More snow and a visit

We got more snow this week, with even more due tomorrow night, and there's so much of it on the ground that it feels like it will never go away. When I go out to fetch the paper in the morning, sometimes I have to use a rake, because the guy throws it on the lawn, and I'm not going to step into a foot of snow in my jungle mocs. Of course, I could put on Rocket Boy's snow boots, but raking is easier. People walking by sometimes stare at me, but it's probably the fact that I get a paper at all that surprises them.

Friday it got into the 50s, Saturday the low 40s, and today it's in the 40s again -- so we SHOULD be getting some melting, but not so you can tell. Rocket Boy is here for the long weekend and today he took Kid B to the Denver Museum (Kid A didn't want to go because he was meeting a friend at the library to play video games, sigh). So the driveway is missing its usual red Subaru and thus SHOULD be melting, but as you can see, it isn't. That means I should go out there and shovel, but instead I am inside blogging. Hmm.

We're having a nice visit so far, with the usual ups and downs. I made the mistake of agreeing to pick Rocket Boy up at the airport on Friday night and we left at what would have been the right time to leave if it hadn't been RUSH HOUR, so instead it took us nearly twice as long to get there as it would have otherwise, and I was a mess when we finally arrived. Rocket Boy was in good spirits, though, and he drove us to the Wishbone restaurant for dinner, my choice. Kid B likes the Wishbone because he can order three chicken drumsticks and they come with a gigantic tub of chicken gravy for dipping. Nauseating, but it makes him happy. I had fish & chips, and RB had trout. But Kid A wouldn't eat his dinner and in general misbehaved quite dramatically, claiming it was because he was excited that Dad was home. I've been having issues with Kid A this week, which I won't go into -- school-related issues, mostly the school's fault. But as I learn more about how his brain works, it gets a little less stressful to be around him when it's working differently from mine. Neurodiversity rules!

A week or so ago we noticed that the bathroom door lock wasn't working -- that is, when you lock the door, you can still push it open. I had no idea why this was happening, nor how to fix it. But I knew that Rocket Boy would know. He studied it for a while, said "The hasp needs to be moved," and proceeded to make that happen. I have a general idea of what a hasp is, but that's all. "Why does it need to be moved?" I asked, and RB shrugged. "The door could have settled." He wasn't concerned about it, just handled it. I won't say this is the ONLY reason I married him, but it's one of them. His brain understands how things work and he knows how to fix problems. Neurodiversity rules again!

Other than the door, we haven't made a lot of progress on this visit's to-do list. The roof is covered with snow, making it hard to deal with the broken skylight and the non-working TV antenna. We haven't done the taxes yet, although we're still planning to. BUT, Rocket Boy has taken the twins sledding, and this morning he and the boys watched a silly old movie together, and now he and Kid B are at the Denver Museum, and tomorrow he's going to go buy me a new (used) laptop in Evergreen and take the kids along for another outing of some sort. The fix-it stuff is very important, but just hanging around being a family again is more important.

One other item of interest this week: One morning I went out to get the paper -- was it Tuesday? Wednesday? -- and I noticed a flock of birds in the scraggly little evergreen tree next to the house. I think of it as a junk tree, wish it hadn't been planted where it was. Once I backed into it and broke my taillight. But that morning it was jammed full of birds. What birds? I stood on the edge of the porch and looked closer. At first I saw robins -- they seemed gigantic, all puffed up in the cold. But there were other birds mixed in with them, moving constantly, twittering, birds with a crest, pale yellow breast, a bit of yellow at the end of the tail -- cedar waxwings! A flock of cedar waxwings (and robins) in that stupid little tree! The tree has totally redeemed itself and now I will never cut it down. I stared at them until they flew away, off to another neighborhood tree on that cold winter morning.