the sounds off the tundra

have been a mixture of screams, groans, whines, and general bitching. I need a drink.

Yep. It's a snow day.

Three minutes after I answered Canada's question about weather out my way (Tra-la-la! Nothing to see here! Maybe a little snow! A little rain! But nothing!) yesterday B came into the room a bit wild-eyed and started yammering some nonsense about snow and rain and black ice and impenetrable roads - what was this?

Surely he'd been sniffing the chain-saw oil again. I was just on the Environment Canada site, and there'd been nothing. I punched it in again and.....aw, crap.


Doooom! It shrieked. Dooooooommmmm! Lock up the children! Prepare to chop up your furniture for warmth! Do a quick check to see which pet is the plumpest! Tie a long line out to the barn so you don't get lost in the blinding whiteness of it all! Doooommmmmmm!
So it snowed. And it snowed. And then it rained - big fat gobbets that splat! in your face and stung like ice. The region dug out its' snow plows and salt trucks.

Around six pm Cass spoke up from where he was huddled in the corner in the buffalo robes we keep for really cold weather finishing the last of his supper and wondered aloud 'Will we have school tomorrow?'

'Of course!' I assured him. After all, I'd had school in the middle of blizzards, where walking down the road to the bus stop chapped your cheeks and made it impossible to talk, weather so cold you avoided the metal tang on your zipper when you tucked your head down in your jacket, scared it would cut your lips off.

Apparently we were sturdier back then. Or the school boards were less worried about lawsuits. Take your pick.

So today was cold. A bit slippery, but nothing that any reasonably good winter driver couldn't handle - and the rain had washed away most of the snow. Messy, though, and bitter cold. So the kids have been inside, alternately playing nicely (just until I relax, because they're sadistic like that) and screaming like banshees. Even the dog has been banished right now.

And it's quiet. My ears are ringing with the quietness of it all.

Right now I would love a cup of something hot - maybe vegetable soup? - in a big sky-blue mug, a big cuddly blanket, and one of my new books.

Short of tying them out in the woodshed (and B doesn't let me do that anymore) I'm thinking I might not get quiet until they go to bed.

It's kind of a damned good thing I love the little buggers.

And that there's school tomorrow.