Happy Birthday, Abe

It is Winter Break here in the middle of the mitten.  Oh so needed for these poor, poor schoolkids, who have been to school approximately five minutes in the whole flippity flip year due to Fog Days, Snow Days, Slippery Road Days, There's A Tornado Warning In Chicago Days, Misty Days, Excessive Sunbeams and Rainbows Days, and other legal (evidently) holidays in this here whackado part of the country.  Thank goodness Winter Break is followed by Spring Break A SCANT FOUR WEEKS LATER.  Now typically I feel quite sorry for the overworked, underpaid school marms out there, but I am starting to get suspicious of all this free time they're getting; if it goes to their heads and they get a taste of freedom they might never come back from whatever casino or vineyard or nightclub they disappear to.  And if they don't come back, by crikey, all these gremlins will have to stay home and then I will be forced to eat their faces.  It's my natural defense mechanism when annoyed beyond belief and reason.

I have even been forced to promise a trip to the mall 45 minutes down the road.

I hate malls.  I avoid malls with every breath I take.  There is nothing good about malls...seriously, I am wracking my brain and can come up with nothing.  The stores are overpriced, the food is bad, it's full of cooties, and those are pretty much the highlights.  It gives my husband Post Traumatic Stress flashbacks from when he slaved at Radio Crap (where you've got answers, they've got blank stares).  But the Teen Queen used all her powers of persuasion to convince me that the mall is better than sitting around the house all day, listening to manly young adults pass gas in a competitive fashion.

She may have a point. 

But I refuse to enjoy the mall, instead dropping off older kids to waste their allowances on greasy pizza and to stalk cute people of the opposite sex, while I go ransack Goodwill down the road, wasting my allowance by adding to the world's largest collection of clothes (I go for quantity, not quality) and avoiding people of the opposite sex, even without my wedding ring which, sniffle, bit the dust the other day.  That was a really long sentence.  Forgive me.  The thoughts of the mall fry my wee brain and I am incapable of writing coherently.

The snow here is melting crazy fast.  The sun is out and if the wind weren't blowing so hard, it'd be a fantastic day.  The little ones all spent time out doors yesterday, even way past dark, taking flashlights and scaring each other with tales of full moons and werewolves.  My kids are weird.  I am looking forward to experiencing a Michigan spring soon - the last of the four seasons I haven't seen yet here.  In Idaho we had two seasons:  winter and summer.  In Wyoming we had all four but they were named a little differently than your typical spring, summer, fall, winter.  Instead the residents called them Almost Winter, Winter, Still Winter, and Road Construction.

Miss all of you, my Western peeps!  Those of you in Idaho, I will see you in April.  Please don't let your children have changed, because then I'll cry and we all know how much I dislike crying.  K.  It's agreed.  Thanks for adhering to the rules, I really appreciate it.