A Good Day to be Lapp
8:43 a.m.
-7 degrees Fahrenheit.
-28 degree windchill.
Before shoveling out the deck, stairs, and a path from the garage to the tree swing in the backyard – happy to partial-work from the fire-heated living room – El Oso advised Puck to watch his cabin fever attitude of the day.
“I don’t have a fever!” Puck protested.
Watching the glazed wind-scrubbed surface of the white yard sparkling in the sun, I already tend to imagine Native Americans five hundred years ago in the general St. Louis area, but I wondered a little bit more what life would have been like for them in sub-blizzards like yesterday’s.
“Oh, how you do, iPad? I’m going to play on you if you don’t mind.” Puck grinned mischievously.
Sure, we read school books. Puck doesn’t know the difference between school and non-school when it comes to books. Around half an hour later … sometimes I know he doesn’t hear what I’m saying. Selective tuning.
“Puck, get off the iPad right now and drink your water and eat your banana.”
“Okay, Mom, I’ll drink my banana.”
When Rose texted me later in the afternoon that she had cabin fever, “Muppets style”, I would have concurred except for the fact that I was barely able to wrap up all of my work before dinner, so I forgot that I had been locked inside for two days.
A few cars scuttled down the normally moderate-to-high-traffic street. No shouts of kids in the snow. Just a few shovels scraping driveways. Temperatures not fit for man nor beast. Not for midwesterners who don’t own Eskimo parkas as part of their daily wardrobe. Except for Rose, I guess.
Before five, El Oso took the Mazda for Papa Murphy’s and more eggs for breakfast to accompany the jowl bacon shipped from Hermann, Missouri. By this time it was so cold, when I went to feed Snickers in the basement, she had tunneled herself deep under a thick mountain of comforter on the couch.
When El Oso returned, he said people were still driving scared. He fired up the grill under the deck and two feet of drifted snow. It was only dark and negative one degrees. Fine grilling weather. We left the fire on upstairs, too.