Snow pix.

The backyard, as of three p.m., with at least another eight inches expected:



And a bonus picture of the children. They're either playing nicely together and pretending they're riding on a train, or they're smiling in frozen shock as they realize I'm about to mail them away in order to get five minutes of adult time. (It's option A. Really. We're having a good day today and it's cozy watching the snow from inside.)

Snow. Lots of it.

We're at ten inches and counting, and both kids are home from school and daycare today. It is the final day of proposal season for Matt (shhhh....he's hunting wocket money....) so he drove into work in spite of the blizzard. Submissions are due at 4 p.m. today so with luck he may get home before they start closing the roads.

Even campus is closed.

The bug and I are playing school at home right now, and I am looking forward to tomorrow when everything everywhere will be closed. If I can locate the camera after our recent Omaha trip, I'll post some pictures of the snow soon. This storm looks to be epic.

what we look like.

Given the recent reportage, you'd be getting a lot of pictures that looked like this if I were to provide an accurate visual record of the past 1.5 months:

So I've carefully winnowed the recent pictures to demonstrate that there were, in fact, days when at least two of us were well.  A few weekends ago, it was the children:

And in this photo, the perpetually bug-eyed polliwog displays a smile, rarely caught on film after months of attempts:

And just a few days ago, both the boys were in fine form:


Perhaps by next Christmas there will be a picture of all four of us in good health, wearing pants. We'll work on it.

Blank verse and illness.

My blog page is empty because I haven't yet posted this month.  In an effort to alter that situation, a brief update:

Both children are home sick today with the plague.  The last day all four of us were healthy was January 14.  There's no point in complaining about this, so I'm simply recording the fact.

The polliwog has been to the doctor twice in three weeks and is still on eyedrops for pinkeye.  The bug had the flu (fever, chills, vomiting) which has now evolved into a cold (runny nose, cough).  Matt and I have taken turns with colds and flu ourselves.  We haven't left the house as a family unit in over a month.

One of my shows closed on Saturday, so now I have nights at home for awhile which is a serious blessing with all this illness.  My first opera on the job opens next week.  The rehearsal schedule for the next one is already falling apart, and I can't even get parking spaces for the first one yet.

So I was looking for a bright spot in the day yesterday--something like Day 42 on illness watch--and a book I've been waiting to read for months finally came up on reserve at the Boulder library.  (It's "Eclipse," yes, the third in the teen vampire series.  I know, guilty pleasure reading. And don't tell me why you hate the author yet, please, let me get through the last two books first.)  I drove all the way in from Longmont last night to pick it up, only to find that someone had STOLEN MY BOOK OFF THE HOLD SHELF.  Seriously.

I began composing an ode to the person who did this, beginning along the lines of 

Soulless whore.

Why didn't you go to a big box bookstore

And steal one from

their mile-long displays?

Stealing from libraries

is stealing from the public, the poor,

and the patient.

I hope you never reach volume four.

The moaning sick await my attentions, though, so that's as far as I can get at this point.  Soon it will be spring and we'll no longer live in a house of infirmity. I hope.