Sunshine

I haven't watched TV news with regularity since 9-11. It disturbs me in so many ways, it's not worth it. Last night, though, I decided to watch the local news to catch the weather. I don't know what possesses me to compulsively get news about weather that is actually happening at the moment, I could just look out the flipping window. But I like to confirm our misery.

We had another snowstorm yesterday. Our house seems to be below the Mason-Dixon line and we only had 3 inches of snow (some areas got over a foot), but it was really wet and slushy. Walking the little man to dance proved impossible as it meant crossing great slush lakes at every intersection.

I learned two important factoids while watching the weather, and these kept me awake most of the night. The first is that we in Chicagoland have had 11 minutes of sunshine thus far in February. That's enough to depress even the most cheerful, half-full person without a Happy Light.

The second factiod was that the snow we received is called "Heart Attack Snow." Mark was already snoring when this information came out, so I carefully stayed primed all night to waken when his alarm rang at 4:15 to beg him not to shovel the snow. Then I promptly slept until 8 a.m. when the plow guy and his group of young, impervious to heart attack workers started plowing and shoveling.


This is my thing from yesterday. It's actually two things. The ball of silk came from the front of an old shirt. I have visions of going through all the old, stained and unwearable clothes I have stashed in the basement and making balls of knittable or weaveable yarn from them. Making a ball takes time as I like to cut it in one continuous loop to avoid sewing the strips together. And it creates a lot of waste as the ends need rounding. I came up with the idea of making a valenting with the waste fabric. Next time I'll use less glue to make it lie more flat and stay closed. Now all I need to do is make an envelope for it and send it to my mother!