, out here in this lovely city, we had what was called a "weather event." That's fancy speak for 5 inches of snow in a place that is not prepared. And a

pparently, a weather event involves a surprising amount of inaction and denial. There was no plowing, no salting, just waiting for the snow to melt (which it did not).

The weather event also involved the closure of the public schools, which meant that the boys' two week vacation turned into three. And let me tell you, a vacation for them is not a vacation for me. Lucky for us, the school system developed a new alert plan to inform parents about weather related issues. The first day of the snowy week, when it was not even snowing yet, the phone started to ring at 5:45 a.m. When we didn't answer, a computerized voice left a message on our answering machine saying something like, "Due to the possibility that it might snow some time in the future, we are going to cancel all classes. This gives us the added benefit of being able to save our cash-strapped district a little bit of money on our heating bills." The system then proceeded to call our cell phones, so the whole house was alive with ringing and buzzing. At 5:46, the kids whooped with joy. "No school! Hooray!" they sang. At 5:47, Green said, "I'm bored."

I'm afraid that being house-bound for so long drove me to drink. I didn't actually mean to drink as much as I did. But on New Year's Eve, as we were lamenting with friends about the weather, Michael accidentally doubled the amount of tequila in his famous margaritas. And sadly, bloggers, that led to some rather unfortunate middle-aged dancing around the living room to Billy Idol.

Oh, it wasn't pretty. There's even a video out there of the drunken flailing (and singing! "Dancing With Myself, woh-oh-oh"), but don't go asking to see it. You never will.

So anyway, that's a long, windy way of saying sorry. I know it's been a bit of a rough patch in our relationship, but returning to blogging is my new year's resolution. I'll leave you with a few photos from the holidays.