I Heart Fall

I love fall. Or autumn, as my know-it-all preschooler now tells me daily.

I love warm sun and cool breezes.

I love the colors of the trees.

I love the crunch of leaves underfoot.

I love football.

I love that I can have windows open to go to sleep and not wake up feeling like someone ran over my sinuses with a Mack truck.

I love walking outside on a cool morning (it's been known to happen. Sometimes it's just to the mailbox. Whatev).

I love warming up with a mug of coffee, tea, or even better - apple cider!

I love taking the kids to pick apples at the orchard and making enough jars of applesauce to feed an army (or my kids through the winter. Same difference).

I love picking the perfect pumpkin.

I love wearing jeans and hooded sweatshirts.

I love warming the house up by baking.

I love anything made with pumpkin, especially pumpkin spice lattes.

I love freakishly warm fall days like we've had in the last week, when the mercury rises to almost 80. I banished the kids to the out-of-doors all week because I know it won't last. In fact, today was it.

I may cry when it starts raining tomorrow.

There are only three things I can possibly think of about fall that I DON'T love: the smell of burning leaves, the random rogue tornado, and the season that follows it.

Don't get me wrong, I like LOOKING at snow. I like skiing. I want a white Christmas.

But I don't like having to drive in it.

I don't like Hubby has to drive to work in it.

I don't like that we won't see a county plow on our road all season.

I don't like 2-hr delays or cancellations, because I have a 4-year-old who loves school.

I don't like being stuck in my house for weeks on end with my children. We all get a little squirrelly.

I don't like being cold all.the.freaking.time. Coffee consumption goes WAY up.

And if those pesky weather people are to be trusted, it's gonna be a doozy of a winter.

Great.

Let's hope it doesn't start next week.

Groundhog Day

I felt like I got a lot done today. Not sure what I have to show for it though.

There are still 3 baskets of clothes to fold, 2 light bulbs out in the kitchen, a mountain of toys in the living room and the Wii has been yelling at me for being a slacker.

Like the groaning every time I step on wasn't enough.

But I feel like we're stuck in an eternal weather Groundhog Day. It has been gray, windy, rainy and cold forever. Literally forever. I counted the days and I am excellent at math.

*snort*

I'm gonna blame my Nana for this one. She has always had better days when the sun is shining, like I need the Vitamin E for my brain to function properly. With her crazy genes, I will live until I'm 100 but you better keep me somewhere sunny.

Sure he's smiling. He's been hiding
out at the beach for 6 months

And my allergies have been giving me heck. I feel like somebody has a belt wrapped around my lungs, just on the next to last hole so I can just almost get a full breath. So every once in awhile I'm gasping like a freaking goldfish and digging for the inhaler.

That tends to make me cranky. I know, I know, I like to BREATHE. So sue me.

But those things have been making me cranky for awhile now. So I feel like every day I'm griping about the weather, the cold, my weak-a$$ed lungs, and the fact that my family likes to wear clean clothes that have been folded every now and then.

Just call me Phil.

Winter blues timewarp

You know that song "I Left My Heart in San Francisco"? Yeah, my version would be "I Left My Brain in Colorado."

I am all about beating the mid-winter blues by taking a vacation ANYWHERE. But timing is essential. Two years ago, we took a cruise in November, before the Holiday/Birthday Craziness. It was the best week EVER, but the following 3 months were straight from you-know-where. It's hard to come back to reality after that one.

So next time we do a winter vacay, it's gonna be in February again, I'm sure. But that doesn't make the weeks after any better. We've had 2 ski trips, 3 or 4 illnesses, lots of snow days and somebody turned our normal crazy up to 11. I'm about full up, thanks.

The result of all of our fun escapes is that I feel like I am eternally behind. I mean, I have two small children so I am always behind, but even more so now. Example? Monday is normally laundry day. I spend my morning shoveling clothes through the machines and by the afternoon, everything is through (or close to it). Then the clothes sit and sit and sit, until about Wednesday, when I start folding. Thursday we start digging for clean items from the pile. By Sunday I'm putting stuff away so I can have the baskets empty for laundry day. And we start the cycle all over again.

But today is Friday AND I AM JUST STARTING LAUNDRY. This is not good. This means I have to do my normal "shove 12 loads of clothes/towels/sheets/etc. into two craptastic machines in the shortest amount of time," but my folding and putting away time is totally screwed. I may have to actually do it... *gulp* ...today!

Now that's just crazy talk.

Maybe I left my sanity in Colorado too...

...if I ever had it to begin with.

Snowstalgia

Snowtastrophe.

Snowpocalypse.

Snowmageddon.

Snowtorious B.I.G.

Lots of names for the 10-ish inches of snow that fell on my house over the last 24 hours. And while my winter weather vocabulary is a bit bigger now, I have learned only one important thing:

Snow sucks and blizzards blow.

(Ha! Get it? Sorry. I'm done now.)

Kids and I hid inside today while Hubby ignored a state of emergency to trek into work. I didn't think staying home with us was THAT bad...

Anyway. We'll be home again tomorrow. It won't be fun to explain why little guy misses show and tell day at preschool, but maybe if I let him overdose on Mario Kart it'll be OK. That's what snow days are for, right?

I have great memories of snow days growing up. That meant waking up on time for school to listen to my hometown's lone radio station, hoping against all hope to hear "John F. Kennedy, closed." I'd run back upstairs to bed for an hour or so.

When I finally dragged myself out of bed, I would settle in at the dining room table to help Nana with a puzzle and watch CNN. I always wanted my mom to stay home from work too, but that rarely happened. Darn work. But I didn't let it ruin my fun.

Blizzard of '93 in good ole PA

My favorite snow memory was the Blizzard of '93. It was March and my friends and I were having a sleepover at my friend Deborah's house for her birthday. We knew snow was coming, so as soon as it started we were in their front yard in our pajamas, laughing and throwing snowballs.

As soon as it was light enough, we were going to round up as many snow clothes as we could find (Deb has 4 siblings - it wasn't hard to do) and go sledding. I grew up in western PA so you don't have to look far to find a good hill (I lived at the bottom of three), but her backyard was ideal.

But my morning was brought to a screeching halt when my mom showed up early to pick me up. She had seen the forecast and was afraid if she waited any longer, she wouldn't be able to get across town to get me. The other parents came trooping in not far behind, so only Deb and her sisters got to enjoy the hill that day.

If Wikipedia is to be trusted, it says Pittsburgh got about 28 inches that weekend. I remember 3 ft and being off school for a week.

Nana and I got lots of puzzles done.

Oh how I hate winter, let me count the ways...

I'm pretty sure my van used to be tan. It's now a filmy charcoal gray. And the forecast says snow for the next 4,532 days so why bother going through the car wash?

I didn't think it was possible, but sweeping and mopping my floors is even MORE of an exercise in futility. The roads are gross, which makes the garage floor gross, which makes the bottoms of our shoes gross, which makes my floors crunchy and majorly gross. Whoever designed this house without a mud room should have to come mop my floors daily from November to March.

I. Am. Always. Cold.

Because I'm always cold, I do nothing. I have arguments with myself about the benefits of sitting on the couch, curled up under a blanket vs. getting off my fluffy butt and doing housework. I understand that by moving, I will generate heat and raise my body temp naturally. But it's the same as hitting that snooze button in the morning, wishing that I could stay in my warm comfy bed forever. I have no rational thoughts before 9 a.m. and without at least 2 cups of coffee; my brain does the same thing when it's cold.

I am always inside (and cold) so I nibble on snacks all freakin' day. It's a good thing we got that Wii for Christmas so it can keep yelling "ooh" when I step on and make me feel like a major fluffy butt.

I drink way, way, way too much coffee. It's warm, and most of the time I make a cup and huddle over it for warmth.

I warmed my hands over the boiling pot of pasta for mac n cheese I made for my kiddos lunch the other day. The normal PB&J doesn't quite do that. It's sad, but I like to plan meals that require the oven so I can stand in the kitchen and warm up.

And on that note, it's time to start dinner... I'm thinking baked fish and mac n cheese. The oven AND boiling water. ;-)

How many days until spring??