I'm starting to feel like I'm trapped in the Overlook Hotel

As you may recall, when last we saw our plucky heroine, she was battling the elements with only a snow shovel and what was left of her wits after two feet of snow fell, then a tree, fell, and then the furnace died. Virtuous Miss Elizabeth thought all would be well once the furnace was replaced. Her patience was sorely tested when her husband left town for a conference. But did she kill any of her children? NO she did not! Good, brave Miss Elizabeth!

She truly thought all would be well at last - the heat was on, the children not murdered or even throttled, and the husband home from his travels. But Miss Elizabeth faces yet another trial: six more @#$%ing inches of SNOW!!!!!!!

Let's just hope our heroine doesn't REDRUM anyone.

OK, I'm better now

The elusive teenager (above) pokes her head out of her hole and predicts six more weeks of winter.


The furnace man came at 8AM this morning. A couple of hours and a couple of thousand dollars later, the heat was on and the icy gulag of our house was thawing out. To celebrate the warm inside, the kids went out and built an igloo (so that they could remember that good old icy feeling of a house without heat?). Then they came in, shedding clothes and clumps of snow all over the place (while I yelled ineffectually "Don't get snow all over the floor.......") and ran to sit on the heating vents and warm up. And, yes, I even made them hot cocoa.

Ahhhh. A functioning furnace is a very very good thing.

Hell has frozen over (emphasis on the frozen!)

1. The New Orleans Saints won the Super Bowl. (The good part of the list is officially over now.)
2. Two feet of snow in twelve hours.
3. A tree in our back yard split in half under the weight of the snow.
(Thank God no one was hurt, and the clever tree managed to fall right in the five feet between our house and our neighbor's house, so neither house was damaged.)
4. Our furnace started groaning and moaning and then conked out completely this morning.
5. It's 12 degrees out right now.
6. I'm cold.
7. I don't like being cold.

There. I'm done now.

I hope to write more soon when my fingers aren't frozen!!!!!

She-Devils on Wheels!!!

I stole this from Mean Dirty Pirate, but how could I resist these bad bad girls?

Give

Hospital Albert Schweitzer, 40 miles outside of Port au Prince, is one of the few functioning hospitals in the area. If you want to help them, please visit
Hospital Albert Schweitzer
The money will go directly to the hospital to pay for medical supplies and pay for the doctors and staff who are working around the clock.

Here's a link to their blog:
Heal, Grow, Celebrate

No man is an island?

I was snooping around, as one does, in the profile of a new internet contact. I discovered that he is a successful artist and graphic designer. No jealousy there. 'Yay him!' I thought to myself and 'How interesting. Must find out more.' Which was when I discovered that he lives in Palma, Spain. Which I had never heard of, so I went, as one does when casually stalking someone, to google maps. And that is when jealousy bit me hard. You see, Palma is on the island of Mallorca, and Mallorca is smack in the middle of the Mediterranean. I always imagined that when I grew up I'd live overseas - somewhere sunny and warm and with access to an ocean. Not much to ask since I'd spent most of my childhood in precisely that kind of situation.

And then fate, with her wry sense of the absurd, intervened. I met and fell in love with a man who, despite being part French and speaking near-fluent French, wanted more than anything else to stay in America. I chose to ignore this, assuming that like a strange virus, it would pass with time and love. Then, when he was deciding what to be when he grew up, he asked me "Should I go to law school or grad school in art history?" To which I said, "Who needs the money and security that a career in law would give you? Go to grad school in art history young man. Follow your bliss, etc." And I thought to myself, 'He's part French. Mais biensure he'll choose French art. We can go to France, live in Paris for a while. Go to Aix where his family has a house which is not far from the coast....' Mais non, mes petits ! Oh la tristesse ! He said he wanted to go into American art "because I wouldn't have to travel or live overseas." This I was less able to ignore, but we were married by then so I was screwed.

Now, twenty-five years later, here I sit in the middle of America, a long long way from any coast, it's 21 degrees outside, and I haven't seen blue sky in God knows how long. So looking at the map of Palma, Spain, then looking out at the frozen tundra of my backyard, I had a weak moment of feeling this was not my plan! THAT was my plan!

Now, I do know that where you live physically is not really that pertinent to how you live emotionally. (And if I didn't know that, Willym would be sure to remind and or bitch slap me!) So I took a last longing look at the Mallorca - dotted with palm trees, surrounded by the shimmering Mediterranean - and closed the computer. Because, truly I know that when I stepped into the stream that was the beginning of my love for K, he became my island, and the life we've built together my coasts and oceans and sunny plazas. I really do know that.

I wonder if he'd be willing to wear a palm tree on his head once in a while?

Oh Momma...

Here, for your delectation, is my mother's #1 corker of the visit (and possibly one of her top corkers of all time):

Elizabeth (explaining why she is interested in writing a book about her great great grandfather, a white man who was chief of the Eastern Cherokee): "I'm not so interested in him as a 'Great Man.' I'm much more interested in his contradictions. For instance, he championed one minority - the Cherokee - while buying and selling another minority - blacks - like they were sacks of corn."

Elizabeth's mother: Looks at Elizabeth questioningly as if to say 'And your point is?'

Elizabeth: "I mean, I think it's fascinating that the Cherokee who were themselves oppressed, owned slaves!"

Elizabeth's mother (in a very genteel Southern accent): "Oh yes, they were much more sophisticated than all the other Indian tribes...."