Spring fever

I keep hearing Michael Franks singing in my head about, "April is not the cruelest month..." but my brain keeps changing it to "Feb-ru-ary's the cruelest month..."

How can it not be spring yet? I have been drinking kegs of coffee and tons of tea and yes, the light is changing, but we still have a month of winter to go! Grrrrr! Mommee, I know you believe March is the longest, but I adamantly maintain that this ridiculous month is never-ending! It just c.r.a.w.l.s. past......... and then backs up to run you over again. 

Since returning to school from Christmas break on January 9th, the kids have had two delays which stayed delays and seven snow days. Damon has had eight, because last Wednesday the big kids went but the younger kids had to stay home due to worsening conditions. I think there's been a total of two weeks in which the kids have had school all day, every day, and one of those weeks Carrie stayed home sick for a day. Am I complaining? I think I'm complaining.

Last Monday, they had scheduled no school for Presidents' Day, the fireplace guys were here working every day of the week, and we all had karate. Tuesday, they went to school and Carrie had karate and staff training that evening. Wednesday was the day only the big kids had school, but everyone had karate that night. Thursday I was getting my IV meds during the late morning and early afternoon and Liam had a band concert that evening. Friday, blessedly everyone had school (including me, as I'm back to having first graders read to me in the hallway of the elementary school for my third year running) but Carrie didn't go because she and Dada headed off to winter camp for the weekend. I had a meeting in the afternoon, and had the boys by myself all weekend. We watched "Father Goose" on Saturday and went to church yesterday. We hardly saw Dada at all last week because he was helping lead some training at work. Saturday, I washed the walls, wiped down the furniture, then vacuumed and mopped the "library" to get rid of the stone dust which was covering everything. Damon especially loves having that room mostly open and empty because he can slide across the hardwood floor, not in his socks as his sister does, but whole body slides. Mopping was a matter of survival if he wasn't to repollinate the entire house with stone dust.

The fact that I wrote, "thank you that Feb is almost over" twice in my journaling today is telling. Zita left for two weeks in India, Janet is spending all month long in Arizona, some people went to winter camp, another friend left last week for Arizona also... clearly it is time to either go stir crazy or get out of Dodge.

So what am I doing? Perusing seeds. That's right. I realized I'm already behind schedule and am picking out garden and flower seeds. I'm also picking up sticks and limbs that are down after our ridiculous winds the last two days. Bosley keeps eyeing them as I set them by the fireplace, and I keep reminding him to not even think about it. Thankfully our power stayed on throughout and our spiffy new fireplace is working well. I don't think I can even call it spiffy as it is way fancier than that; I like it even more than I expected to! I can't wait to get the holes drilled for the curtain rods to go back up, move furniture where it belongs, and call it good. 

Usually when I'm busy I feel like time passes faster. Last week I felt like a single parent and the time just did not get the memo that it was supposed to speed up. Where is that groundhog? Someone get a message to him that spring, not summer, had better hurry it up before some of us end up on the news!