“Wait a minute. Shoot, I’ve read this before.”

The title of this post is usually accompanied by an exasperated sigh and slam of a book.

I started writing this post, made that sound, and quickly realized I shouldn’t slam my computer. But, I’ve written this post before! No. My computer didn’t delete all my work. No. I’m not having deja vu. Look! Last year’s never ending Christmas break from school.

Exactly last year at this time I wrote a post about school being cancelled for an entire week, the week the kids were supposed to return after Christmas break. It was cancelled due to rain. It would rain all day, then freeze overnight and the buses couldn’t run. But because it rained all day, the kids couldn’t go outside and play, it was tortuous.

Here we are, on day 22 of Christmas break 2024-2025. Except this time, we actually got snow. Well. We had snow. Then we got ice. Severe ice. Which means my driveway, which is 1/4 mile long and 8% grade, is treacherous. Because I didn’t clear it. Why would I? That’s a Hubs thing. But he’s out of town, all week. Nobody cleared the driveway. And I grossly underestimated the ice.

Somewhere in the depths of my brain as I watched the snow fall I thought, “snow isn’t that bad. I’ll drive down in the morning, lay some good tracks, I won’t even need to shovel.”

Then the rain started and those depths piped up again with, “eh, rain. It’s not that cold out. If anything, it’ll melt the snow.”

Then the temps dropped, and have stayed below freezing, for 6 days. At that point, my depths were all done with their helpful thoughts and I was on my own.

Literally. The kids and I have been on our own. On day 4 of isolation we slid down to the bottom and a friend picked us up to go to the store and see civilization again. The world was still happening!! How could this be when time had stopped in our house on the hill? Roads are clear! People are out! Just walking around like normal! Don’t they know it’s icy and treacherous out here?!

“Well no, it’s not. Just your house is…”

Oh.

Actually there’s quite a few back country roads that are pretty bad still and presumably that’s why school has been cancelled. Although we’ve kicked around a few theories about the nefarious plans of whoever these people are that make back to school decisions…

Three days ago, or maybe four, I can’t be sure, the cats caught a bird and obliterated it in their cat room. There’s feathers everywhere, not to mention a bird carcass. My oldest noticed it today.

“Mom! The cats got a bird and it’s gross!”
“I know, they caught it three days ago.”
“Ew. Why didn’t you clean it up?”
“For the same reason it took you three days to notice it was there.”

Time has lost all meaning.

I assume when we surface from this icepocalypse she’ll be old enough for her driver’s license. I’ll probably be taking her to the DMV while I get the middle one going at freshman orientation and the youngest will be a teenager.

Or maybe time has slowed down, I really can’t be sure.

I’ve entered the world of sourdough starters. Because it’s a good way to mark time and make sure one day is indeed becoming another day. 8:30 in the morning, feed the sourdough. 8:30 at night, feed the sourdough. The next morning check the jar, the dough level has risen above the rubber band, yes, I can mostly confidently confirm time has passed. Feed the sourdough.

If you’re wondering why this post is coming out on what I presume to be Saturday morning, it’s because most of Thursday I thought was Friday. Then when Friday came, according to the sourdough calendar at least, I was so relieved I hadn’t actually missed the blog day, that I forgot to write a post. But now I have. So I’m going to post this, and then go feed the sourdough.

Oh it’s snowing right now, by the way. Which will either make ice mountain better, or worse. I really can’t be sure. It’s definitely salt in the wound, but not the driveway…