I had wonderful intentions to do some blogging over the holidays.
Then the Spud, the first class disease vector she is, arrived home and shared the joy of the head cold she incubated at her Dad’s down in the midwest. My gift of the lesser plague came snot wrapped on Christmas Day afternoon, and had pretty much knocked me out ever since. I can report we have gone through about 4 boxes of Kleenex since her arrival and I have had to disengage the IV drip of tea as I was so stoned on caffeine it was hard to tell if the congestion or the buzz was keeping me up despite being absolutely exhausted.
I have managed to do some work on my laptop so I will still get paid over the holidays, but besides from that I’ve mostly been curled up in a fluffy blankey playing Free Cell, reading the books I got for Christmas and eating every manner of holiday treats I can get my hands on. I remarked to Leif, who is also sick as a dog, that it’s been nice doing not much of anything, but I would prefer doing nothing while I’m healthy. See, I’m never satisfied, am I?
I did feel slightly better yesterday so I took the Spud sledding.
Rupert was much smarter than us, he got about 20 feet from the Jeep and decided “F*#k this, my holiday sweater isn’t rated to -30!” and ran back and jumped in the Jeep.
It wasn’t much sledding as much as it was like the luge without walls. The snow had frozen into a sheet of ice which we pretty much careened down at breakneck speed until we hit the hard crusty snow banks below and were thrown from our sled. While I don’t handle carnival rides quite as well as I used to, neither the Spud nor I was daunted by the primal screams extracted from our congestion encrusted lungs and continued to race down the sledding hill, laugh as we flew from the sled, and once confirming neither of us was actually injured and the sled still intact, we slogged back up for more again, and again, and again until the Spud’s feet got too cold. Yesterday at sledding time the windchill was reported at -34, but it didn’t feel so bad when we were running up the hill and laughing like idiots and screaming with terror as we sped back down. Oddly enough her Dad did not send her with winter boots rated to -30, so she had to borrow a pair of mine which we stuffed with extra sheep’s fleece. Apparently, however, our efforts to pad my old boots were only half successful, as one foot stayed toasty and the other got painfully cold.
So despite the colds, we are managing to enjoy our holiday as much as possible. Besides from not blogging myself, I haven’t been visiting much, so I hope you all are enjoying your holidays, too. The spud and her bio-hazard spewing mucosal membranes are returning south on Sunday. Maybe I’ll heal up and be able to return to blogging before school resumes.
Maybe.
Happy New Year!
Janie's Place 