It's Springtime in the Great White North….
Even after 4 years the magic of letting the dog out for a pee on green grass and sprouting flowers before bed and waking up to let the dog out for his morning pee in 2 feet of snow is still impressive.
Although not too surprising as the school called at 5:30 am to notify us there’d be no school today.
Happy April 16th to you!
We’ve been having a relatively mild Great White North winter this year. Very few subzero temps, and very little snow. Some of us are happy, as it makes commuting to school much easier, others have been a bit cranky because they bought fancy new snowshoes and have only been able to caress them longingly before hanging them in the front airlock.*
Sunday through Monday we got a rather decent snowfall and our accumulation is now pushing winky high to a long-backed, short-legged dog. I can say this with certainty as I luckily have such a creature. I brought my camera out this morning to document the measurement, however, between wearing extremely bulky gloves, the lag on my shutter and Rupert’s desire to do his business quickly and get back in the house this is the best I could manage:
Amazing how that dog can poop like the wind in the wind, but then it must really suck to have to do one’s business under such conditions. So for those of you who aren’t good at spotting the supersonic invisible dog, I’ve Photoshopped the photo just a bit to help you, my dear readers, fully realize the scene:
Good boy Rupert! Isn’t he the cutest dog in the whole world?
But I digress. This promising winter weather development has put several members of the Jones household in a flutter. Yesterday Leif and the Spud apparently went sledding for well over an hour, and when I got home I was greeted by this:
Incontrovertible evidence that winter outdoor sports were highly anticipated. On my dining room table non the less.
Winter is a very beautiful season in the Great White North. Which is good, because real winter can last upwards of 6 months. Unfortunately, some of us need to be studying Spanish, taking a biology test and annotating our writing class reading today. *Sigh* No rest or winter frolicking for the wicked I’m afraid.
TTFN.
*Airlock in our family means one of two hallways to the outside which are sealed off from the rest of the house by doors. Airlocks not only help keep the warm air in and cold air out when coming and going in the winter, but they make awesome extra freezer space. On the down side, you really want to remember to bring your coat and boots inside the house, as putting on a frozen nylon sleeved coat which has been essentially hanging in a freezer is somewhat less than enjoyable. Some call it bracing. I call it by a slew of colorful explicatives we will leave to your imagination.
This post has nothing to do with revolutions, unless eating cake for breakfast lunch and dinner for a week constitutes a diet revolution. No, Monday was my birthday, so naturally I had to eat a whole cake. Leif, not being a big sweets eater, and the spud having her own pink birthday cupcakes (her birthday was Thursday) was busily devouring her own birthday treat. And, we simply couldn’t waste it. Nope. That would be ungrateful, and I’m never ungrateful of birthday cake. Although I can’t really share with you all, here’s a virtual piece and my 6 Word Saturday offering:
Six Word Saturday Challenge is courtesy of
Show My Face, Six Word Saturday
And, for your mouth-watering, taste-bud-teasing enjoyment, here’s a photo of the spud and her birthday cupcake cake:
Yesterday evening, when I finally disengaged my self from the blogosphere (yes, it was painful, but had to be done), I found myself face to face with this:
I’m not the one moving. I hate moving. I mean loathe moving, with the intensity of a thousand white hot suns. I shall positively rue the day when moving becomes a necessary evil once again. Today is not that day.
So it would be strange to find myself schlepping furniture, poorly packed bags and containers of personal items up and down stairs, into trailers and finding it consume my living room. How does this evil magic work?
The answer my friend is simple dollars and cents. And I have a death grip on the purse strings.
The spud had two complete homes. At daddy’s new house apparently Uncle Curt had a guest room already made up with furniture and bedding for the spud. Daddy is the kinda guy who doesn’t really care about monetary loss and would have otherwise just given all her things away. Me, I’m a tight frugal bastard. Nothing gets thrown away until I’m damn sure there’s not even a garage sale quarter in it.
Hence, my living room now looks like the ex’s apartment barfed all over it.
So, what began as a county fair prize is now a family obsession. Leif, who rolled his eyes and shook his head disparagingly when I gave the spud a dollar to play the ping pong ball game to win a fish, said to me when we went shopping for a fish tank:
Leif: Hey, let’s get a big tank and get more fish.
Janie: Seriously?
Leif: Yeah, I love fish tanks.
Janie: But you gave me the hairy eyeball about the spud winning the fish at the fair!
Leif: Yeah, whatever. Do you wanna get a big tank?
Janie: Well, I guess it would look cool on my buffet.
Leif: We could watch fish TV.
So, a week later, what started as a $1 whim has end up to be like a $130 investment. We are now the proud owners of this:
And it’s so cool.
Yesterday, we went rock hunting, because the fish needed some feng-shui-ey decor and I was not going to spend $5 for a bag of ugly colors-not-appearing-in-nature pebbles and $10 for a resin “cave” for fish modern art. Instead we drove and hour and 45 minutes, Rupert in tow, to the big lake and, in a rain storm replete with thunder and lightning, we hand picked all the rocks in the tank that are bigger than a pea. Two and a half hours later we scrambled up from the beach and changed out of our muddy wet clothes in the front seat of the Jeep and went to the BEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT EVER. We were cold, damp and hungry, and if we didn’t think about how much money we spent on gas and dinner, we could congratulate ourselves on saving about $15 on fish tank decor.
After driving home, we spent a racy Saturday night boiling rocks and arranging the tank. Then, ice cream and drinks at hand, we sat watching fish TV until 10:30 (last night’s programming included the Cannes festival award winning documentary where black moors lick the algae off a snail- just look at that shine!) 
and picking out names for our fish.
Spud named her goldfish Libby.
The plecostomus is named Sparticus.
The serpae are named Jose and Hosebee (say it out loud).
The black moors are named Penny and Cletus.
The tiger barbs are Nemo and Marlin.
The black high fin tetra is named Hyphen.
The shubunkins are named Harley and Quinn.
And, the snail is named Gary.
Yes, I know. We live on the wild side. We really need to settle down.
Placement is everything.
Comments from the peanut gallery: