frozen lamb

Yesterday, the first day of March, was quiet, sunny, and pleasant, if having a foot of snow on the ground can be called pleasant. I guess that means that March came in like a lamb, but that lamb had frostbite. It reminds me of one of my favorite murder-mystery plots: the wife murders her husband with a frozen leg of lamb, sticks the lamb into the oven, calls police to tell them she has just found her husband murdered, acts appropriately distraught when they arrive, and later serves them the roasted lamb "so it won't go to waste."

Today is comparatively warm--a toasty 42 degrees. Sounds of melting snow and ice have Esteemed One running down to the basement every now and then to check the water situation. Snowmelt can cause just as many flooding problems as a heavy rain. He's done everything imaginable to try to solve the problem, but so far, it seems to be getting worse.

If I don't get the tenure-track job, and we wind up staying in this house, I want to rip off the deck and have professionals do something to grade away from the house. We want to replace the deck with a covered porch. In the summer it gets so hot back there that we can't enjoy the deck, and since the house is a farmhouse style, with a great front porch, I think having a great back porch would be appropriate. It would certainly be more usable than the slipshod patchwork deck.

If I do get the job, and we decide to sell the house, I would love to get something more Arts and Crafts or Mission or Prairie style. But that's wishful thinking, obviously. I've found several houseplans for new constructions that have the flavor of those styles, and given the Esteemed One's love of all things electronic, we may need a new construction just so we won't go up in flames.

Last night, eager to get out of the house for a few minutes, we went to the local big box bookstore, where I of course loaded up with bargain books. I can go forever without buying shoes, underwear, or clothing. I never have my nails done. I don't have my brows waxed (or anything else waxed, either). I get my hair chopped off periodically at the bargain places. But to save myself, I can't pass up a bookstore. As the old saying goes, "Books is good."

Speaking of clothing, if I don't do a couple of loads of laundry, I'll face the week dressed even more oddly than usual. (It's amazing what I can find to wear when most of what I usually wear is in the laundry.) So I'm off to sort the colors from the whites.... the only sort of segregation tolerable. Dr. S.