I had a call (well, an e-mail summons) from anonymous saying I should come post. Well I can, I could, I shouldn't. I posted here:
unschooling.blogspot.com but not much.
Yesterday morning Kirby came into the bedroom and told me the cars had been broken into. They weren't broken into, but two left unlocked had had their music stolen--a borrowed iPod from one (Kirby was planning to buy it from his friend, and still will, and the music is backed up), and the radio/CD player pulled out of the white van, which usually sits locked, but Marty had driven and forgotten to lock. I reported it to the police, but it won't do anything but become a little bit of a big statistic, I think. And the police report number could have helped our insurance, but our insurance wouldn't cover it anyway.
We've had CD cases and a little CD player (portable plug-in kind) stolen before, from unlocked cars, so in one way of looking at it it's just our fault. There are other ways of looking at it, but what made me feel best was that they didn't get into the house or garage, and the cars were still there. Things could be worse.
They stole our music, though, and everyone here likes music.
Then I came in to make the planned call of the morning, about my printer. Yada yada, on hold, transferred, etc., various frustrations; they'll fix it free, but I have to mail it to them and it will take 4-6 weeks. As it cost me $50 after the rebate and the scanner works wonderfully, and the ink was expensive and evaporated too quickly (a problem of water-based ink in the desert), I'll just need to get another one.
While all that sad activity was going on, our wireless internet wasn't working for the fourth time in five days.
SEE why I wasn't blogging?
But around and above that, we're all healthy, Marty's planning a visit with his friend Madelyn who's coming here to stay for a week in January, Kirby applied for and got a new job as a waiter at Olive Garden and it starts right as the last two weeks are up on his job at Dion's. Holly and I went to eat at Dion's yesterday so we could eat there one more time while Kirby's there. He's the one who said "Holly, your order's ready--Holly," and his voice was strong and lyrical. Holly said he's been really nice to her lately, more than usual.
Keith's having a very rough work week of long hours and frustrations, but the hot tub is clean and he cut lots of wood last week and it's nice in the snow. Oh right! It snowed yesterday, in a miniature fashion. Almost all day, nearly imperceptible small snowflakes that just made the tops of things white, and the ground wet,and stayed on bushes and trees all day without melting. This morning it's lightly on everything, but not at all deep.
My Wednesday night discussion was good overall, we had two visitors of rank (SCA rank), and one of the guys who's only been a couple of times and was there by invitation of a regular got frustrated and was dominating the conversation, and ended up leaving early, but in a civil way, and said he'd be back next week. Maybe he will and maybe he won't. It was uncomfortable but useful, even to him I think (will be, as he analyzes what happened and why, with the help of one or two of the others there who have a stake in his progress and happiness). The environment and purposes and expectations of SCA discussions can be so different from "regular" discussions that it's hard to even write about them to a "mixed audience." The pivotal point of it, for me, was his saying straight across the table to me (with nine other people there, half of whom had already agreed with me) "I challenge you to show me a dictionary definition of 'integrity' that says it has a positive connotation." Dictionary definitions--that's an area of challenge in which I'm confident. I didn't have a dictionary, but I offered a money bet. It wasn't taken.
But yesterday I made a big pot of green chile stew and homemade bread, even though I was going to a restaurant for a discussion. Kirby's Wednesday gaming group ate quite a bit of it. The house smelled good. I made rum balls (using a generic term; didn't use rum)--some with pecans and cocoa powder, and some with grated orange and piñon, both with Grand Marnier. They need to sit a few days.
Marty has been to several of the discussions. Holly had been to one, a week ago. She went because she was hungry, and the plan had been she could get someone to walk her home if she was bored, but she stayed the two and a half hours. Last night she went again, stayed the whole time, and contributed a couple of times. Each of them said something profound last night. In response to a definition of integrity that involved bike stealing, Marty said "That's consistency, not integrity." And in and around whether there has to be "evil" for good to exist (the discussion was whether the word needed to be "evil," which seems to be personified, or whether it couldn't be "bad" or something less focussed), Holly asked whether there was as much good in Satan/the devil as there was evil in God. (That followed an Old-Testament smiting and genocide story, which gad followed a set of prayers for forgiveness, one of which was Israelil.) When Holly asked that, I started to open my mouth and say "The Chinese say..." but I couldn't remember anything that the Chinese said. I just knew there was something about balance, from China, about that. There stuff about all kinds of balance, from China.
I just looked at her with big eyes and blinked, and others looked at her, and what could they say? She was fifteen and had been going on about her newly-red/pink hair just a bit before that, and about the bag-boy she has a big crush on at the store that's right next to the restaurant. And she asked a question like that.
When we got home, I told her what I had thought, and that after things were still, I realized it wasn't a Chinese saying, but a picture. She said, "The yin-yang?" I was already drawing it. I asked her if she had thought of that during the discussion, but she said no, not until just then, when I said something.
Yesterday was one very busy day.
Keith has gone to clean the driveway of a friend who's been at a family reunion and is in an electric wheelchair. I hope others show up there too. They'll need to clean a 25 foot driveway and the sidewalk and the porch, but it's doable. 
The steps were cleaned off halfway through the storm, for fire escape purposes. Having company and a roaring fire and snow keeping doors from opening seemed a bad combination to me, so Keith cleared our exits. He's a good guy.
Below is a photograph of the firewood in the mulberry tree. Four sticks show. There may be five or six, but I couldn't spot them. There's still more snow higher up, where it didn't fall down when I tried knocking it down. 
The cars after Keith cleaned off all but the roofs today.
We have a houseguest who drove down from Colorado Springs on Wednesday, planning to return Friday. We have a teen who was delivered here to play Encore Thursday night and is still here. Keith and Holly and I had planned to go to Alamogordo to see his parents, but stayed because of snow and houseguests. Starting last night we picked up another strandee, who couldn't get his car out but didn't have to work anyway because his place of business (and many others) stayed closed.
It's been kind of like a party, though. We had enough food, and extra excuse to cook and eat together, and have been playing cards and board games. Last night five of us were in the hot tub and four (all but me) kept getting out, diving into the snow, rolling around and then getting back in the hot water. Or Holly would go under a tree or a stand of bamboo and shake the snow down onto herself.
Earlier, I had thrown sticks of firewood up in the tree that's above the hot tub, hoping to knock the snow off the branches above the tub. I did knock a lot of snow off. I didn't want it to fall on us when we were in there. Unfortunately, some of the firewood is still up in the tree, though not right over the hot tub. So I reminded Holly not to play in the snow under that particular tree. 
This is how much snow can pile up just on stuff like pipes. This isn't as fluffy as the last snow. It's settling and drooping. The shot below is the other corner of that frame, and in the background is the roof of the house, and some of the snow that can stay in a dead apple tree. Lots of snow.
We have three children who love to dress up.
