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Nasturtium.

Since we're in the middle of a blizzard this morning, and the road out of town is closed again, it might be a good day to paint my bathroom. I'm going orange, I'm pretty sure. I read the swatch names to Little Sweet on the phone yesterday, but she wasn't impressed: pumpkin pleasure ("ew"), pumpkin burst and navel ("gross"), orange nut and peach butter ("blech"), orange ice ("that's stupid"), fresh persimmons ("what?").

My favorite is called orange fruit, probably because it seems so repetitive. Should we call it orange? You mean orange as in the fruit? Yes, we should make that clear. Orange as in the fruit.

Radar flipbook.

I'm just so in love with the TV6 weather art.

  

Makes snow look like fireworks. So far, we're still in the eye of the storm.

Petulant.

Does everybody but me know that "froward" is an actual word? One of my students used it tonight. "Not willing to yield or compIy with what is required or is reasonable; disobedient." I can't think of another word that looks so much like a typo.

Don’t forget the decimal point.

So I did find my water meter (who knew?), and replaced the light bulb above it so I could make out the numbers. I even picked up the phone and called the number on my door-hung note to report my find. Ten minutes later, there were two men in my basement, drilling holes and running wires to install a new outside meter.

First, they said they needed to see if I had a new meter or an old-style meter, and I said I didn't even know I had a meter till today, and when we got down to the basement and I did my tah-dah gesture, the tall one said to the white-haired one, "What'd I tell you?" And I was like, oh no, what? And he said, "That's your gas meter." And I'm sure I just about started to cry of incompetence till he said, "Just kidding!"

The water guys is funny. But honestly, for the fifteen minutes they were here, I felt comforted. It's dumb, because none of it's their job, but I just felt this immense peace that if my sump pump exploded or my car ran out of gas in the driveway, they'd know what to do.

At least the women tell all tonight.

Things fall apart faster than I can deal with them. Not that I deal with anything particularly efficiently, but I want you all to know I do get my work done. I swear, at school, or when I'm doing the editing, I'm on the ball. I don't go whining to anybody else or put things off. I'm together. I don't have to google how to do everything. It's just the off-campus issues that get me.

I try to handle the immediate things. Like my windshield wipers, which got all tangled up in each other yesterday. In that case, easy. I dropped by the car dealer this morning and the guy had some special tool and he tightened a bolt or whatever and that's fixed in two minutes. But there's no dealer/service station for my house. Why not?

Because I need one. The mailbox needs fixing, so I turn to my only real source of fix-it knowledge: the infomercial. Magic Putty, right? Roll some toxic goo in your fingers for a few minutes and voila, things are tight. I left for work all excited that I'd handled it and trying to figure what else in my house I could bond. My broken fence? The hanging rod for my closet? My storm door? But either that stuff is crap or ten-degree weather isn't ideal for gluing, or magic. The mailman was cool about it again, leaving me, this time, my mystery Newsweek subscription (sister sister, are you getting this one too, along with your Midwest Living?), even though the box proper isn't connected to the post. I suppose the real solution entails screws or bolts or something, though I really don't see how or where anything was previously connected, and any googling of connecting my mailbox to a post brings up e-things like Outlook and mail forwarding.

I'm going to call a plumber or two soon (it's on the list), and maybe when he's here, I'll corner him about everything else. "Just give me an idea where to start," I'll ask him. About this, about other things I need. Just put me on the right track.

Chickpeas getting curried.

I'm watching the ceremonies, but my company is so less fun than Poodle and Betty and their crew. Plus, I'm trying to figure out how to fix my mailbox by mailtime tomorrow. The street plow ripped it right off its post. This happened Friday night, and for Saturday's delivery I just propped it back up. The mailman didn't blink, or at least he still put my National Geographic in it. But the plow blew it right off again, and I suppose I have to actually do something real about it. And I made brownies for the neighbor who has previously brought over his snowplow, but I'm late in saying thank you so now I think they would just say please more than thank you.

I'm writing this during a musical tribute to musicals, which is a little silly. You're busy now, my girls, but do check in and tell me all the details: who wins the pick 'em, your best bingo additions, costume awards. And send pictures.

Weathered.

It appears If I could get as far as Mackinac County, I could actually escape this godforsaken peninsula.

Update: I'm just cleaning and watching Last Restaurant Standing on BBC America (they have to serve as much of a whole pig as possible, so one team fried up the innards and put them on a salad, calling it "crispy pork," which seems low), when the TV started beeping. For a "Civil Emergency Message," I should turn to Channel 4. So I did: M-28 is closed again (it was last week for a while too).

I'm putting on my costume tonight anyway. Playing bingo by myself. The cats are all dressing up as the stars from Hotel for Dogs. Argh.

The Curious Ham of Benjamin Pickles and Cream Cheese.

Blue skies this morning, but I'm still snowed in. Remember how I said I hired a plow service and wouldn't that be nice if it just worked out from then on? Yeah. They apparently forgot about me after the first time they came. (I think I attributed one of my neighbor's nice gestures to them.) They also forgot to bill me, so I've decided not to fuss about it. But geez – now there's also a note on my door asking me to read my water meter and call somebody. I don't even know where my water meter is or why they can't just take care of business without bothering me.

So at some point, I have to go dig myself out today, though I'm pretty comfy here, so it won't be anytime soon. Tomorrow, I leave for my Oscar party (weather permitting (everything in my life is weather permitting)), so I know I'll do it by then. I'm just sad I can't even pay somebody to take care of me.

Grayling.

Swear, it's just coincidence that we pulled into the Super 8 with just enough time for a swim before The Bachelor. But it turned out the motel didn't get ABC. What?

Don't tell me what happened, but do let me know whether DeAnna's visit is worth looking forward to. And maybe why Jason cries in the previews. Little Sweet says it's because Ty dies. That makes me laugh. (I mean, because it's so not Milton Bradley.)

She made me publish this in Algerian.

I can't actually remember a Valentine's Day. Which isn't to say there haven't been good ones, I guess. I had my first date on the day after one, and my ex husband was always very good about flowers. But for the most part, eh. This one, though, I was lovely. We went to Hot Plate, where there were a few couples on what seemed like first dates. Very awkward. They had to get out the book of ideas, and even then they seemed afraid of the brushes. Not us, though. Little Sweet made a Fancy Cat Food dish out of glass, and I painted a spoon rest. Love.

Today, we hit the road for a mini road trip. A cheap motel along the way with a swimming pool is all we're looking for.

You don’t want to know.

Joan Didion says only the very young and the very old may recount their dreams at breakfast. Which many days keeps me from blogging.

Can you get Chuck Taylors with crampons?

It's weird out today – warm and melty without feeling particularly springish. But schools are closed all over the UP except here, and I'm not sure why. Though the ice may have something to do with it. I wore tennies to work today instead of boots, so I slid all the way from my parking spot to my office, including down this hill with a car following right on my ass. I wanted to hitch a ride on its back bumper, like in Back to the Future. I could have if I didn't have coffee in one hand.

So even though the melting exposes the dirty underneath of everything, I'm still rooting for it to go on. For the snow to rumble off my roof, for my driveway to level, for the mountains at the street corners to get smaller so every single stop sign isn't a roll of the dice against oncoming traffic.

We need a team name.

Oh, it is quiet around these parts, isn't it? Somebody put on some music.

So I'm teaching, and we're talking about a story we're reading, and one of my students, he hates to interrupt, but he has to read us what the last moron who owned his book wrote in the margin. It's the word "prego." Who knows why. Easily distracted, the rest of them all decide they love this game and start flipping the pages for notes and reading them out loud. My favorite: a solemn "OMG" next to a highlighted passage about Hiroshima. It's cute, this little performance, but I'm just crossing my fingers the whole time for something halfway smart because the thing is, I'm the only person here who assigns this book. These comments are almost certainly all from my very own kids in semesters past.

But whatever glues this group together. If they want to rumble with my other section, that's fine by me.

Next: trisexual triplets.

Why is nobody here to watch Double Shot at Love with me! This show is nuts. The twins introduced their two finalists (?) to their family tonight. In private later, the dad actually told them he didn't really think they'd be happy with either the boy or the girl because (as a surfer dude and a single mom bartender) neither one could support his daughters like they really wanted to be supported. That he saw them more as "trophy wives." He said it to their faces.

He didn't act like he wanted them to be trophy wives. He didn't use the phrase lovingly. He just seemed to know that's what they'd be best at. Saddest TV moment ever.

Meanwhile, outside:

How can we not feel singled out, with radar like that? I know it looks crazy colorful from way up high, but from ground level, it's just all white.

Throwing rocks.

Check out this awesome Xmas present Little Sweet received in the mail yesterday. (Thank you, Poodle! What a pretty neckline on that shirt, too.) I opened it on the phone with my girl, so I had to describe it to her. It's shiny pink! And it says Sweet! She already knows she loves it. And, I told her, it's so cool, shaped like the top half of a bowling bag.

Halt. What's a bowling bag? she wanted to know.

It's for your bowling ball. Duh. But she's like, where are you taking your bowling ball that you need to put it in a bag?

Fair enough. I just get hit by the things that mean nothing to her – like "roll up your window" (what, press this button?) – though this one's not so much generational as my fault. We need to hit the lanes more. It's either that or really practice our horseshoe throwing come spring. A girl's got to have some skills.