When snow calls all the shots [and all the shots are bad].

I was born in California, but didn't live there so long that it made me less snow-worthy. I'm pretty much a die hard Midwesterner now. But nature, what the fuck? We're snowed in again here in Akron, Ohio. The kids had a snow day on Tuesday, and everything (universities included) is closed today. Add to that the fact that Monday was a holiday, and I have two sick children who were out of school the days that we didn't have a snowtastrophe, and you get the strangest, least productive week ever on earth, I fear.

I had such ambitious hopes for this week! Working on sequencing my new manuscript. Writing poems. Reading (for work, and for fun). Annotating student poems in a leisurely fashion. But instead I've had kids coughing, puking, whining, thankfully not fighting because too sick, waking up at night, crying, making extravagant demands, etc. I did manage to teach my one class of the week and make it to my meeting, but shortly after I had to speed home to the infirmary.

So no new poems, no gym, no catching up (though I did get more sleep than usual, which is always welcome), very little reading, but you know what? So far I am not sick. I'm not sick! And that makes this all sort of okay. I also thought ahead and brought my student poems home with me, so hopefully I will be able to do some work. I need to learn how to annotate while being pestered.

Hoping the kids' strep tests come out negative, and that it stops snowing eventually. People looked at me like a lunatic yesterday when I was frantically filling my grocery cart, but I am rather glad I stocked up while I could.

Could this please be the last major storm of the winter?

Please?

Pictured above, this year's incarnation of the wind chime icicle.