winter

Spinning Wheels

Let’s start with a poll:

When I came home yesterday, I immediately noticed footprints leading to the front door.  We hardly use the front door, so we don’t shovel to it.  Maywood Man has enough to do with plowing and there’s no reason for me to shovel a walk that no one ever uses.  There has been snow upon snow all month, so we’re just waiting for spring to deal with it.  Hence, my surprise at the footprints.  UPS knows better.

It was my brother-in-law, come to check out locations for tree stands for next year’s hunting season.  Tromping through the snowy woods in March must mean he’s going a little squirrely indoors.  However, he didn’t count on our driveway being a sheet of ice.  That’s another thing about March this year.  If isn’t snowing, it’s coating us with freezing rain.  So Jim and his truck slid down the driveway to within inches of the Weber grill that waits forlornly for warmer weather.  And then he was stuck at the bottom of the driveway with nothing to do after his woodland walk but sit with Maywood Man sipping coffee until the driveway melted.

Where was I?  At work.  With some difficulty and great trepidation, my Camry and I made it up the slippery slope so that I could go to school and manage squirrely teenagers and their Ipads.

I had a parent conference at noon.  The mother shared that her daughter seems to get overwhelmed by too much stimulus.   It’s not that she can’t focus.  She just can’t figure out where to focus.  I totally get it.  I told her about my sister, the one with Attention Surplus Syndrome. (You gotta love the acronym!) She pays attention to everything. Try riding in the car with her while she drives, notices every realtor sign, and avoids every manhold cover and pothole in the road.  She needs blinders, like a horse.

So what am I supposed to tell this mother whose daughter sits in a class with audio files and video clips and online text and online workbook and online classwork submission all in different apps while doing partner work with classmates who can’t even figure out that I want them on page 152?  She doesn’t need more stimulating activities.  She needs blinders.  I explain that the technology of the paperless classroom is actually helpful for those students who lose all their work in a crumpled mess at the bottom of their bookbags or somewhere in the hallway or maybe under their bed at home, but even as I speak, I know that often I am completely overwhelmed by the “too much” of it all. The mom and I can’t even get our days straight as we talk…the umpteen snowdays have the two of us completely befuddled.

Today, while it pours snow, I ponder remedial work for some students.  There are so many resources available to the students online that they did not have last year.  I search for something that will be helpful.  One auto-correcting activity will not work with pop-ups on the Ipad.  Another has so many publisher errors in it, that I will not use it.  I discover video activities.  I regularly use these in class with paper handouts, but–voila!– all the resources are right there on the Ipad!

Or not.

I click on the video pages to discover that the video activity link does not contain video activities.  It contains all the teacher answers to the workbook.

I’ve spent the afternoon spinning my wheels online.  I’m thinking that I need less.  I need slow.

I like the idea of sitting by the fire with a spinning wheel, simple work.  A manual task that is repetitive and yields a tangible product.  If I’m lucky, I’ll prick my finger and a  magic spell will let me sleep for a hundred years.

The hot, dry air of winter

This is the winter that will not die.

Some people are tired of the cold.  It’s March–when the bees are supposed to emerge to pollinate budding  red maples– and the weather forecast is still calling for a temperature of ZERO.

Some people are sick of the snow.  My husband, for example, is outside right now chopping more firewood in anticipation of the next sleet/ice/snow/bring-down-the-power lines weather event.  The tractor is constantly hooked to a charger to ensure its ability to start when plowing is next needed.  (That would be in the next couple of days.)

Me?  I’m sick of the hot, dry indoor air.  It is so dry around here that salt is actually pouring out of the salt shakers.  When does that ever happen?  We usually have the salt shaker half filled with rice to soak up the moisture in the air.  This morning I came close to ruining my egg; the salt came out so fast.

It is so dry around here that my hair wants to look like this:

She wasn't swishing her hair. It was sticking straight out after an encounter with the sofa.

She wasn’t swishing her hair. It was sticking straight out after an encounter with the sofa.

Fortunately I have a bathroom full of products to help me look a little more like a grown-up: volumizing shampoo, moisturizing conditioners,  ultra poufy mousse, anchor-it in-place sprays, and shiny stuff to give the illusion of sunlight reflecting off it.  It all sort of works.  My hair isn’t quite as bad as sweet little Emily’s, but it is craving humidity.

And so is my skin.  Ack!  Every night I go to bed with my feet slathered in moisturizer and tucked into socks.  My hands, too, are lotioned and gloved.  I look like Minnie Mouse without the ears.  And still my skin is like sandpaper.  My lip balm recipe (in larger containers!) works great on my hands and feet, but is not too practical for full-body application.  My whole body really needs a milk bath.  Lactic acid, ladies.  It sloughs off that dry skin and leaves the rest nice and soft.

This the winter where the least little thing will set off an episode of eczema.  I touched chalk the other day.  I was reckless, I know.  I did not use my special chalk holder.  It was in my desk because I hardly use chalk anymore.  I just wanted to tally points for a competitive activity in class.  A few measly little slash marks on the board.  Ka-bam.  Circle of eczema on my hand.

I was moaning about this with my hairdresser who moaned back that she has gotten eczema on her neck this winter.  She’s dumbfounded.  Her neck?  A friend of mine gets it on her eyelids.  Yes, ouch.

My eyelid suffering friend has found the bees to be part of her skin care routine.  She uses honey to help soothe and heal her eczema flare-ups.

Here’s her concoction:

Lisa’s Honey Mask

  • 1 tablespoon of honey (Maywood honey, of course!)
  • “some” freshly  grated nutmeg
  • 3-4 capsules of Vitamin E.

Grate “some” nutmeg into the honey.  Cut open the Vitamin E and mix it in with the honey/nutmeg.  Apply to face and leave on for 30-60 minutes.  Rinse it off.   (I suppose you could leave it on, but your pillowcase will probably attract ants.)

A bad case of eczema will still require medicine from the dermatologist, but Lisa finds she gets the best results when she uses both the medicine and the honey mask together.  After a few days, the eczema improves rapidly.  Then she just uses the honey when she has a flare-up.

Sweet!

Pioneer Chronicles or More Reasons Why I Don’t Do Camping

Never underestimate a snow storm.

It sure isn't summer time.

It sure isn’t summer time.

I should know this by now.  Twenty years at Maywood.  We survived the Winter of 1994 when the stream froze and the ground was white with snow and/or ice from Christmas until the first day of spring.  We sledded groceries down to the house…when we could get out to get groceries.  We wheelbarrowed wood to the wood furnace to try to stay warm in the uninsulated Maywood House.

In ’96 we made the evening news when we were the last family in Baltimore County to get plowed out.  They needed front-end loaders to deal with all the snow.  That was the year we drank raw milk from Vernon Foster’s cows.  His grandkids didn’t want to drink it, but we were plenty glad to have it.  One mile of road and we couldn’t drive it.  The only way out was to drive over the corn fields where Robert Warns had plowed a path with some farm machinery.

In 2010 we survived Snow-pocalyse, two back to back monster storms and a snowed in family party that I thought would never end.

We got this much snow. YOU go out and measure it.

We got this much snow. YOU go out and measure it.

So what’s a little prediction of 3-6 inches.  That changes to 6-12 inches.  Accompanied by single digit temperatures and high winds. Right?

First, my in-laws lost land-line phone service.  My father-in-law called on his cell phone to let me know.  Our land-line is with the cable service so it didn’t affect us.

Then the cable went out.  No phone, no internet, no TV.  No Pandora on my new wireless Bose speaker.  It was looking like hubby and I would have to spend the evening in scintillating conversation.  Fortunately, the smart phones still worked.  I could text and post to Facebook.   Cable service was restored amazingly quickly.  No small feat for Comcast.  Music was playing again within two hours.

No sooner had I finished cleaning up the kitchen and taken a potty break, when the power went out. No lights.  No water.  No heat.

At least the dishes were done and my bladder was empty.  Pottery Barn wickless candles all over the house provided soft illumination. The flashlight app on our smartphones guided us around the house.  We read by the glow of the Nook.

Now, we were relaxing by the wood stove without a fire because hubby said we were out of wood.  With no heat (although the house was still warm), it was time to get picky about what “out of wood” meant.  It did not mean “no wood.”  So the few pieces down in mancave were put to use in the fireplace insert.  Which, by the way, does not have a blower fan when the power is out.  Radiant heat is all you get.

When BGE updated the return of service from 11:15 pm to 6:45 am, it was time to call it a day.  Up to bed fully clothed in fuzzy sweater, fleece pants and socks.  The bed was piled high with blankets.  And hubby puts off a lot of heat.  I was rather comfortable.  Hubby was so comfortable that he slept right through the return of power at 1:55 am, at which time the bedroom was a toasty 56 degrees.

With morning we have lights, water, internet, phone, heat.  There is even a fire going in the fireplace. (“Out of wood” today means that there is wood but it needs to be split.)  It is time for Pioneer Man to get out there on Betsy the Tractor and plow us out.  Yeah, so it’s like 5 degrees out there with a wind chill.  Betsy is not cooperative.  She refuses to start.  Oh, she was quite willing to start two nights ago when it was 40 degrees out.  But now her hydraulic fluid is like sludge.  I don’t blame her, really.  I feel that way too on cold mornings.

Don't you just hate it when your hydraulic fluid feels like sludge?

Don’t you just hate it when your hydraulic fluid feels like sludge?

But how will we get out?  This snow is not going to be melting anytime soon.

Pioneer Man calls our neighbor who also has a vintage tractor like Betsy.  Neighbor and family are sick with the flu.  They hired someone to plow them out.

“How much?” asks Pioneer Man.

“Don’t know.  He’s going to bill me,” replies flu-stricken neighbor.

Whoa.  He’s really going to feel ill when that bill comes.

We ponder ways to warm up Betsy.  There is a torpedo-like heater in the  Room of Outer Darkness.  (“Which room of outer darkness?”the daughters may ask.  We have so many. The Room of Outer Darkness is the room off the shop underneath the side porch.  It would make an excellent wine cellar for someone organized and with an ability to not drink every bottle as soon as it enters the house.)  Anyway, this torpedo heater is like the ones you see on the sidelines of football games to warm up the players.  It was left here by a contractor once upon a time.  It runs on kerosene.

We don’t have any kerosene.

We have wine and whiskey, though.  I stocked up on important things before the storm.