Baby, It's Cold Outside

[liralen]

At the moment it's 1.2° F (-17° C). The highs around here have been in the teens and lows have been a bit below zero without wind chill, with wind chill it's down around -16° F (-27° C).

It's not Minnesota or the East Coast. They're actually having warmer weather there than we are. Hmph. We usually have warmer weather than they do and it's just a bit weird to have snow so fine and dry that the only way to get it off the sidewalks is to use either a squeegie or a push broom. It's powder fine and even after a few days on the ground it still crunches under the feet.

It definitely is cold enough that my body *knows* it'll die if I stay out there much. But Jet seems to ignore it cheerfully in order to kick and push every single bit of snow he can find. Boys. *laughter*

It's been about this cold since Thursday afternoon, on Thursday you could watch the thermometer just start to drop down and down and down. Wednesday was in the 50's and we were thawed enough we could actually see a bit of ground between the white and a bit of black top right in front of the house. But about an inch or so fell on Friday, half an inch the night before Saturday, and then another two or three inches today. Powdery fine stuff. Excellent if we were a ski resort, but we're not!! Hmph.

It is beautiful, though.



It's hard to admit it, but, physically, my body is in worse shape than I thought it was in. A bit too much stress recently.

Then when I added the dental shift, and my bite, while it is actually good now, did shift. It moved. My teeth all meet correctly, now, but in a mildly different way. And that difference translated to some muscles in my jaw and neck being really unhappy with me because they were already iron tight from stress. Then the neck brought the shoulders into it and then I tossed in a little bit of show sweeping and I finished a pair of mittens for a friend and spent a while felting them in a bucket, using a plunger.

Using the plunger proved to be a mistake, as my shoulders brought in the whole back and said, "Ha. Try that NOW..." and my gut kind of chimed in with an "Enough is ENOUGH." *sigh*

So.... most of the weekend has been distracting myself from pain. A bit of ibuprofen now and again when I just couldn't take it, but on the most part we all found me some distractions and a bit more sleep than I've been getting in the last week.

On Friday, Jet and I had gone to the library and I'd gotten the three Darkangel books by Meredith Ann Pierce, and I devoured all three books in just two days. Reading Fantasy gets my mind off anything else in reality. I liked the characters enough that I found the books interesting; but the standing in of pseudoscience for magic made my head hurt as while some parts of it made enough sense other parts made me just want to throw it against the wall. Who thinks of a mind, a soul, and a heart as parts that can simply be rebuilt? Ahem. If it has been all fairy tale I would have been okay, every princess is due her magical abilities. If it had been all hard science fiction I would have been okay, but her use of pseudoscience to stand in for fairy tale concepts made my jaw ache just a bit more. But much of the prose was beautiful. Much of the story sense was good. Some bits of it made me think of Patricia McKillip, many of the fairy tale bits rang true. The plot was a bit video game like... kind of linear.

I was up at 6 am on Saturday because I hurt and couldn't sleep, so I used it to good advantage when Jet came in at 6:15, and we crept back to his room where we played until John got up.

Saturday, even with the snow, John managed to get us to the movies and we got to watch Arthur and the Invisibles. It's written by Luc Besson!!! Or at least he co-wrote the screenplay! Some of the action sequences in there are very much Luc, and it's a very sweet, funny, and mildly stylized movie. I loved the kid in it and there were quite a few clever bits throughout.

The movie was at noonish, and when it was done, the popcorn had sustained Jet during the movie, but he asked, quite politely, to go to Noodles and Co. afterward, so we did. I tried the chicken noodle soup this time and it was fantastic. I loved it. Jet ate a whole bowl of noodles so that was cool. In the morning, he really loved the baked pancake, so much he asked for more but we had already split the rest. We'll have to make an even bigger one the next time and give him more of it as he really enjoys it a lot. He seems to be eating a lot more recently, so I suspect a growth spurt.

John did his best to let me sleep in as much this morning as possible, and when he did wake me it was just with the scent of freshly made waffles and bacon.

We did church in the snow, and only the die hards made it. I went to the class on the Jewish faith and learned more about the Old Testament inheritance laws than I'd even known before. Most of the rest of it was familiar, but made interesting by the very dry wit of our lesbian instructor. She used to teach World History and the history of religions, Eastern and Western, in a Catholic school even though she wasn't Catholic. So she definitely has my respect. They had the new chairs in the chapel or else I would never have survived it. The pews were pretty hard, but provided good back support for the service.

This afternoon I finally had had enough and I got out the one mile Leslie Samson walking DVD and just *did* it. My back felt a lot better after that, but then my right hip went into spasms for a bit. But they went away soon enough, and I played a bit of Okami just to get my brain off it. A hot shower helped a lot.

John had gotten free tickets to the local taping of etown, which was supposed to be for a kid-friendly show. It was at 5pm and was going to be for two hours, which wasn't exactly kid-friendly as it's right over dinner time and a bit long for any five-year-old. But... we thought we'd at least try and since the tickets were free it would be easy to leave at any time we wanted to.

So we did.

We talked through the sub-freezing weather to the theater and Jet kicked every bit of free snow he could find. *grin* He was wearing the hat aelfsciene had given me and he loves the pompom motion on his head. Everyone there really loved the hat, as it almost looks like Jet has dreadlocks and when he dances and jumps and bobs his head, it all goes with him and he loves the motion. With just the background music going he danced through the theater as we tried to find seats and all the parents murmured, "Ooooo... LOOK at that hat!!" *grin* aelfsciene, know that your gift is VERY appreciated. :-)

He wore it for the show, too, and when the Columbians came out with their drums and wooden flutes, he was just bouncing like mad in his seat, clapping and stomping his feet. It was traditional Columbian music, too, the first was just a flute and a gourd-made rattle, and I would have assumed it would have bored him, but Jet really got into the rhythms and the sound and danced to it quite happily. There was a rock star turned family-friendly folksong guy that had some good things, but Jet wasn't as much into those as John and I were, which was kind of funny. A bit more than an hour into it all, Jet declared he wanted to go do something else...

... so we left and stopped at the B.D. Mongolian BBQ and had a pretty good dinner. It was cold and beautiful out and there were so few people on the Pearl Street Mall it looked haunted.

The drive home was quiet. Jet fell asleep, but awoke when we got there. He played quietly with John for a bit, and then did the going to bed ritual and is now asleep.

I'm healing, gradually. My body's finding a new balancing point. Hopefully, I can get it off the violin string tightness it's been on for the last decade or so when I take off on my leave at the end of the month. Until then I guess I'll just have to cope and get massage and do the exercise stuff until things shake out or something.