When I came into the living room, Graham was sitting at his little desk holding a large, heavy wooden cigar box out in front of him.

He would open it, just a little.

Then he would lean forward and put his mouth right up against it.

And shout something incoherent into the box.

SLAM it shut.

Wait a few seconds.

Hold the box up to his ear.

Open.

Howl with frustration.

After a few attempts he clunked the box down in front of him, and put his chin on the desk so he could glare at the box. Eye level. He said quietly to himself, “The sound just keeps escaping somehow.”

I stayed out of it. He didn’t ask for help. There are plenty of years ahead to know how shit really works.

Here is what we learned this week:
Sometimes weather forecasts are way overblown for drama’s sake. But! Sometimes! They aren’t.

Cold weather isn’t that bad if you wear a coat, scarf, hat and gloves worn over a sweater over overalls over a long-sleeved shirt and fuzzy pajama pants. Worn over leggings and a tank top. Three pairs of socks and some gloves and there! You’re ready to go play in the snow!

And then after that first day of playing in the snow you just stay inside because getting dressed to go outside is a lot of work. Especially when you have to help children in and out of similar outfits.

You can shut down businesses, schools, churches, government offices, major highways… you can have major food shortages at grocery stores, halt all UPS, Fedex and postal pickups and deliveries, and even tell sanitation workers to stay home for a week and society somehow does not break down. Potential rioters don’t want to take the time to get dressed for the cold weather.

During times of crisis, the first things the grocery store will run out of are: fresh meat, eggs, and tortilla chips. For some reason dairy products, cereals, lunch meat, most produce, and Valentine’s day crap are all well stocked.

You would think that after so many days trapped in the house with no where to go, the house would be spotless, but no.

Being forced to eat every meal at home is nice, actually.

Cooking at home creates a daily mountain of dirty dishes. Is it really 2011 and this is the best solution we can come up with?

Making rice crispy treats is surprisingly easy to do.

My children will play the game Blokus for up to four hours at a stretch as long as an adult is playing too.

There is no end to the number of hours they will spend watching Felix the Cat.

Nicolaus also loves the show Cake Boss. Graham will claim to hate the show and then he will watch it and pretend to make cakes and then he will drop the imaginary cakes and oh no! I am supposed to freak out and say Yous kiddin me??

One of the most challenging, insurmountable engineering frontiers of our time is figuring out how to safely transport a cake without wrecking it. We can build impossible bridges and bullet trains and satellite GPS magic phone systems but getting a decorated baked good from one place to another? Can’t be done.

Sometimes snow has a thick layer of ice on top of it, making it very beautiful like the whole yard was sprayed with clear coat. But you can crunch down past the ice and find powdery snow. Past that it’s just dirt and squished grass.

Looking at such beautiful glossy smoothed-out scenery for months every year, Northerners must have a wonderful appreciation for light and texture and form.
And GLOVES. And snow plows.

Snow plowed snow is gross looking.

None of our errands that we do in a normal week are that vital afterall.

As long as we have paper and two pairs of scissors, my kids will be busy cutting. If you could set them up at the table to cut while watching Felix you would theoretically never have to do any real parenting again (other than acknowledging that Felix is indeed hilarious and/or that this is the best pop-up poisonous cobra greeting card anyone has ever made for me.

Looking for the bin of winter clothes in mid-January is a sign that maybe you are from the south.

My children did not know what an icicle was.

My children feel it is terribly unfair that our neighbor gets to have icicles on her house and we don’t.

On a normal day, Nicolaus doesn’t change out of boxers and his bathrobe unless we go somewhere. We just usually go somewhere sometime during the day so I hadn’t noticed.

For someone who claims he never gets cold, Nicolaus doesn’t have a lot of patience for cold weather.

Graham will stay outside in the cold all day.

If you pull out a toy that your children never ever play with and set it aside to throw it away, that toy will suddenly entertain them for two solid days.

The worst thing that could happen to a family that was iced in for days and days? Running out of tea. It turns out that a small amount of daily caffeine is what makes my brain go.

A person can make a mighty fine sled out of a cardboard box and some packing tape.

My customers are very nice and patient and understanding.

Yesterday Nicolaus taped signs all over the house that said “R WORD!” and then under that he drew a picture of a cape. And then under that he wrote $1

The cape makes him look like a bat or a vampire or a person dressed fancy for dinner, see, and it was missing.

Well. I found it (in the dryer, whoops). At his insistence, I got the dollar. And I’m using it to buy him spelling lessons because even though I’m all about learning things at your own pace you beautiful, interesting child oh my goodness, you can’t go out in the world writing “R WORD” over a picture of your lost pet or worse, a missing person. People will take down your signs and put up pictures of YOU with “A-WORD” written underneath.

So. Tomorrow we resume school after a bit of a break for the holidays. I have a new plan of attack for teaching them better handwriting habits, and I’m mighty excited and hoping it works.

Speaking of R word I bleached my hair last week, using mega powerful superbleach and it only lightened my hair to a level pee-color blonde. That’s okay, I figured, I’ll put pink over it and it’ll be fine. Only the pink just glazed it… sort of like toner people use to make their blonde highlights less brassy? Only pink is just weak red, right? So it made my hair the precise color of actual brass. Usually when people complain that their hair looks brassy I think they’re being too picky because really it looks pretty good, but no no no. This was not pretty good. It was very bad.

So! Over the weekend Kevin took the boys to go climb a mountain while I stayed home and made one last silly try to fix it before giving up and going to pay the people who have years of medical training in this sort of thing. Very intense dark purple, all over the head, for three times as long as the bottle says to leave it. And… hey! Good things happen to people who don’t follow the directions. I would be very happy to have been born with this shade of purple hair.

And now… because I do everything that I promise to do eventually… here is a picture of me right after the hair cut. Pre-purple but still.

Later this week I will write about our holidays and new exciting Nerdy Baby news and a dog update and resolutions and how twelve years ago today I got married and eventually changed my name to Ard which is much more piratey than any last name I ever could have hoped for. But it’s late, and I’ve got to go to sleep because tomorrow! The Ard School of Arts and Sciences will learn how to spell and read good.