Catch-Up Post

Tuesday: Into NYC we go for Native American Architecture class with the homeschool group. The kids worked on their wigwam models, installing a fire pit, finishing up the framing, and starting to install the bark covering. After class, we had some park time with friends. Rushed home so I could make it to the first session of Adult Ed Pottery here in the village. This is my attempt to exercise my rusty art muscles. Started a coil built pot.



Wednesday: Library Day. Read a bunch of books there, borrowed an obscene number...



Thursday: Worked on the pile of library books. Made good progress early, but then the day devolved into *one of those spectacularly ugly home ed days full of surly adolescent attitude*, which seem to pop up every 3-4 months around here. I wonder if this was a case of early spring fever or something, though it was rainy and grey. Yesterday was all about being stubborn, avoiding work, acting helpless, and driving mom bonkers. He wouldn't even read the fun stuff without drama. After a period of sulking, he decided he wanted to learn after all, and flew through a bunch of Japanese folktales, some math, and an architecture book. We did some bird watching for Project Feeder Watch. Then he worked in his sketchbook, and came up with a concept for this week's Illustration Friday challenge: Warning. (Heh, Maybe mine should be: Warning: Bad Attitude Will Get You Sent to School If You Don't Watch Out... I am not above using the threat! The boy knows the boredom would be toxic.) And then we had wind-induced power outages (This is what we get for living in a "Tree City" with overhead powerlines. Too typical in March...), and sat around in the dark with our battery operated camping lanterns telling stories and reading by flashlight.

Friday: Mikro has painted his Illustration Friday piece, which I'll photograph and post later (after I come up with something myself...) And he's back at the stack of library books. We'll be heading back there to drop off the ones we've finished and pick up a couple more that have come in...

The Big Snow

We had about two feet of snow here during the big storm. I'll put up more pictures of the winter wonderland aspect of it once Kevin finally downloads his camera phone... I mostly stayed indoors and tried to keep cabin fevered boy, who had a cold, entertained, warm and dry.

That soon proved an impossible task (well, the warm part, anyway), as we lost power for several days. No power means no heat. I am really glad we had our camping lantern and a radio. I missed my little battery operated TV, but the whole digital conversion thing rendered it useless (and the digital versions are ridiculously expensive, so I won't be replacing it soon!) Luckily, we have a land line, and could at least call family members for news updates. And we had our small generator, which kept us from losing the entire contents of the refrigerator. We did a lot of reading by flashlight, and told stories, played games, and tried to make it into an adventure. Clever Bird did her bit to keep us smiling with her antics at the feeders. But by the end, it was wearing thin...

There were 36,000 homes without power in our county, and the Red Cross even set up an emergency shelter at the fire house here in our little village. If we had been faced with one more night without heat, we would have wound up there. It was pretty uncomfortable the last night. The least lucky villagers didn't get power back till March 2nd or 3rd-- that's 5 or 6 days with no heat! And the phone updates from Con Edison were worse than useless.

We were lucky to come through it without any damage. Trees were down all over the place, and many people weren't as lucky. On a smaller scale, we were also lucky to have on hand a new to Mikro toy that made sitting around in the dark a bit more palatable.



Needless to say, we are all hoping that was Winter's last hurrah.