Snowmaggedon 2013

Not two weeks ago I was lamenting that our kids, in their lifetimes, had not experienced real snow. At least not snow that they would remember. Sure a few years back we got a couple of decent snows that Gabe got out in, and we got the requisite video to remind everyone of it. But the last two years, nada. Last year, our biggest snow was less than three inches. And this year looked like it was shaping up for more of the same. Three different times we've had forecasts for "sure thing" snows (or rains), and all three times we got bupkiss. Not surprising during a drought, but definitely not great for the "memories of a lifetime" department either.

And then, last week, it snowed. Quite a lot. We were told that, at about 15 inches, it was the second biggest snow in recorded history for our area. School was cancelled, which doesn't happen all that often around here, so Gabe got to experience his first snow day, too. And his second when the snow lasted longer than was expected (and our region is pretty woefully prepared for such storms as they happen so infrequently--main roads will be cleared but side roads are often impassable by smaller cars).

He got a four day weekend out of the deal. By Saturday the sun was out and things were starting to melt. By Sunday, the roads were pretty good (except for the ones with tree cover, like the one that goes by our house, which keeps snow for at least a week longer than everything else because the sun doesn't hit much of it) and the yard was starting to melt down. We got out and made a snowman and Gabe insisted on building an entire igloo made out of little blocks created with a square bucket he found. He ended up only getting one block into the project, however, and the snowman became our only accomplishment of the day.

By Friday, we were starting to hear rumbles about another storm system that would move in Sunday night or early Monday morning. The weathermen insisted that it wouldn't be a significant system and we shouldn't see much additional accumulation. Either they were badly misinformed, the system unexpectedly built up a lot of steam, or they are liars. Cause it was a second wave of blammo. By Sunday they were predicting a full-on blizzard, with high winds and gobs of snow.

Sunday night, they cancelled school for Monday--a preemptive move that the schools in Kansas almost never make. I remember one time back in the early 90s a storm was being predicted and all the schools cancelled. Then we ended up getting next to nothing and people pissed and moaned. Since then, winter weather has to be a lock before they cancel (and, probably, with good reason since, as I said earlier, we've got a history of weather systems petering out and producing little or nothing when they get here).

I went to bed Sunday night to clear skies. Sunday had been quite a beautiful day, really. Filled with sun and warming up nicely. As I was preparing for bed, I pondered on how lucky we are to live in the time we do. Can you imagine what it would have been like prior to us being technologically capable of watching weather systems as they moved over large areas and predict what they are going to do? Say, during frontier times. People living in log cabins see an enormous snow move through. They spend a couple days digging out and getting their lives back in order. They spend a nice, pleasant Sunday, enjoying the warm sun and, when they go to bed, they see a clear sky and not the least bit of a sign of anything on the horizon. Then, overnight, WHAM! Another foot of snow moves in.

That was what was supposed to happen to us. It didn't. I expected to wake up to a fresh winter wonderland Monday morning. Instead, I woke up to the exact same thing I went to bed to. Our meteorologists kept insisting that it was still going to move in, it was just taking longer than expected, but I kept watch of the radar and nothing impressive was happening anywhere. I took the kids into work for awhile. Nothing was happening. Everyone in town was out and about. It was looking more and more like we were back to our old ways of missing the weather. People were beginning to grumble about having to deal with their kids. Then, around 10:30, the first few flakes started to fall. By 11:30 it was coming down pretty well. By mid-afternoon it was a white-out and I was VERY glad that they had cancelled school, because it would have been a misery trying to get out in it with Norah to pick Gabe up at the bus stop, especially considering both of our cars are about useless on the snow--they are front wheel drives, but so low to the ground that more than six inches of snow means we're either high centered or plowing a path.

We ended up getting about 10 more inches out of that one. SUPER wet, dense snow. It stuck to everything. The trees and the north side of our house were covered. It was quite pretty. They cancelled school again on Tuesday. Four snow days in a row. I think we might have had that many days off after the ice storm in 2005, but that's the only time I can remember having that much school cancelled at once. Even though it had stopped snowing by Tuesday morning, I was really glad they cancelled because I couldn't get out of the driveway. The deep ice ruts in the road in front of our house that were left over from the last snow had all the new stuff on top of it, so we were pretty much snowbound until Tuesday afternoon, when it had finally melted enough for us to be able to plow our way out of the drive and get somewhere. We did our due diligence, though, and tried to make it to the store--I work Tuesdays, and we weren't closing since nobody else was. This resulted in me backing into the road and being instantly jammed in one place, high centered on an ice rut. I had to run and get the snow shovel and dig the front wheels out, which allowed me to spin the wheels like a maniac and squeal my way back up into the drive, where the car stayed until things started to melt.

So there's that. I also managed to get some pictures and videos of the kids enjoying their first real snow.

Snow angels.

Gabe decided that the only way to make a snow angel was face down. He soon discovered how uncomfortable it is to have snow inside all of your clothes and we had to go in shortly after.

Snowball fight. Sort of. Mostly it just amounted to each of them picking up wads of snow and dropping it on the other's head.

The backyard after the first snow had finished.

Norah, using her "jumperoo" pretty much the only way she will. Before we ordered this for Christmas, it seemed like a winning idea. She likes to jump on trampolines. Or, at least, she did. Until she had one of her own. We figured it would be good exercise, which she kind of desperately needs. This is her idea of exercise, though.

See that square head? That's Gabe's igloo. Since he went to all the trouble of making that single block, it seemed a shame to waste it, so we made it the snowman's head. Then stuck decorations on it from our bag of pumpkin decorations because I was having a hell of a time finding any rocks or anything else that could be used to make the face. And then he decided to lick it. Also, it has a sword and a fez because it is a badass.

Monday night, around 10 or 11, after they cancelled school for Tuesday and I wasn't stressing out anymore about how I was going to get the kids around and delivered and into work on time if I was going to have to dig out a path in the road, I looked out the back window and saw a pretty extraordinary thing. Snow was stuck to EVERYTHING. And the cloud cover was trapping all of the town's lights down around the ground, which was reflecting off all of the snow. When I went to our back porch, I could see clearly all the way back to the back of our property. It was like dusk, but it was four hours after dusk. I tried to get a picture, but our digital camera is nothing special. I did manage to get this one. This is a little solar light, which gives off almost no light, that is on our back patio.

And this is what the backyard looked like Tuesday morning. After five days and more than two feet of snow (and quite a bit of melting and snow shoveling, but you get the idea).

We didn't really get around to using the toboggans properly. The only hill near enough to our house for us to easily get to is the one that falls off our yard and into the little drainage creek that runs along our property (after the hill part, it literally falls a couple feet into the creek--though that might have been filled in with snow, who knows). And, while it MIGHT have been fine for them to use that (well, Gabe would have, Norah wouldn't have even tried it as she's too timid to even go down slides right now), we didn't really want to trudge through all the snow to get over to it and then have to pretty much fall our way down into the creek to wait for them. Maybe when they are older and able to think of stupid, dangerous things to do on their own. So this was all the sledding they got out of the snow. 

The snowball fight.

Friday, this was the ONLY thing Gabe wanted to do outside. Our house makes some pretty awesome icicles. Because our insulation is shite, any snow that accumulates on our roof melts slowly and steadily from the moment it starts to fall on it. And there are a few points where the water funnels and falls off (because we've never gotten around to installing gutters) creating massive icicles. Gabe wanted to knock those icicles down with a sword.

Honorary Kick. I have NO idea where this song (or the word "honorary" for that matter) came from. It's just something they started to do. There are other actions other than punch and kick, too. There is an honorary dance, and an honorary shirt (not sure what that means) and honorary stripes (again, no clue). 

And while I'm on the subject of weird things kids do, there's this. He came from school with this song. "Walk it out like Grammy." I was going to do a post of some of the miscellaneous things we've accumulated here on the camera, but this seems like as good a place as any to put this (especially considering my recent record of getting things uploaded).

And, finally, me trying to coax a back story out of Gabe for our snowman. I wasn't very successful.

Thoughts on Huey Lewis' Wang

I have a problem with ear worms. It's been a problem that I've suffered from my entire life. Songs, even songs I don't remember hearing recently, will stick themselves in my head and stay there for extended periods of time. Usually they pop up during quiet moments, like when I'm trying to go to sleep at night. Or, at least, that's when I notice the song there. In reality, I think the song or songs are running pretty much constantly in the back of my head.

In theory, this sounds pretty cool. It's like I have a personal soundtrack for my life.

A few weeks ago, we took the kids to Exploration Place for the afternoon. They have an installation right now about cartoons (I think it's put on by Boomerang or Cartoon Network, and it must have been around for awhile as pretty much all of the shows they cover aren't on Cartoon Network anymore), and they had a display where you got to sample a short clip of animation with different soundtracks playing in the background. The clip was pretty standard fare. A young girl magically ascending the outside of a big tower and entering a top floor through a window. And it was pretty amazing the difference the music made in what the viewer perceived to be going on in the clip. If happy music was played, you imagined the girl was playfully going up the tower to meet a friend for some mischief. If the scary music was being played, you anticipated her meeting some mysterious stranger with questionable motives. If the neutral music was being played, she was just entering a room in an unusual way.

Following the power of the soundtrack to shape mood, if an appropriate soundtrack could be played in the background of a person's life, that life could be made exponentially more interesting. Or more ANYTHING, really. If upbeat music were playing constantly, normally boring moments of life could be given new vigor and life. It could really change the way the world worked.

What is playing in my head, though, is not the least bit appropriate or inspiring or interesting. Instead, it is almost always a smallish snippit of some seemingly random song. It could be nearly anything. And the song might stick around for a day or two if something kindly replaces it, or it might stick around much longer. I'm not sure how long this has been happening to me, but I first noticed it a little over a decade ago.

We were on a float trip with friends. One of our friends, for reasons I can't recall, referenced the song "Up Up and Away (in My Beautiful Balloon)." I don't remember if he sang it or simply mentioned it and that was enough for the song to enter my mind. Whatever it was, the chorus for this song was stuck in my head for an entire month. Every quiet moment was filled with it. And this was a song that I had heard a few times in my life before, but it was not a favorite and I certainly didn't know anything but, well, pretty much just that title part put to music. It was misery.

And I might just have put it right back in my head again by bringing it up now and finding the link, thus having to listen to just a bit of it again. Considering what it is replacing, though, I might be just fine with that.

What it would be replacing is a song I heard a week ago on the radio. "Jacob's Ladder" by Huey Lewis and the News (look at the crowd in that video! I seriously miss the days when a Huey Lewis could gather that kind of a following).

Now, I like your Huey Lewis as much as the next guy. Quite a bit more, probably. I had two of his CDs growing up ("Fore" and "Sports," obviously). When I hear his music on the radio, I still want to call old friends and tell them to flip their radios on quickly. "The Power of Love" was my favorite song for about a year after I saw "Back to the Future" (and "Back in Time," the terrible B-side that also briefly appeared in the movie has been an ear worm for me a few miserable times).

Pause: Here's a little bit of embarrassing personal information. My three favorite songs, as I remember them from my childhood, were, in order: "Two Less Lonely People in the World" by Air Supply (I still love Air Supply, but this is not one of their "better" songs), "Believe it or Not" by some guy (I gotta admit, I still love this song, and if you disagree that it's awesome, you suck--also, Connie Sellecca was hot and STILL looks good even though she's almost 60. And you really should watch the little still shots as they scan by in this "video," they are pretty fantastic), and "The Power of Love." I owned the 45s of "Believe it or Not" and "Power of Love" and listened to both songs hundreds of times in a row in my lonely, lonely room when I was growing up. I also briefly flirted with "Touch" by Stan Bush (from the Transformers movie from the 80s--this song, sadly, has not held up as well over the years, it's just too hair bandy in a not great way), but I think that was just a Transformers related phase.

It's worth noting at this point that, even with the moving of all these previously favorite songs into the front folders of my brain, Jacob's Ladder is STILL holding strong.

And that's all well and good. It's only been a week. That's pretty minor. I had a few of the Yo Gabba Gabba songs playing in my head for weeks at a time during the days when we watched that once or twice every day. I can live with a week or two of the same song playing over and over. I did, rather famously (among the two or three friends who knew about it), create a 90 minute tape that had only two songs on it played over and over again--one on each side (Weird Al's "Melanie," which is still one of my favorite songs and, I think, Al's greatest work) and Lionel Richie's "Deep River Woman" with Alabama (trivia! I proposed to Libby with that song playing in the background and she is forever burdened with that knowledge and this song because of it!). So, clearly, I have no problems listening to questionable music over and over again ad nauseum.

The problem is the dreams that have repeated for two nights in a row now.

Normally, I don't remember much of my dreams. Every once in awhile I'll keep a flash, or the last little scene of a dream in my mind for the better part of a day. And then it's gone. Normally, I am a lucid dreamer and can easily control what direction my dreams take, which probably makes them more forgetful as nothing truly interesting usually happens in them. My sleeping brain, apparently, is pretty regimental and vanilla. But the last two nights, that lucidity has been eluding me. Either that or my brain WANTS me to go to a very unusual and probably worrying place. Namely, Huey Lewis' junkal region.

Necessary Backstory: From 1993-1995 I worked at a movie theater. We were not a popular movie theater. We tended to get the art-house flicks and the popular movies a month after they came out (the one time we got a popular, newly released movie, we destroyed about ten minutes of the film--during a climactic scene--which totally ruined the movie for everyone who watched it and probably had something to do with our never getting opening movies ever again after that point). During this period, we got the movie "Short Cuts" by Robert Altman. "Short Cuts" is famous for only two things (in my mind, at least): Julianne Moore's bush and Huey Lewis' wang, both of which made their film debuts in the movie. Oh, and Andie Macdowell's terrible delivery of the line "My son is dead, you bastard"--I tried to find a link to illustrate just how bad her delivery is of this line, but I couldn't find anything, so apparently we were alone in thinking that she was utterly terrible in the role of grieving mother.

Anyway, we had the movie in our theater for at least a month. At first, I kind of liked the movie. It was edgy and different and I was in a good state of mind for Altman's rather unusual style at the time. But then, after seeing portions of the movie over and over again, it started to wear thin. And the portion that I saw the most was the part with Huey's dong. I don't know HOW it happened--maybe it was the power of the subconscious mind to keep track of the passage of time and it led me into the theater at exactly that moment without my knowledge, though I'm not sure WHY my mind would torment me so--but it happened. I am reasonably sure that I saw "the news" no fewer than a dozen times.

I don't normally have a very vivid memory. If I am somewhere quiet and can really concentrate, I can picture certain things from my past pretty clearly, but that's still a bit of a trial. Usually, I remember things through a kind of vague haze with lots of blobs and very little color. It's one of the reasons why I have zero artistic ability. I don't visualize well. But not Little Huey. It is indelibly etched into my brain. With perfect recall, I can picture it whenever I want to. Mind you, I don't WANT to, and it's not a memory that I purposely pull up, well, ever.

And for two nights in a row, my brain has taken me to the scene where Huey is peeing in a river (I'm not going to link it, but a search for "huey lewis peeing" will bring up a few links where you can see the scene--thank you, internet, for verifying that my memory was recalling the scene correctly). My dreams have had to perform some pretty fascinating mental gymnastics to take me to a river setting, but it has. Twice. And both times, even though the "power of love" wasn't very clearly visible in the movie itself, I seem to have a crystal clear image etched in my brain and I can see it with crystal clarity. Only, unlike in the movie, my brain does a slow pan and zoom over the parts I'd really rather not slow pan or zoom over. And, the entire time, "Jacob's Ladder" is playing in the background.

Each time, I wake myself up, but I am unable to do so until AFTER the scene has played out, and then fitful sleep filled with that goddamn song and the after-image of Huey's looie endlessly looping is all I'm able to muster afterwards. It is, obviously, a little disturbing and worrying.

None of this, of course, is anything that YOU need to know. To be honest, I was just hopeful that referencing all of these other songs would prompt what I think is the most important first step in my healing process: replacing "Jacob's Ladder" with something else, maybe even leading to a dream sequence that I'd be more appreciative of. Maybe I should listen to and watch the video for "Cherry Pie." Except, of course, then I'll have to listen to "Cherry Pie," which might be even worse than seeing Huey's penis in slow motion.