As I mentioned earlier, I awoke at 6:40 am – well, scratch that. I woke at around 4:30 am to Michael the Toddler’s cries for the bathroom. Then back to a fitful sleep, wondering if school was on for today, awake to the telephone ringing at 6:40 or so for the radio interview, then turn the television on to find not a simple 2-hour delay but a real live snow day.
Sigh.
Well, if you can’t work, might as well take pictures, right?

Joseph woke up first, then Michael (again.) I let Katie sleep because she hardly ever gets to sleep in – what with speech and debate, she’s usually up even earlier on Saturdays than she is during the week. They ate, I shoveled the driveway and sidewalk. I called the Y to see if they were open and if the childcare was open, and yes to both. Once you got out of the neighborhood, the roads were fine, which is absolutely par for the course around here, so it was off to the Y, where, not surprisingly, Michael and Joseph were the only clients. Which was fine with them – they’ve just had some cool new toys donated so they were off, absorbed, even before I was out the door to to head upstairs.
Back home to find Katie awake, a brief respite, then it was off to the Cathedral for Mass at noon for us all – a good crowd and a couple of well-behaved boys (who were complimented as such by an elderly lady. Always so nice when people do that. Especially when it’s deserved.). The African priest offered a nice homily on forgiveness. An opening hymn was sung, started by an unsteady male voice, uncertain of pitch, which was joined by a few other voices at different pitches until, rather miraculously about five measures in, we all settled in the same place and journeyed along to the end, together.
I think that was a metaphor a birthin’ there.
Lunch, then a haircut for Katie and some time for her to spend some of her Christmas money (another by-product of the speech and debate lifestyle – absolutely no free time, unless God dumps snow on your town) while we (naturally) went to Barnes and Noble where some of us (naturally) headed straight for the train table in the children’s section. Because, as I keep saying, of course there are no trains to be had at home. Not one.
(While supervising little Sir Topham Hatt, I read Honor Moore’s piece in the New Yorker on her father, the late Episcopal Bishop Paul Moore, the centerpiece of which was the revelation of her father’s homosexuality (he was married twice – the second time after the death of his first wife and mother of his nine children). She’s got a book coming out in May. Maybe a panel at BEA with her and Franky Schaeffer?)
Miraculously, there were no tears when it was time to go. Actually, it wasn’t a miracle. It was bribery, as it usually is. This time the bribe involved an activity we had not engaged in up to this point this year – sledding! In which Katie paid the price for sleeping in: