Hmph, Finally!

Well, it is about time, that is all I have to say! And all that grumbling I did last night. "Oh, good grief, guys....it's not going to snow! They say it will and it never does." Either that or it snows half an inch and everything gets cancelled. One flake on the ground and the entire triangle goes into a panic about stocking up on food and snow shovels. There is an entire storage building somewhere full of salt to put on the roads so that nobody slips on the one flake. Northerners must think we are so wimpy. I think we are wimpy. I mean, yes snow and ice are dangerous and yes we down here in the south don't consider it a worthy enough investment to buy materials suitable for the snow since we only get a significant amount every five years or so. But still.

Besides all that, snow is beautiful. I woke up this morning, went into the kitchen, happened to glance out the window, and I saw white. "Well, then, I was wrong...." I said, scoffing and humphing more than what was surely my fair share. I still haven't been out in it. Actually I am about to go and sled some, I think. I've just been inside being cozy, reading, researching, talking with parents, etc. We watched the inauguration. Now THAT is something lots of fun to do while wearing sweats, drinking hot chocolate, and looking outside at the birds and flurries. I was worried that the music at the beginning...the Appalachian Spring arrangement by John Williams thing.... would be too much to my liking and then I would have to deny myself the privilege of downloading it since I have boycotted the whole ceremony. Thank goodness it wasn't that impressive. Nice, easy-listening-in-the-elevator-ish, but hardly outstanding.

Alrighty, I will take a break now to go sledding. I'll write more after a word from these asterisks:

**********

I have returned.

We walked down to the pond, stopping by Catherine's house on the way. The snow is good enough for making a nice snow ball now. We sledded a bit at the pond, and I tried to build a snow fort, but I didn't make much progress because NOBODY was helping me. After being at the pond we decided to walk down the street to some body's yard that has a big hill on it. We always went down the hill when we were younger (in the days where it actually snowed like this once or twice a year, every year). This year we decided that since we were all teenagers now, we would be like the teenagers back then who would make lots of cool bumps and turns. We manufactured one bump which, to our great surprise, worked well! After succeeding, we walked down to the new part of that neighborhood and tried to sled on the hill in the yard of the model home. Nobody was at the model home, but the outside speakers were playing classical music. I never thought I would get to sled while listening to classical music. But I still haven't. The snow was too deep. But now I have something great to aspire to--listening to classical music as I sled.

We finally hiked back home, to find out that a friend of ours had been calling and wanted her dad to bring she and her brothers over to our house so we could all play in the snow together. Her dad has not made a decision about that yet, so we are all sitting around wondering whether to clean up the house a bit or not.

I have been thinking a lot, and then I thought about what I have been thinking. It seems as though I can never dwell on the present. It's either thinking about what is going to happen in the future or thinking about things that happened in the past. It isn't as if I am discontent with the present. I don't think I am. I hope I'm not. And I concentrate enough to get things done. But is my mind really somewhere else all the time?

I don't know. There are plenty of things that I do where I don't think about-or wish I was actually-doing something else. That is usually just something like playing piano or cooking. Cleaning the bathrooms makes me wish I was doing something else, and writing stories makes me feel like I should be doing something else. If I am reading for school a lot of the time my mind will start to wander and I will either think of how nice it would be to be young and free again, or what my future life will be like...where I will live when I'm married and how we'll do things...UGH. Now is not the time to think about what can't be, nor is it the time to think about things I will have plenty of time to think about when the time comes.

Anyways, I need to get on with stuff. There probably won't be water polo tomorrow, and I don't even know if a significant amount will melt before Thursday so I can go to the Hawks-NRCA game. It might be the only basketball game of the season I get to go to. GOSH I am so tired. I'll talk to you all later!

~Jessica