BRRRR-R-R-R-R-R-R-R-R

Ok, so it's not HORRIBLE outside, but it's pretty brisk! The windchill is only about ohhhhhhh 7? above zero?

Long long ago when I was but a wee child I walked home from kindergarten. There was a nice path to the street OR you could take the shortcut through the ditch. I seem to remember snowfalls we got when was little to be much more than the snow we get today. It could have something to do with the fact that I was only 3' nothing tall. I took the shortcut one day and my tiny little legs sunk into the snow. They couldn't reach the bottom of the drift to the ground and the snow was up to my patootey.

I yelled and yelled "DADDDYYYYYY DADDDDYYYYYYYYYYYYY" for what seemed like forever before he looked out the window. We only lived kitty-corner to the school. It must have seemed a lot further in those days if I deemed it necessary to take the "short-cut". He mumbled over to me asking why in the H I didn't take the path!

You know when you are a kid and you KNOW you're stupid and any answer you come up with sounds even more stupid? so you just say "I don't know."? That's all I could come up with. I think that answer is the one answer that most often makes parents crazy... but I understand. Sometimes an "I don't know" that's earns you a whack upside the head is a lot easier than trying to explain how really dumb you are.

That would surely cause the parents to realize they failed in geneology and that I should have been drowned at birth. So I'll settle for "I don't know" and I don't get too upset with my kids when they use it.

TODAY, it is pretty frigid out. My daughter has a decent trek from the road to the house when she gets off the school bus in the afternoons. I've seen worse though. I've lived through worse. She'll be ok. In addition, she's a jock and she's been running it. It just takes her a few minutes.

Dad is beside himself with worry that she will catch frost-bite and is trying to get his errands done so he can get there when she gets off the bus. What happened to this man? Where did the grumbling short-cut curser go? Besides, he's going to make my kid soft, dangit! HA HA!

What I find interesting is that when I was her age, I was helping him haul hay in a flat-bed jeep with no heater and proceeded to get it stuck in deep drifts. Don't think I didn't get the evil eye over that one!

Now, where did I put those coveralls?