Spring is a week away, though you wouldn’t know it by looking outside. The several feet of snow we’ve accumulated over the winter is being added to by a deceptively light snowfall. Invariably, I will see this kind of snow coming down and think to myself, “Oh, this won’t be much at all.” And then the snow will continue to build for hours and hours as I delude myself some more. “It *must* be stopping soon, as there is barely any snow falling at all! Stop, snow. Stop stop stop stop STOP!”

It rarely heeds my cries.

So while the calendar says spring is only a week away, we know better.

Despite the faulty calendar, it is Spring Break here in the semi Frozen North. The kids are out of school until the 23rd. I won’t have to dread an early morning call from the school secretary asking me to substitute for an ill teacher or aide. (Besides, she already has me scheduled for three days the week we return.) Sleeping in is a favorite activity, and now that the kids are old enough to get their own breakfasts and keep themselves occupied without my wondering if the quiet means something needs my immediate attention, I can stay in bed until only my bladder forces the issue.

As an added bonus, I have four days without kids or hubby (he took them to visit some friends in our former town and to the Big City to buy groceries and a new washer–Yay! new washer! Oh, that is as sad as it sounds isn’t it, to be excited about a washer…). I plan to enjoy every peaceful, undemanding, ice cream for dinner moment. And tonight there is a blues/jazz musician in town I want to go hear (ETA: If the damn snow stops.). He played for the kids at school yesterday. Very talented, but I can’t recall his name. Somehow we get the amazing artists and musicians to come visit our small, relatively remote town, and I’d be a fool not to take advantage of the opportunity (if the damn snow stops). But that’s fodder for another post.

I also hope to get some writing and housework (ha!) done. If it warms up some, perhaps I’ll be able to scrape the inch or so layer of ice off my front walk. But by looking at the temperature do-dad at the corner of my computer screen, and at the thermometer outside my front door, I doubt that will happen today. Or even tomorrow. No worries. Spring will come. Eventually.