Surprise!!!!

It snowed this morning.

Snowed.

In the twelve years we’ve lived out here in the Central Valley, we’ve seen hail, and we’ve had plenty of ice. Vehicles parked outside have to be scraped down from about now until mid-February. (It can actually be a little fun, seeing how big a sheet of ice you can peel off the windshield. Where “fun” is pronounced, “trying to ignore the fact that your fingertips are threatening to shear right off your hands because Christ-awl-mighty, it is coooooooold out there by saying, ‘Isn’t it fun how you can peel these big old sheets of ice right off the minivan?! Yippee! I LOVE WINTER SO MUCH!!!!’”)

Now granted, it wasn’t “real” snow. It didn’t stick to the ground, it will be gone the moment the sun peeks over the horizon, but…still…it was snowing when we left the house this morning.

And there was actual snow sticking to the ground over the pass.

Whoa.

Of course, after a few minutes of going, “Squeeeee! Snow!!” I realized that the first thing I need to do tonight when we get home is cover up my poor little peas and green beans – because guess what?

Our teenaged-weather is starting now. We seldom get hard freezes out here, but our overnight lows do dip briefly into the teens, and plants that aren’t covered up overnight have a way of, well, dying.

I am ashamed to confess that, upon pondering the logistics here, I had a few moments of, “Maybe I should just let the garden die for now…”

But that was my it’s-too-early-right-now morning self speaking. At 5:15 in the morning when these sorts of realizations are hitting me, I am not what might be considered a bright, energetic, optimistic sort of person.

I’m more of the meh, doesn’t matter, don’t care, might be cancer, let’s just go ahead and DIE rather than deal with it sort.

But my will to live follows sharp behind the first dose of caffeine and Tylenol, and then I say to myself, BRIGHTLY AND WITH GREAT ENTHUSIASM!, “Aw, c’mon, it’s not THAT big a deal!!”

So tonight, I’ll be out there in the dark happily spreading the aren’t we humans the most CUNNING things?! plastic over my adorable little pea and bean sprouts.

And at 4:45 tomorrow morning, I’ll be out there wrestling with the vile, villainous billows covering the blasted! sprouts that aren’t growing fast enough anyway and who cares, FIE! this is stupid YA KNOW, a can of peas is only $0.69 on sale, just sayin’.

Speaking of not wanting to deal with things…this week is going to be a nine-layer crazy cake because guess who didn’t feel like dealing with things this weekend?

Uh-huh. I spent most of Saturday not dealing with things, and then I spent Sunday at the Dickens Fair. That’s right. I left the house, all by myself, and took BART to the Dickens Fair, and wandered around with my friends – whose reaction to my presence really drove home the point that I definitely need to get out more.

“Oh look, it’s a unicorn!”

“Never mind that old thing, Tama’s here!”

“NO. WAY!!!!!! This I gotta see…”

I had an awesome time, and my husband did a fair amount of cleaning and even baked bread while I was gone (woo hoo!), but everything else I should have been doing this weekend sort of didn’t get done, and now I’m going to have to figure out how to get it done mid-week…which is going to be (ahem) interesting.

I don’t even have a meal idea, let alone a plan for the week. I didn’t get to either the farmer’s market or the supermarket, we’re almost out of milk, the Thanksgiving leftovers have been used up and I’ve got about thirty minutes a night to produce food for the Starving Masses.

{gulp}

This kind of stuff is good for me, right? Builds character, keeps the mind nimble, all like that?

In other news, I’ve decided that we need to remove the chairs from the house. All of them. Because they are a very real problem, in that I keep sitting down. With knitting. Just for a second, just for a few rows, you know, just until I reach the crown decrease on this hat, just until I finish turning the heel on this sock, just until this CSI:Anywhere is over.

And then, six hours later, I go, “OH CRAP! I didn’t {household chore that REALLY needed to get done today, but now it’s going on 11:30 at night and I’m not running some noisy appliance at THIS hour, for gosh-sakes}!!!”

So. I have decided that the chair absolutely must go.

And the television.

But not my yarn stash.

Because, you know, let’s not get all crazy with this thing…

(Sitting. That’s the cause of all my sorrows. If I couldn’t sit down, I wouldn’t be so far behind on everything right now…CURSE YOU, COMFY CHAIR MAKERS EVERYWHERE!!!!!)