It's been a hot minute

Hello, readers... if any of you are still out there!  Apparently there is some controversy as to whether a "hot minute" means a short time or a long time, but I know for sure that it's been a long time since I've visited here.

My girls and I have been reading through some old blog posts in these past two days and I just think it's a crying shame that I don't blog anymore.  Not for the sake of any readership, really, because I know whatever following I may have once had has probably abandoned me due to the lack of updates here, but because it's so therapeutic for me and valuable for my family to have a record of our daily goings-on.

Of course I'm tempted to reflect on why blogging is so hard for me these days.  I think it's a combination of things.  My (now two! more on that later!) jobs keep me extremely busy, our girls have their own busy schedules with their many, many activities and I am deep in the era of taxi driver because none of them can drive yet.  My typical day is not the bustling but simultaneously relaxed at-home days of yore but a constant streak of me going 1,000 miles a minute and filling every possible second of my day with tasks that are imperative.  A full day of teaching during which I sometimes get 10 minutes to eat lunch (sometimes not!) followed by coming home and immediately make sure that dinner is ready so we can get to all the girls' evening activities where we stay until between 8 and 9 PM.  If I have free time while I'm waiting for them it's usually catching up on email, grading assignments, or doing one of the many administrative tasks in the mountain of things expected of public school teachers these days.  When we do have a chance free evening I rarely have any creative energy left for things like blogging.

The platform I'm using here (Blogger) hasn't had an update in a while and so it's a bit more cumbersome now for me to upload photos and share videos, and because of that extra time-consuming piece I think I shy away from sitting down to write a post in my scant free time.

But there's more to it than that.  I think we all know that blogging was the medium of the early 2000's and 2010's and our attention spans have grown way shorter, and people can't even sit through a 10-minute YouTube video in favor of a 30-second reel on Instagram or TikTok these days.  How would anyone take the time to sit down and actually *read* a blog post that might take more than 5 minutes?  I sound like a granny when I say it, but it's true, and I have even noticed this difference in myself, not just the younger generation.  It's a little unsettling.

But anyway, let's save that existential crisis for a different post.  For now, can I talk to you about my beautiful family?

Of course there has been so much that has gone on since I last chatted with you here, but our most recent big event was a surprise trip to Disney World for our girls over Christmas week. I can hardly believe it actually happened, because we were so crazy busy leading up to it that we barely got everyone packed, and then the week itself went by in the blink of an eye because of course, we were having so much fun and every day was jam-packed full of all the amazing things there are to do at Disney.  I could give you a detailed recap but for now let's just suffice it to say that it was wonderful and none of us wanted to come back.

But come back we did, and along with us came an unwelcome stowaway:

M was the first to show symptoms, in our fourth day in the Disney parks.  He managed to power through the rest of the vacation on ibuprofen.  Everyone else had mild symptoms but nobody else tested positive except for me.  C actually was pretty sick and was out of school four days with the exact same symptoms as her Dad but never got a positive test.  Unfortunately the timing was such that I had to miss two very important dress rehearsals for winter concerts at two of my schools, so the kids felt a little nervous and slightly unprepared, but I was well in time for the concerts, and they went fine, so I suppose that's all that matters.

Here is me wielding a hammer that we used for one of our concert songs, "A Viking's Tale", masked up on my first day back to work after COVID isolation.

Since returning from sunny Florida we have had our share of snow, although in the age of global warming it seems like each storm gets harder and harder for the meteorologists to predict.  We seem to be always wondering whether the temperature will be cold enough for these storms to be all snow, some rain, all rain, freezing rain, etc.  This also makes for difficult decisions regarding school cancellations as well.

One such day, when meteorologists were trying to pin down a changing forecast and our superintendent decided to have school, I ended up sliding sideways down a steep hill on a thin coat of ice covered in snow while taking the girls to school.  We ended up perched on a stone wall on the opposite side of the road:

We were all pretty scared and shaken up, but thankfully nobody was hurt.  However the ramifications of this one event have lasted for weeks-- poor M has used up all of his free time working with the insurance company to decide whether we wanted to total the car, then getting us a series of rental cars while we shopped for a new one, finally finding a new car after test driving several, then communicating with the bank, getting the car registered, etc. etc. etc.  This all came at a time when I was preparing for yet another concert (this one our biggest of the year-- our district-wide orchestra concert) and so I was of very little help to him.  Not to mention the fact that about every week since the accident we have had some sort of snow or ice or weather event, and driving anywhere we need to go has been very stressful and traumatic.  I vowed on that day that if there was any doubt about whether it was safe to drive, I would just err on the safe side and keep everyone home.  But it hasn't been that simple-- I can easily keep the kids home but when it's a work commitment for me and taking time off is frowned upon, it's a different story.  So there have been a lot of agonizing decision-making in these last few weeks.  I feel like it has taken a few years off my life.

But we have had some fun events too.  Dance competition season has started, and we have three out of four girls competing this year!

Not pictured is the fact that L auditioned for our district orchestra and absolutely killed her audition, placing 5th out of every viola player in central Massachusetts!

And of course we have had some extra family time with all these snow days and two-hour delays, which we never complain about.  We do love each other a lot and take every chance we can get to hang out together.

M also started a new job in November which has been great!  More on that later, perhaps?  Anyway, he has been doing some traveling and while he's away J usually sleeps in my bed.  It's a win-win situation because, as the baby of the family she still loves to sleep with Mama and will take any opportunity to do so, and, well, I just get lonely sleeping in our big bed all by myself.  She brings lots of her friends to sleep with us, as you can see above.  So it's a party!

As for me and M, we are about to celebrate 22 Valentine's Days together, if you count the very first one when the secret valentine was sent.  Pictured above is a run we went on together the other day on a rare beautiful spring-like Saturday.  We are, as ever, such a great team and it's a privilege beyond words to have this awesome person by my side.  Laughing at his jokes, watching Star Trek together, and planning all our hopes and dreams with him has been a huge comfort to me through the trials of 2024 so far.  Can't wait to continue the adventure another 20+ years!