Ducks in the snow

They're living it but they ain't lovin' it.

Sock bonanza!!!

What's this? A care package from Sheffield? What can it be?


SOCKS! In all their two-tone glory! Knitted by my dear old ma, slaving away in the Dark Satanic Mills of the industrial North!


Guess which ones I tried first:


Ah, toasty toes. Is there anything more conducive to a contented life?

Pavilion of Splendour

We went sledding again today. The place we normally go is a huge park (Kearsley Park) about a mile from our house that must at one point have been amazing, but these days is deserted, except when it snows, because it's been dug out of a hillside and has nice steep slopes. It has a large impressive pavilion that is used for Shakespeare in the park in the Summer but the rest of the time is rumoured to be a hangout for druggies. But it looks nice in the sunshine.

Dashing through the snow

First sledding of the season

It has been unseasonably warm up to this point, with just a light snowfall that quickly melted and mild temperatures in the 40s. (Sidebar: I do talk a lot about the weather, don't I? I think there are two main reasons for that: (a) I'm getting old, and wrinklies do nothing but witter endlessly about the weather, (b) my mood correlates completely with what the weather is doing, so it is even more fascinating.) Well, this week I stocked up with wood just in time for the cold snap, and it arrived, bringing with it a mild snowfall. Cue the sledding! Going down:


And coming up again:


Some other sledders were going down with their dogs, one of which crapped just to the side of the slope. This caused me some anxiety, as our sleds tend to veer. Some people.

New Year, New Look For Thomas's Room

About a week before Christmas Thomas announced quite unexpectedly that he did not think he needed two rooms anymore (the green room and the blue room that he uses upstairs) and that he thought it would be nice if we turned the green room into a "family room" for us all to use together. I think what he had in mind is that all his most favorite things would be compacted into his blue room, which would be where he would sleep and game, and we (the rest of the family) would spend all our free time in the green room reading, drawing, watching TV, being together or whatever--near enough to him to be "chummy" but not so close as to "cramp his style." It was a sweet idea but... (1) Thomas has not thrown a thing away since the day he was born (hence the reason he occupies two rooms and also has boxes and boxes of his things taking up space in the basement AND the attic of the garage (2) the room is COLD because it has a door going out onto the balcony which, even when we seal it up, does not make it as nice as the livingroom with the fireplace (3) the room is BRIGHT GREEN, a color Thomas picked out when he was 2 1/2 (a liberty I allowed him that I have always regretted). Given the generous offer Thomas was making, we couldn't exactly just walk away, so we decided to make a counter offer: let's do a massive clear out of your room, help you get rid of everything you have outgrown (either packing it away for Frederick or giving it to Goodwill) and if it really is possible to have a sitting area in there, we will certainly turn it into a "study area" for us all to enjoy.
So, since then, Thomas and I have spent about 2-3 hours every other evening working on his room, picking a section and either bagging things up for the garbage, or boxing it for Goodwill, or crating it for our basement. So far we have bagged up 10 (!) giant sacks of garbage bags (mostly old homework exercise books dating back 8 years but a lot of other crap as well). I was astonished at how unsentimental Thomas is unlike a certain someone in the house. Simon was told he was ABSOLUTELY NOT allowed to search through the bags to see what was being thrown away--it was eating him alive, though, I could tell. Thomas also boxed up 5 tubs of books for Future Frederick and we donated MANY things that Thomas decided were "inappropriate" for Frederick.
Each evening after we've worked for 2 or 3 hours, Thomas decides that he "needs to rest" (though what he actually seems to be doing is poring over some old drawings of his he forgot he had and is getting lost in the marvelousness of his own sense of humour. He tries to explain it to me, but I usually don't appreciate it enough.) He then shoos me out of the room and I can hear him cackling away at his own comics well into the wee hours. If Thomas didn't make such a meal of it, we would have been done days ago but he is really dragging this out. But we are almost done: just the blue room closet and the blue room floor remain.

I'm still skeptical the room is "family room" material, and I can't imagine doing much studying with Thomas playing his "shoot-em-ups" in the next room (or laughing hysterically as he is wont to do when he plays video games, though he insists he does no such thing) but the clean up was massively productive and got Thomas out of a depressive slump, so I think it was a success nonetheless. As for the REST of the house...

Here is the one thing Thomas will NEVER throw away: