Well, my brilliant kids cleaned up at the Regional Science Fair. Heidi got silver for "How to train a Betta Fish" and Levi got bronze for "The dangers of smoking and why people accept those dangers." Seth, sadly, did not get to Regionals despite his gripping portrayal of the trials and tribulations of a Raven-Watcher. And the squirrel did eventually get eaten, although not until we left for Edmonton to visit family there. So that's over and next comes Music Festival with various well and truly played pieces being adjudicated (I love that word. It just sounds so great if you say it slowly over and over).

Just a sec, I have to go put duct tape on my kids' warts for the night . . . This is an actual podiatrist-recommended remedy that has worked far better than anything else - and we have tried everything else. But you have to use the good stuff. No knock-off duct tape. Therefore we have little squares of duct tape coming off of socks in the dryer all the time. Also kind of disgusting bedtime rituals. Lots of handwashing, let me tell you.

So just like absolutely everyone else in Saskatchewan I really really REALLY want spring now. The last two mornings have been -25 and tonight it is supposed to feel like -30. That is ridiculous and depressing and very aggravating. I went shopping today for new running shoes. Dan does not think I should run ever again. Now that I have wrecked my shoulders and knees I have been working on wrecking my feet. Actually my shoulders are very well healed and as strong as they have ever been judging by the weights I can lift. But it took a full job change and lots and lots of physio to accomplish that. And if I continue to work my quads very religiously my knees do behave. However my feet have been giving me grief for the whole winter, give or take. I have taken advantage of my home ultrasounder frequently with pretty good results but any time I have tried to walk more than 4 miles, or heaven forbid, run at all, they act up again. This is not good. Running is so critical to my mental well-being! So I am not quite ready to give it up totally. Last summer as I probably wrote about I tried biking as a replacement but with spring coming that is not thrilling to me as a prospect for getting out there. I want to run! I want to feel the shock of the earth pounding through all my joints and to push through the forces of gravity and aging and injustice and stupid bureaucracy and all the things I am not allowed to say and all the conflicting paradoxes of life and just run! Yes I have issues but going out on the old train tracks and passing numerous wildflowers and bear scat and bends in the road is Very Good for Me.

So anyway, I went to SportChek and was immediately identified and upsold and came home with $200 running shoes (Asics - my favorite) that I am wearing right now and LOVING. I think my whole problem was just my 3 year old running shoes and 4 year old hiking boots and now I will be All Better. I hope. This after poring over our budget and figuring out that I cannot really afford the $10 flipflops they sell in WalMart. Priorities.

The point being . . . okay, now I'm ready. Bring on the nice weather.

One of my horse-friends dropped in today as well just to make everything that much worse. I cannot WAIT to get away from winter and snow and regular housecleaning and budgeting and contemplation and porridge every single morning. There comes a wonderful day in about mid-April (usually, probably not this year) when I clean the house one last time and basically do as little as possible inside til fall. That day has not yet come and therefore I am continuing to clean the house very thoroughly and it is not fulfilling. Not at all.

However, I did feel fulfilled last weekend when I actually cleaned out our car for the first time in, hmm, probably about 10 months. I love going in our car now! Did you know that there are actual people that clean their cars (the inside, mind you) every week? Can you believe that? I can't. It is one of those tasks that in my head takes about 8 hours. In reality it took 2, but the effort expended was psychologically worth 8 so nothing has appreciably changed in my head. However there are big changes to the feel of being in the car. I wish it would last. That's the other problem. It doesn't last. I don't really feel like a weekly clean would accomplish any more than a yearly clean. On the other hand, it's been a week and my kids are still scared of the gleaming interior and are throwing crumbs carefully out the window, so maybe it would work . . . I'll have to figure out if that's another aspect of life I need to reframe.

Other news . . . hmm. Nope, can't talk about that. Probably not that either. Let's see, yes . . . no. I'll continue to consider what I can share ethically and non-invasively and compassionately and all that as I watch Seinfeld with my husband who doesn't want to be mentioned. Good night!

censoring sucks (can I say that?)

Yeah, so I love to write and I can almost feel my thoughts untangling as I type (which is now much more effective than handwriting for me and way more legible). Also, as I have been searching through all the corners of the house for addresses and contact info that are stored in various mugs and files and lists and mostly obsolete card catalog thingy's, I have reflected often that there should be a way to use this internet phenomenon to connect with people quickly and easily and without using a whole ton of paper and ink to, say, share funny pictures of my current life. Aha. Someone else had the same thought and it is Facebook. Huh. Okay, so the world is divided on this issue into two camps represented quite nicely by my husband (who doesn't even want to be named online and is horrified that I'm blogging at all and thinks that online banking will send you straight to hell or at least identity bankruptcy) and myself, who loves to chat and has a very iffy filtering system for thoughts at the best of times and at the worst of times can really enjoy a conversation with way too much information.

And there we are. And, predictably, because I actually love my husband and am attracted to people like him (strong, silent, inscrutable, able to filter thoughts, and sound wise, and otherwise way more mature than me) roughly half of my friends (because I have listed you guys in this latest effort to re-connect and it has filled two pages of small handwriting) are like my un-nameable husband and have no online identity and probably don't want to have one. The other half are like me and very happy to chat and have a total of probably a million FB friends between them. So there you go. It all makes for cumbersome list-checking-off.

Add to this that I work in health care and with families with really quite complex medical and developmental issues going on and there is a HUGE confidentiality thing that I am constantly aware of and very very careful to respect in every possible way. And so the bulk of my life that is interesting to me and has fascinating anecdotes that happen frequently and in fact is a huge part of Who I Am, is really off-limits for any sort of chatting at all. So that leaves me able to talk about, hmm, the garden. Which is currently under 2' of snow and irrelevant to my feelings at this time.

Anyway, I am just wanting to say that I love the idea of blogging as a way to let you all back into my life in a more personal and up to date way than my Christmas letters used to. However, many of you (on my list) will never see this blog unless I really try hard to persuade you to find a portal into the www. Also, most of what I would like to tell you about I really can't because other people (such as my un-nameable husband) would Flip Out. Not to mention that I just can't talk about other stuff. And then there's the whole thing about kids online and should you really talk about your kids online and should you have images of them for the world to see . . . which my uncle-in-law who was an RCMP officer cautioned me about speaking from sad experiences and so that pretty much wraps up that topic, certainly in terms of anything specific.

AAAAAGH. I am still going to continue blogging, however, because, darn it, I like it. If you feel like I am talking in circles, though, that is why. I am circling around the real topics of my life like the ravens are circling around the dead squirrel hanging from the basketball hoop in our yard that my son just shot with his bow and arrow for his Science Fair project, which is to befriend a raven. See? That's priceless. Stuff like that you can't make up. Welcome to my life in Crutwell. I would describe it in greater and more interesting detail than that, but I have to figure out the censoring rules first.