The holidays seem to have skipped everything in between my decorating the house two weeks ago and my looking around yesterday and thinking, "It's time to get these decorations down and put away."

I came down with plague or something like it and missed every celebration and get-together.  No Christmas Eve with 37 of my closest relatives at my mother's house lest I get the 84 year old matriarch or 2 month old new baby sick.  No Christmas Dinner because my stomach wasn't handling anything but tea.  No post-Christmas retail raids for bargains.  No New Year's Eve bash.  No nuthin'.

I'm due back at work tomorrow and I won't have any satisfying heartwarming tidbits to contribute to the holly jolly post-Christmas note comparing among my coworkers.  I was in bed.  Sick.  Yes, the whole time.  My best holiday feature?  I looked like the Grinch who stole Christmas--green and grim.

Therefore, I'm siezing the first two days of work and refusing to hand myself over.  Substitutes eager to refill coffers emptied by Christmas goods and post-Christmas fun have consented to come in and put their bodies where mine should be.  And where will mine be?  Mine will be wherever I want it to be.  I might not have throngs of merry-makers around me, but I will have my holidays!

What could possibly be the downside of being able to be at work outside at school in an unzipped hoodie instead of layers of down coat, sweater, hat, and goosebumps in January?

Yesterday I would have been hard pressed to come up with any discouraging word about the weather, even though the playing field was mud and the blacktop's area was severely impinged upon by big deep puddles, irresistible to small-footed kidlets.  While other grades were kept inside the building for recess because of the wet slides and mud, the youngest grades were taken out to get their wiggles out lest the children's repressed energy make their classrooms explode during afternoon study time.  The adults who stayed inside the building for playtime were happy to do so, but it just seemed like a waste of a day that was 40 or 50 degrees warmer than usual for January.  I thought that getting out into fresh air that was kind to us instead of the brutal stuff we battle against most days was definitely worth having to keep a closer eye on the peeps and everyone--kids and me alike--loved it and was sorry when the bell commanded us to get back inside.

This morning's radio news filled out the picture of what unusual weather can mean.  While we enjoyed it on the playground, and though Jean and I were treated to a spectacular show of air to ground spears of lightning that presented no danger to us, other people in the state and midwest were terrorized by tornados.  Houses were flattened or had their roofs sheared off, train cars were lifted off their tracks, trees were uprooted before people's eyes.  One sheriff said that in many years of experience with more typical summer tornados, he'd never seen such destruction.

I can't say I feel guilty for enjoying warm breezes yesterday, but I wish other people weren't suffering a steep price for them.

Six o'clock ay em.  The alarm bleats at me.  First morning thought: "unh.  no."  Second thought: "How can I get out of this?"

It's funny what a difference a day makes, or rather what a difference which day it is makes.  Saturday I was out of bed, dressed, and had two hours of accomplishments behind me by six;  Sunday I slept in--I was ready for the day by six, though.  All it took was today being Monday, the laboring engine pulling the heavy workweek behind it to reset my inner clock and to make clutching my pillow and burrowing under blankets my morning exercise routine.

Birds are rioting today. A gang of them, different species and different sizes, are wheeling around the yard. Small birds shooting through the air, some roof-top high, others low to the ground, cutting close to the house. One blasts off a branch, another follows, others cross their paths, all these crazy birds sprinting from trees from one side or the other across/around the space to the opposite side. They don't look afraid, they look like they're trilling "Woohoo!" as they madly charge around.

Maybe they feel the snow on the way and they're getting their fun in clear air while its here. Three inches of new snow should be on top of the tired glazey leftover snow by nightfall.

Today is Jean's last full day here. Tomorrow I'll take her to the afternoon train and she'll go back to university life. Both of us are dealing with conflicting emotions about this; she loves school and loves her mother and I want to keep her close but don't want to close her in. It's life and we are both life-livers, not life-retreaters from so to the train we will go.

It's Edgar Allan Poe's Birthday.

My learning about his life explained a lot about his style of writing.  Why did he write creepily effective gothic stories?  Where did he get such dark images?

Look here if you'd like to learn that and you'll also find out the horrifying diet that sustained him and the devil that drove him, too.  Take a listen, too as a special treat for yourself.