glitches

updating from the crypt

Now that I'm actually paid to do this, it's hard for me to stay focused on the goals.  What are my goals?  Simple, I suppose- tenure, which means I have my 3-year review (they call is CODE-3, which makes it sound supersecretveryimportant), and then my tenure review at 6 years.  Between now and then I have to generate a certain number of manuscripts, do some new research, teach some, and be involved in university committees.  It seems doable, but that six year timeline makes it seem a bit abstract at times. 
It doesn't help that I'm just not feeling the love on these manuscripts, although I recognize and understand that I really need to pump out at least three of them in the next year.  I am trying to think of them as big term papers, but hey! I used to procrastinate those too.

Other key events:

The lentil is now 5 years old and going through something.  This is the first time in my parenting life where my kid is not an open book to me, and I can't read his every thought.  I can't solve his every problem.  I don't like feeling this helpless.  We suspect he's feeling resentful about having a little brother, but we just can't tell for certain.  It's very hard to be in this position, because I want so much for him to be happy.  I tried the overlove thing with him this weekend- giving him tons of attention and special one-on-one time, but that didn't change the fact that he was whining and crying at every turn.  He's definitely not talking to us.  I hate this.  I'm in the process of making a meeting with his teachers, to see if they have any advice.  After all, they're the experts on five-year-olds, we hope.  at least.

The peanut is also doing this cranky whiny thing, but his is alternating with being absolutely charming.  He's a cutie, but totally infuriating.  And while he had some speech issues when he was newly talking, he's now far beyond his age with verbal ability, so I have learned that I need to stop being such a worrywart and expect that the kids are fine and healthy.

I'm trying to get back into the rhythm of writing full blog posts, but honestly?  my brain thinks in facebook feeds these days.  but I'm trying.

train life

It’s been awhile since I posted here- things got a little crazy.  First there was the baby, then there was the dissertation, then there was the job search, then there was the madcap month of trying to find time to relax before the new job started.  While I feel like I did a pretty good job with the baby and the dissertation, and was successful with the job search, I failed miserably at the relaxing before starting work.  And now… I work every day, in an office, with a computer and a support staff (albeit small and overstressed), and I commute an hour each way every day I go to the office.  Technically I can work from home a few days a week, but it’s been very difficult to find a way to make my work at home days productive enough to justify doing it more than once a week. 

Right at this moment I’m watching the sun rise while riding on the commuter train to work.  It’s hard to get up in the middle of the night to get to the train, and I like it better when I can drive.  When I drive, I’m in control of when I go and when I leave, and it only takes an hour each way.  I can park where I want, and if I need to go to an offsite meeting midday I don’t have to worry about buses or taxis.  But that means I have to drive, and it just feels irresponsible to drive every day when there is a perfectly functional train.

The problems with the train are multiple.  Because it is pretty brand-spanking-new, there are a few glitches.  They still have a little trouble with minor issues, such as having cows standing on the tracks.  I haven’t been on a train which hit a cow yet, but it happens often enough and it creates a huge disruption to the schedule (train has to hit the cow slowly, which slows it down, then has to be taken out of commission to be washed, other trains have to approach carcass slowly to avoid being derailed until cow is removed from the tracks).  It’s a whole process and it can really disrupt service and cow farming both.  There have also been problems with getting the gates at intersections to go down before the train crosses, which you can imagine is just slightly important. 

But for me, the biggest problem with taking the train is the time investment.  I take the first train in the morning because there’s a shuttle at the arriving station which will take me to work. There are no other shuttles between the train station and work until the afternoon, so if I miss that shuttle then I’m on the city bus which isn’t as fast or as nice.  Oh, and if the train is delayed (by a cow, or weird gates, or some fleck of dust on the tracks), the shuttle that is supposed to pick up train passengers and take them to campus leaves without the passengers.  There’s about a 2 minute window for us to hustle from the train to the shuttle outside the transit center, which makes mornings extra exciting.   In the evening I try to take the same shuttle, but that means I get to the train station 20 minutes early.  And if I want to be home to see the kids before they go to sleep, I have to leave my office by 3:35 in the afternoon, which makes for a short day. I don’t mind the short day because I can work on the train, but it does mean no afternoon meetings.  And even with leaving at 3:35, still don’t get home until 6:00.  In summary:  driving means I can leave home after the kids have gotten out of bed and still be home in time for dinner, and taking the train means relying on mass transit scheduling, little flexibility, and only seeing the kids for bath and bed at night.   And being exhausted all the time because I have to get up so damn early but have no time to exercise during the day.

I have a good friend who also takes the train and she has become very zen about it.  She pointed out to me that taking the train is about so much more than having a convenient way to get to work.  The scenery is nice, and if you plan your day around the train it’s not such a bad way to travel.  You just have to find a way to reconcile the inconvenience of being gone for 12 hours every day and devoting 4 of those hours to transit.  I shouldn’t complain- this same friend has a much stricter schedule and has to add to her worries the issue of possibly missing the last train every evening.  She takes the first train in the morning with me, but she can’t leave work until after 5:00pm so she ends up taking a train which gets her home at 8:00.  She only has 10 hours to be with her sweetie, run errands, sleep, and eat before she’s back on the next train.

So that’s train life.  Not very exciting, but what I worry about these days.  But now that I’m taking the train, I have more time for things like blogging, which is good.

 

Crap and goodness

The goodness?  My wonderful sons.  The lentil taught himself this poem last night after hearing it only a few times.  It was amazing to watch.  The youtube is below.  I was blow away by his genius.  But then I looked at other videos of children with the tags of "child genius" on youtube and was frightened.  I will be changing that tag, I think.  I meant it tongue in cheek, like, "yeah, I have a pretty bright kid and I'm proud of him" and not "My kid kicks your kid's poem-reciting ass!"  Wierd people out there.

The crap... Our refrigerator pooped out on us.  It's only a year old, so it shouldn't be doing what it's doing.  It won't get cold enough, no matter how low we set the thermostat.  We only realized this when I started vomiting on Wednesday night after eating a chicken salad sandwich made with mayo and chicken that had been in the fridge.  That night our geriatric dryer also died.  So Thursday was spent researching then buying a dryer, trying in vain to find a refrigerator mechanic who would come before next week, and throwing up.  Or dry heaving.  The good thing is that sweets took the day off and did most of the heavy lifting so I could mope around the house whining about how nauseated I felt.  The bad thing is that we ended up spending a lot of money on a good dryer and now we're many more steps away from doing the home improvement projects we had hoped to do this month.  Sigh.

But the kids are good and I'm trying desperately to work on my dissertation.  I have another interview lined up for February, which makes me about 1/3 of the way to having enough subjects for the study.  Daunting.  very daunting.

in other words, it's a hard knock life for us.  But we're smiling and trying and that's about all we can do.

gifts received

Top gifts of the year

Money!  I got money from my grandmother, which was a real treat.  I was hoping she'd get me an iPod, but instead gave me enough money to buy an iPod.  The problem is that I now have to decide how to spend the money, and although I'd love to run out and buy another iPod today, we really could use that cash to buy a new china hutch or pay an electrician to come in and install lighting in the bedrooms.  Stupid '70s lighting what with the wall switch but no fixtures.  why?  why?

Books!  Every year I put a bunch of books on my list, mostly pleasure reading but some more serious stuff.  This year my mother in law got all the pleasure reading books off my list, so I've spent the past two days reading stuff that I really wanted to read.  Peter Walsh's "It's all too much" and that big Oprah hit "Eat, Pray, Love".  Exciting.  Which reminds me, I should go do some yoga.

CD's!  They Might Be Giants!  Gogol Bordello!  Other exciting things from my wish list!  Now if only my iPod was working again, I could listen to them.  As it is, I have to wait until I get home, then rip them onto iTunes, then burn new cds so I can play them in my temperamental car cd player.  sigh.

Cashmere!  It's not really Christmas without a little cashmere.  A lovely little ballet sweater in black, looks great, isn't too casual.

Sheet Music!  I admit, I geeked out and got the sheet music from The Piano.  Remember that movie?  Well, I have the music. 

Earrings!  I love them.  gold, with little flowers.  Sweets got these for me.

Starbucks gift cards.  Three- yes, three starbucks gift cards.  I'm in coffee heaven.

Coupons for Babysitting!  Hooray, grandma.  I can't wait to redeem these little suckers.

There's other stuff, but nothing too ridiculous.  I have to admit, I'm quite pleased with the haul this year.  It's all pretty modest, which is nice.  I don't have to feel beholden to anyone for buying me something extravagant, even though I know they made the decision to buy the thing and I shouldn't hold myself responsible for other people's actions.  I'm glad because most of the items are either useful or consumable, so I don't have a lot of extra stuff coming into my home.  And most of it is quite small, so it won't be too expensive to ship home.  I'm trying desperately hard to only have quality stuff, and to be rid of the extraneous garbage that has been piling up around the edges of my life.  This year, I'm happy to observe that the stuff is quality, with low pile-up potential.

Hip, hip hooray.

Honoring

Last night I was reading through the google search terms people had used to find my blog.  The saddest one ever:  "I have everything and I'm still sad."  I read that out loud to sweets and he smiled and patted my leg.  poor momma.

Sweets and I went out to lunch today.  The restaurant we chose is across the street from the main and federal cemetaries.  As was our luck, today was the day they buried a police officer who was recently shot and killed by her own son.  The whole story is really unfortunate- the son is schizophrenic, he shot her with her own gun, and she seemed to be a good person.  It's a loss.  So today was the funeral, and we happened to be just across the street having our lunch when the procession began.  I don't know quite why it happened this way, but the funeral process went from next to the federal graveyard, around the block to the city graveyard right next door to the federal graveyard.  I don't know why they didn't go straight there, but I'm not a cop so....  Not only is it really, really sad to see a funeral procession so large (I think every cop in the state came to pay their respects), but it was unfortunate for us because we were trapped in the middle of the procession with no way of getting out.  Sweets was taking time off work to have lunch, and I felt pretty bad that he was trapped with me when I knew he just wanted to get back to the office.  Me and my bad ideas.

So there we were, driving in circles trying to find a way around the procession so he could get back to work.  I went the back way, thinking I could get across somehow, and found myself perpendicular to the very tail of the procession.  (It was all "public service units" from Albuquerque, which was funny somehow. not so much now.  I guess you had to be there.)  I thought I would pull into the middle of the street (between the islands) so I could jump into traffic once the procession ended.

Let me just say, perhaps thinking I could wait for the procession to pass while parked in middle of the road was a bit insane.  Because the instant I pulled in, my car was surrounded by police cars.  Or should I say, "public service units."  Apparently I had crossed the velvet rope for that exhibit and was now being considered a threat to the artwork.  Hoooweee.  "Public Service Officers" were yelling at me, shaking their hands and telling me there was no way I was going to be allowed into the intersection.  Ever.  Even after the procession had passed.  I was expected to wait there forever, stuck between the islands on St. Francis Drive, contemplating traffic for all eternity.  But then, two seconds later, the procession ended and traffic was back to its normal pattern, albeit slightly congested.  Very quickly a big truck let me in, and there I was, swimming with the stream again.  Only the truck in front of me had a great bumper sticker that said "Honor death.  Create peace."

Now I know tempers were high, being that they were burying one of their own, and I'm really, really sorry this officer was killed.  I felt like crying myself, seeing that big procession, and not just because I was facing a doozy of a traffic jam.  But yelling and screaming at me for wanting to wait out the procession in a way that would allow me to actually join traffic in a timely manner?  That's not so out of the ordinary, is it?  And what does yelling and screaming accomplish?  Very little, I say.  very little.  I propose we honor this officer's death by improving mental health services for people in our nation,and doing what we can to create peace in our own corners of the planet.

Holidailies Welcome

I don't know what I was thinking signing up for holidailies this year.  I have this fantasy life where I have all the time in the world for crap like writing in my blog, making cute gifts, and changing the health care system for American Indians.  But, what?  I have two kids?  One is only three months old?  I'm lucky if I get to shower AND eat breakfast, let alone check my school email account.

Even so, I'm going to do my best to follow through with holidailies this time.  I did pretty well last year, even though I was newly pregnant, my internet connection was crap, and we were moving into our first real-life home.  I will do my best to carve out a little each day so I can post and get back into writing in my blog after a brief hiatus.

(even though I did forget to post yesterday, remembering at 4:00 this morning and wishing I was in a place where the time zone would be forgiving.  Because I'm that dedicated, you know?  If I did live in Hawaii or some such place, I totally would have hopped out of bed and posted something, just so I would have a perfect record.  I'm an overachiever in all the wrong places.)

If you're finding me through holidailies, welcome.  I feel like I know you already.  We go way back, you and I.  We're like this (fingers crossed).  I can't wait to explore those feelings with you.  How does that make you feel?  Or, as my mother would put it in her not-at-all subtle therapist way, what's THAT about?

I like:  long walks in the desert.  babies who aren't crying.  watching tivo in the middle of the night.  wearing hats to cover my greasy hair.  exercise when I can get it.  eating chocolate and reading Cathy.  Putting my dream shoes on my favorites list on Zappos.  welling up watching Extreme Home Makeover.  crossing things off my dissertation to-do list.  submitting articles for publication.  (At least I think I would like that, if I ever did it.) Getting crap done.  Hearing people say "Let's get 'er done."  sunsets.  kittens.  that my like list is much longer than my don't like list.

I don't like: when the fabric stretches out while I'm sewing and the seams end up clumpy or uneven.  Having to make endless coldcalls.  Whining child.  When the baby can't commit to nursing and latches on and off over and over again.   Wind.  When the nap is too short.  How ridiculously long my perfect drink order is at Starbucks.  feeling foolish.

So, hi.  see you tomorrow!

The good things

With all the bitching and moaning, I forget to tell you about the good things.  This is probably pretty normal, what with my tendency to harp on the impossible to fix stuff and let the good things buouy me up with nary a second glance.  But guess what?!  There are good things!

Most important good thing:  I made it to 37 weeks gestation, which means the next big feat will be having this baby before I reach 42.1 weeks.  And given my track history, I think this is doable.  So stay tuned, faithful readers, because this is about to become a baby blog again.  The baby is head down, facing rear.  He's moving less and less because there just isn't enough room for both of us in this town.  While being pregnant has meant we don't get to go to all the great concerts and street fairs August has to offer in Santa Fe, I can deal.  My biggest sadness is that we will definitely miss Zozobra this year.  I've already started explaining the lentil that we will just have to watch it on television.  Thank goodness the Kiwanis club reconsidered their decision not to air it on public access television.  (another good thing!)  I'm also missing Indian Market, and the new and exciting Muzic fest.  We also missed what turned out to be a spectacular concert by Rufus Wainright because I just couldn't bear the thought of going back and forth to the bathroom a million times at that particular venue.  Actually the bathroom thing is really cramping my style in a lot of ways this month.  But you know what?  We're going to have a baby, so phooey on social life.  And this is supposed to be a post about the good things.  So I will just say, yay!  baby!  And I had my first painful contraction the other day, so I know the old 'ute is gearing up for some serious action in the next few weeks.

Other good things:

My brother has been going to rehab and he seems to be open to actually learning something.  We'll see where this takes us.

Our fruit trees, despite our efforts to murder them in their prime, are pumping out fruit faster than we can harvest it.  This is the first year with these trees, since we just moved into this house in December.  But the apples are getting plump and juicy, we've already harvested peaches off one tree that were AMAZING, and the little green plums were supposed to be harvested when they were little and green and they rock my roll.  Last night sweets woke me up to tell me that the pears are on the verge of amazing, and I forgave him because i emailed him last week to tell him all about the plums.  The trees are heavy with fruit, and we're going to have so many apples I don't know quite what we're going to do with them.  On top of that, we have grapes (!) growing on the back fence, we had a sweet little crop of blackberries, and our sad little tomato plants that have struggled so have yielded the most amazing tomatoes ever.  And they're just getting started.  I can't wait to see what happens with the squash and pumpkins.  We got started a little late, so our harvest is coming late, and I hope things don't freeze before we can get pumpkins big enough to carve for halloween.  The incredible yield makes up for all the sunflowers and beans we slaughtered earlier in the year when we went away for a very hot week and they all died shriveled, sad little deaths.  (moment of silence)

The lentil has entered his amazingly brilliant period.  Yes, he's reading.  And he's totally brilliant.  Did I mention that?  The other day we were in a parking lot and there was no parking and cars were all piled up on each other trying to steal a little real estate.  I said, mockingly, "What the!..." and his little voice came from the back finishing my statement: "heck"  It was really, really cute.

Another good story:  Before the lentil was born we did the expectant parent thing of putting the cat in all the baby stuff.  Then we took photos.  The other day the lentil and I were looking through all those old photos, and came across one of Jasmine the cat in the Baby Bjorn.  The lentil looked at it a minute, then said "Oh look, it's Jasmine when she was a baby!" because, of course, she was too young to walk and had to be carried.  It was very sweet.

Tonight the lentil is having a sleepover with his best friend.  I'm scared for my sanity, but these are the people who will be taking him when I go into labor, so we have to reciprocate.  The last time we did this, the little girl was up about 15 times in the night talking in her sleep and crying out and waking up everyone.  We used to day we'd do this every week, but as it turned out we were so scarred this is only the second time she's come over.  Wish us luck.  I hope that this turns out to be another good thing.

just a week

Lately my life has been filled with these teeny little disappointments and inconveniences.  I feel like I can't say that things suck or that I'm so depressed or anything, I'm just blah on everything.  How can I feel justified in griping when everything turns out pretty well?

We flew home from Rhode Island on Wednesday.  (I never in a million years would have guessed that so much of my adult life would be spent in the smallest state in the union.  As a kid I thought, some day I'd like to visit Rhode Island just to say I'd been there.  I never thought I would grow up to marry a little Rhody, let alone spend weeks at a time reading back issues of New Yorker in his parents house in Providence.  go figure.)  Our flight left RI on time, but when we approached Chicago there were reports of lightning storms so our plane circled for an hour.  The lentil was on good behavior, so we weren't sweating it too much.  We assumed correctly that our connecting flight would also be delayed and so we figured on getting dinner at O'Hare and then catching the next flight to Albuquerque.  Inconvenient, but at the same time it wasn't disasterous, so we were mellow.  The Albuquerque flight was delayed 3 1/2 hours, but that meant the lentil was exhausted when we finally boarded the plane and he slept the whole way.  Nice trade-off, really.  The descent into Albuquerque was choppy as usual, but not that bad because it always is a little rough.  None of our luggage was missing, although the baggage handlers did break a wheel off sweets' new suitcase.  Inconvenient, but since it's one of those bags with four wheels instead of two it was just a little rickety.  We drove home and were in bed by midnight.

The next morning was more of the same.  The lentil was up at 6:00.  To be expected, given the time change, but still a bit painful since we hadn't been able to sleep through the flights and drive home from the airport.  We all got up and started our day.  We had no reasonable food for breakfast, but the lentil was cooperative and ate what we put in front of him.  (well, he did refuse to eat breakfast cereal with chocolate soy milk, but that isn't such a crime.  I would have done the same.)  Pancakes were had by all.  After breakfast I went through the mail and noticed that the package that I really need for my gap insurance application had been sent express mail.  I didn't know this, but express mail is held for only 5 days, then returned to sender.  According to the little post office slip, it had been scheduled to be returned to New Haven on Tuesday.  Piss.  I quickly dressed and prepared to go to the post office. 

When I'd collected my morning paper that morning I'd observed that the trunk to the car had been left open.  I assumed sweets had done it, as he can be pretty spacey about that sort of thing when he's tired.  I made a mental note to be sure to start the car before he left so I wouldn't be stuck with a dead battery, since the trunk has a light that goes on when it's opened.  As I raced to the car to go to the post office, I noticed that the driver's side door was also open a crack.  Then I noticed that the contents of the glove box were strewn all over the passenger seat.  That's when I had the realization that we had been victims of a car theft.  But it was odd, because the only thing that seemed to be missing was the handful of spare change I keep in the ashtray for parking meters.  I called sweets out to the car, more pissed than anything else because he'd left the car unlocked.  But nothing of note seemed to be missing so again, inconvenienced, but not terribly unlucky.  They hadn't broken anything, the stereo was still there, and the car runs just as well as always.  Not a big deal.

At the post office I presented my slip and asked if they could please check to see if my package was still there.  The post office clerk was friendly, but after a quick look-see she confirmed that the package probably had been sent back already.   Dejected, I started for the door.  Just as I was about to exit, the clerk called back to me and told me that sometimes things don't get sent away so quickly, and she would look again for me.  She went back and looked for about 20 minutes, leaving me standing there at the counter wishing for a chair.  But her search was fruitful, and she emerged triumphant with my package.  Apparently it had been mis-filed, so it wasn't going to go anywhere until someone had found it.  I left feeling lucky, but in that unlucky way.  Lucky it had been mis-filed, sore from standing at the counter, and still feeling a bit violated from the break-in.

As it turns out, the thieves did make away with something sort of important to us.  He/she stole our travel bag of electronic crap- the chargers to our cell phones and iPod, my nice sound-reducing headphones, and other little wire connectors and things.  In all a pretty worthless booty, if only because my headphones were on their last legs anyway, but still completely inconveniencing.  My cell phone is dead now, which is how we figured out they stole the bag in the first place.  In the break in, they rifled through everything in the car, including the trunk, and it appears now that they were looking for the ipod.  But we got them!  We still have the ipod, just no way to connect it to my computer.  wah wah.

So I would bitch and moan, but it all turned out pretty okay in the end.  Irritating, aggravating, but nothing much has been lost or damaged.  About half of the plants in my new little garden died while we were gone, but the other half lived and the most important ones survived, so even that isn't that bad.  The worms in our worm bin all died, but we weren't that committed to keeping worms anyway, so that isn't the worst thing in the world. 

It's all sort of blah.  It wasn't even a really bad week, you know?  Just a week.  An inconvenient week.

police notes

I love to read the police notes in our local newspaper.  There's something special about crime in New Mexico.  Yes, we get the standard lot of break-ins and driving under the influence.  There are the usual arrests for drug issues and domestic disturbances.  But the local newspaper has a certain flair at reporting the crimes in the area.  Granted, we're no arcata eye, but we have our niche here.

The best one I ever read was in the early '90's, when the blotter reported a case of road rage in which a motorist reported another motorist for pulling a gun on them and encouraging them to "learn to drive."

Lately there's been an increase in home and car burglaries which police suspect may be linked to a recent upswing in the availablility of cheap heroin.  Remember when federal officials were warning us that buying drugs only supported the terrorists?  I suppose in some twisted way they were right, only they were talking about people in Afghanistan. 

I love to read the lengths to which some arrests go.  When so-and-so, age 24 is arrested for drunk in public, domestic disturbance, public indecency, and resisting arrest, you know that was a pretty good party.  When a whole family is arrested for domestic disturbance, unregistered firearm, resisting arrest, taking hostages, and destruction of public property, you're just glad you were home asleep and it didn't happen near you.

Going by today's paper, it sounds like the heroin trade is drying up again and thieves are now looking into niche markets.  Amongst the booty being hawked on the black market this week:  several plants were uprooted from a resident's yard (they also tried to steal the dryer but were unsuccessful), a Skill magnesium worm-drive saw (whatever that is, you know it's hot!), a black leather fanny pack, a salad bowl and salt and pepper shakers (check your wedding gifts, newlyweds!), items were stolen from an upholsters business (needles?  thread?  heavy fabric in simple patterns? got 'em here!) and a case of poker chips.  In addition, someone broke some windows on a car by throwing spark plugs at it, and our needle thief was busy because he/she broke some windows at "the needle's eye" but nothing was stolen.  And my personal favorite is the report that an officer found the door of a 1979 ford pickup open at 6:30 in the morning and was compelled to write a report about it. 

Yup, the police department here is busy.  We gotta keep them on their toes, you know.  The first time my brother was arrested, it was for lighting those little puffs of cottony-stuff that comes off Cottonwood trees on fire with his lighter.  Serious arson.  Keeping the streets safe for Cottonwood Puffs!

I have learned something by reading the police reports.  I have learned to never leave my purse sitting on the seat of my car in a parking lot.  Nobody ever steals cars around here, they have much more fun breaking in and taking women's purses.  Some days there will be 5 or six purses stolen from car seats in the police notes.  Because momma never told you that leaving valuables out in broad daylight was a silly thing to do. 

++++++++++++++++

Yes- I'm back.  At least, I'm trying.  In the past few weeks it's been pretty crazy around here, what with the gestating and the sleeping and the nausea and the illness (remind me to tell you about the lentil's ear infection!) and all the other insanity.  very little dissertating, I have to confess.  But I'm back on track.  Because I woke up with something on my mind! (powerpoint link) (explanation: I went to a minority mentoring conference over the weekend and this person was a keynote speaker.  woo!)

and finally, the lentil. 

Hell no, we won't plow!

I usually love snow.  I love snowstorms, when the city is basically quiet and all you hear is the gentle sound of weather, settling on the roof.  I love to go on long walks in the snow, just so I can marvel at the clean white sheath that replaces the normal dirt and pavement.  I love to go sledding.  I love to hike in the snow, with my feet sinking in with every step.

But this is enough.  We got so much damn snow, I'm worried I will never see the dirt again.  Mud, maybe, but never dirt.  The city was so unprepared for this storm, the guy in charge of snow management was quoted in the paper that it was his goal to have a street plowed within three blocks of every residence in the city.  I mean, really.  We pay taxes for things like clear streets, right?  That and safety?  And in a state that boasts the worst drunk driving problem in the union (or at least it feels that way), you'd think they'd at least try to plow in anticipation for new year's eve... AKA, drunk driving holiday especial.  Instead, the city made these tiny gestures towards plowing- they claim they plowed, and they did get a few kids to sprinkle salt on major intersections like flower girls spreading rose petals.  The effect was that there are parts of the city that are clear- the main routes to city official's homes, and the one big street that splits our town in half.  But they didn't plow things like turn lanes, or any street that actually matters.  After the gigantic storm of the century, most of the streets are covered in these 6 inch ice moguls that will take weeks to melt. 

Sweets and I were out last night, careening across the city on a thick layer of bumpy, unpleasant ice as we went to a party.  We got into a whole conversation about the difference between here and Connecticut.  In connecticut, we never got this much snow, but at least people plowed.  There were private people plowing.  The city plowed.  The state plowed.  Everyone plowed.  People shoveled their sidewalks (when they felt generous).  Strip malls plowed.  Here, there was a whole excuse (by the same public official) about how they couldn't plow because they didn't know where to put the snow.  Maybe they can put the snow next to all the little crosses that are going to crop up on the side of the roads in the next few days to mark all the fatal accidents that will result.  Nimrods.  Where to put the snow.  Duh.

Part of this is a result of the culture of the west.  Most people we know drive a truck or an SUV, with 4 wheel drive.  It's assumed that you know how to deal with the weather, that you can navigate through the elements should something fall from the sky.  But part of this is just laziness.  Seriously- where to put the snow?  On the side of the freaking road, you idiots!

I'm just cranky.  We were housebound for waaaay too long.  Then when we finally did get out, nobody had plowed their parking lots so it was ice skating all over the place.  And I just got word that the lentil's school, which was due to reopen after the break tomorrow, isn't going to open until Wednesday.  Their reasoning?  Because the parking lot is unnavigable.  Not because the heat is out, or the place burned down, or there is an epidemic of avian flu amongst the faculty.  Because they didn't get someone out there to plow the stupid, 50 square-foot parking lot.  Arrrrrrrrrrr!