It’s getting to be The Shining up here, friends. I think I’ve handled this winter pretty well, and it’s not that I’ve run out of things to keep me occupied, I am just starting to go a little bit mad as of about noon yesterday. Nothing happened. I’ve just had enough.

I walked to get the mail yesterday and met our UPS guy at the end of the road. He was parked down there patiently doling out parcels to whoever was walking or driving by, trying to get as much stuff delivered via willing neighbors as possible. Of course he had my humongo new carseat – “if it’s okay with you I’m just going to leave it here on Bob’s back porch. He won’t care. I’ll give you his phone number and you can just come pick it up when you can get your car out.” About that time a state road truck came by – PLOWING and CINDERING THE HILLS! It was a beautiful sight. Mikey is digging out the car (again) as I type so he can go get the mail and our carseat off of Bob’s back porch, and then tomorrow we’re going to town. Oh, the excitement! Andy is going to be here from Louisville! Jarrod is home from China for the first time in two years! I have about fifty-seven things to mail!

Part of my insanity is to blame on my dear, sweet child. She has a wee cold – the kind that’s only really evident when she’s trying to sleep and has gunk rattling around in her nose when she lays on her back. She hasn’t been sleeping well for three nights, and as a result has nursed All. Night. Long. On a normal day she nurses once during the day to take a nap, maybe more if she falls on her face or is otherwise in need of comfort. But usually – just once. Then she nurses to sleep at night and will wake up and nurse for a few seconds just a few times – neither of us really even fully wakes up and we go right back to sleep. When she’s teething or not sleeping well for whatever reason, she wakes up constantly, nurses back to sleep and then refuses to let go and take her soother instead. It’s like the first trimester of pregnancy. No matter what or how much I eat and drink before bed, I wake up starving, dehydrated, feeling like I’m going to puke, and completely sore and exhausted. Three. Nights. I’m officially below my pre-pregnancy weight… the weight I maintained practially to the OUNCE from 8th grade until conception. Now I’m under. It’s really discouraging. I need reinforcements – coconut oil, hemp oil, protein-packed smoothies. Too bad a single avocado is $1.99 in this town in the middle of winter.

Ok enough whining. Mikey and I have been thinning out books, movies and music since the last time we got snowed in for days and days and putting them on swaptree. Here’s what we’ve traded for in the past several weeks:

The Van Gogh Cafe by Cynthia Rylant
Stranger than Fiction
The Bean Trees by Barbara Kingsolver
and The Poisonwood Bible
and Animal Dreams
and Prodigal summer
(can you tell I’m in love??)
Ship Shapes by Stella Blackstone
10,000 Maniacs’ Blind Man’s Zoo
Robyn Hitchcock & Egyptians’ Perspex Island
The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox by Maggie O’Farrell
Cowboy Junkies’ Black Eyed Man
Happiest Toddler on the Block by Harvey Karp
Into the Wild by John Krakauer
A Parchament of Leaves by Silas House
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
and some GI Joe episodes for my 33 year old pacifist child :)

Not bad, eh? Mail delivery – on the days that mail can actually get to us, which has not been every day – has been very exciting. Lots of new books and music to keep us occupied are a very good thing.

…but, if I see one more facebook status update about how global warming must not be real because we are buried under so much snow, I am going to scream (some more). THIS, coming from people who I KNOW got better grades than me in SCIENCE CLASS…it fills me with an irrational rage. Good thing I don’t know where the hatchet is located in this house / garage / shed. Just saying.

Hazel’s accomplishments lately: climbing, dipping her food like a big kid, pretending to eat / drink / feed you / give you a drink from the proper utensils or when looking at pictures of foods and cups, covering Paisley and stuffed animals with “blankets” (her silks or a bandana), hurrying to deliver Paisley’s bone to her as fast as her little legs will go anytime she finds it laying on the floor, putting empty bowls in front of Paisley’s snout so she can “eat” or “drink” (I’m not sure which). Her play is increasingly becoming centered around nurturing. I need to get this girl a doll! I’ve had fabric to make her a doll sling for almost a year, but no doll yet.