Miser Family Update

N-son shoveling a neighbor's walk.

The first day of spring brought a record-breaking snowfall* for the Miser family, with shoveling and school cancellations, ensuring that our lives remain rich and full. Wednesday brought the snow, and then Thursday N-son went to work shoveling 16 inches of the heavy white stuff from the sidewalks and driveways of our neighbors.

* This isn't the biggest snowfall we've encountered, but it was the biggest spring snowfall that our city has seen in the past several decades.  Hence, record setting.

Earlier in the week, when it was still "winter" (but before the snow), I had a wonderful day granddaughter-sitting.  A-child is about to turn three years old, and so she's a lot of fun.  She loves coloring (she seems to know all her colors already, and loves geometric shapes, exclaiming about "circles!"), and planting things it dirt in canning jars, as approved by her Miser-Nana.  She loves playing with the dog.  We get along well.

Also during winter, I-daughter went to an awesome weekend of square dancing.  She tells me she did "almost ten miles of dancing" according to her pedometer.  How cool is that?

A light fixture, mid-fix.

My husband has been living the life of retirement that I can only imagine and lust after:  this week, he fixed a toilet clog by removing the toilet from the floor and replacing it (jealous); he went to a protest for Women's rights on Tuesday, and a march against gun violence on Saturday, and we repaired a broken light fixture in the kitchen together.  (That last was a kind of a marital bonding experience, albeit the kind that involves standing on chairs with our arms in the air holding heavy objects and also sticky electrician's tape).

Mid-week, a bunch of our family went to our local production of Guys and Dolls, and we got to have bonding experiences of a different kind.  I got to hear my daughter ranting at intermission about how anti-feminist the show is.  That's not the phrase she used, but "anti-feminist" was at least part of the sentiment --- and it's usually me ranting to my kids about the freakishness of musicals where women end up "falling in love" with men who annoy them, merely because the guys do one kind act, or maybe because the guys get mildly less annoying. What a terrible example that is for our daughters! So it was lovely to be the recipient of a rant from my daughter on that same theme; Sarah and Sky didn't belong together, and she knew it..

But also, "Sit down; you're rocking the boat" -- wow!   What a totally fantastic, amazing, kick-butt song!  We were hollerin, yellin', dancin.   Bring it on!  It's so much fun to go to live theater with my family.  At this point, I need to pause and say

. . . thank you, Mom and Dad, for taking me and my sisters to operas and operettas when we were kids.  I'm so glad that we got to share these experiences with each other, and with the people around us.  And I'm so glad that I get to take my own children to live theater now.  

Sunrise over the newspaper box.

The week ended with my husband at one of his marches (srsly, can we make some progress on gun control now?) and with me taking eight students to a mathematics meeting where we got to give and listen to some beautiful math talks.  Not the same as a Loesser/Swerling/Burrows musical, and yet still a great way to spend time experiencing heady material together.

So that's the news from my family, which continues to be wealthy in our adventures.  May you and yours be similarly prosperous.