Pict Pandemic Spring

I’m back! I finally have enough free time that I feel able to resume blogging – though it may continue to be very sporadic for a while because, like many people, I don’t have a lot of interest going on in my life given the whole pandemic context.

I thought I would write a bit of a catch-up post containing some of the things we have been up to this Spring. Most importantly, we have celebrated three birthdays. These are all, of course, the second birthdays being celebrated in this weird lockdown context. Yes, I appreciate we are technically no longer in strict lockdown but as a family we have chosen to behave largely as if we still are, taking mitigation efforts seriously. Mr Pict’s birthday last year was literally two days into lockdown so there was a lot of improvisation involved but we made it work. This year was much less stressful because we knew we were going to have to keep everything lowkey and also because the supermarket shelves weren’t empty like they were last year.

Two of the boys have also had their second pandemic birthdays. My third son turned 14. He is a massive Roman history nerd – he seriously knows more about Ancient Rome than anyone I know and I know a lot of Roman history nerds – and is also passionate about Soviet cinema, especially of the 1970s. Those themes, therefore, informed his gifts, one of which was a photo of his favourite Emperor, Trajan, which had even been signed. I am assuming Trajan won’t sue me for forgery.

And our oldest son turned 18. I know! We cannot believe it either. He is now technically an adult. That is somewhat nerve-wracking to think about and makes me feel even more ancient than usual but I am very excited to see what this next phase of his life has in store for him. He is off to the Rochester Institute of Technology in the Autumn to study computer science.

We have chosen to keep our sons learning virtually for the entire school year for a variety of reasons. They have adapted well to learning online and are enjoying having more free time and flexibility in their schedule. My 15 year old, for instance, has been using his extra free time to make lots of short movies. His brothers and father have all been press-ganged into acting parts and as cinematographers while I sometimes provide help with costumes, props and make up so it is a bit of a family affair.

Having the boys home proved very useful this Winter as I very much appreciated their extra digging power with all of the snow we got. Even with all of us digging, it took us over 3 hours to dig out after one particular storm. We then had weeks of vicious looking icicles falling from the house. We built up quite the collection in our azalea bushes.

We have been on a few walks and excursions since I last blogged but we have tended to return to familiar places. A couple of weekends ago, however, we finally ventured to Ringing Rocks County Park. It is not even that far from home so it is kind of bonkers that we have not ventured out there in the previous seven years. We took the loop trail which took us to the boulder field first. We had a hammer with us (as the website instructs you to do so, we felt OK about the geologic vandalism) and set about glancing it off of various boulders to make them ring. We found that they all emitted a noise that was not just the normal smack-thud you would expect from a hammer whacking a rock but that some boulders really made the ringing sound. Our 11 year old in particular really enjoyed the experience. I guess having spent his entire life being told to respect nature and leave things as we found them he must have been relishing the opportunity to bash those rocks.

The male Picts all bounded from rock to rock like mountain goats in search of the best rings. That is not something I am comfortable doing primarily because of my malingering SPD problems and also because I am a lifelong wuss so I went off into the woods in search of salamanders. Alas, I did not find a single one. Meeting up again, we headed further along the loop trail to see the waterfall. I was anticipating a bit more drama and oomph out of a signposted waterfall but it was a nice spot to stop and spend some time before we completed the loop. It was a nice, easy walk and one we would definitely do again.

Finally, and most excitingly, those of us who are eligible are finally receiving our Covid-19 vaccines. As a teacher, I became eligible first but I still had such a massive problem finding and scheduling an appointment that it still took until mid-April for me to be fully vaccinated. Meanwhile Mr Pict and our oldest son have both received their first shots. We plan to keep playing it safe and following mitigation efforts, not least because we still have three members of the family who are unvaccinated and not old enough to be eligible, but it is definitely a weight off my mind – especially as someone who has been teaching in-person since September – that I have that layer of protection. I am so grateful to the scientists and everyone involved in the distribution and delivery of the vaccine.

PS Here are some photos of our cats, Satchi and Peanut. They have adapted to having us home all the time and think they get to participate in all of the video conferences and frequently appear in my sons’ online classrooms.

Abominable Snowman

It is only January and I am already so over Winter.  I like to be warm and cosy.  I dislike shovelling.  My kids have not and will not have a full week of school this month thanks to snow days, early dismissals, and late arrivals.  While I love spending time with my kids, it has been pretty disruptive and we are a family who does better with routine.  Winter is the price I pay for getting to enjoy the other seasons of the year.  Alas, it is too early for me to even start searching out the first signs of Spring.

Anyway, thoughts of snow, ice, and winter chill inspired my most recent art journal page.  Technically it is a response to the Art Journal Adventure prompt which was the letter A.  I had already been thinking about creating an illustration of a Yeti so I am just labelling him as the Abominable Snowman to fulfil the prompt.  I love monsters and mythology and cryptids so I always enjoy drawing them.  This yeti is inspired by a painting I did in my altered book of monsters a couple of years ago.  That painting was just the face but this time I drew the whole body.

Snowmageddon 2016

After a pleasingly mild winter, this weekend we got slammed with all our winter weather at once.  Winter storm Jonas walloped us over the weekend, dumping an incredible amount of snow in a short period of time.  It is difficult to determine exactly how much snow we got in our neighbourhood – the blizzard’s winds created drifts a good few feet high in some places while other patches had under a foot – but I estimate we had over two feet of snow.

My brother-in-law was supposed to fly in to see us with his wife and son on Saturday.  While he had to contend with the stress of cancellations and postponements and changed plans, we were thankfully all cosy and safe at home as the snow packed in around the house and made the street disappear.  My husband did a power of work digging out the drive over and over and tunneling narrow pathways through the snow.

Rather than go sledding, the three younger boys decided they wanted to go for a walk through some nearby woods in the snow.  They passed a man walking with snow shoes and using cross country ski sticks but they were undaunted.  They were excited to spot animal tracks in the otherwise unblemished snow.  Even more exciting was the news – delivered during post-walk hot chocolate – that there was no school on Monday.  They have been hoping and yearning for a Snow Day all winter and they finally got one.

In addition to yesterday’s Snow Day, we also had a delayed arrival for school today.  Not everyone has cleared their portion of the sidewalks and in some places the snow piles (an accumulation of snow drift and snow ploughing) are taller than I am but we had our snow boots on and trudged valiantly ever onwards.  Since we had to walk in the road at points, I was glad of the two hour delay since it meant there were fewer cars to contend with.  The kids, of course, would have rather had another Snow Day.

Sledging

I think Americans call it sledding.  I actually don’t know which is the correct term.  Maybe only my family calls it sledging for all I know.  Anyway, I grew up calling it sledging so I am sticking with that.  I will also probably never refer to trousers as pants.  Old dog, new tricks and all that.

So sledging is what the Pict family did this last weekend.  We had a massive dumping of snow in suburban Philadelphia – deep snow by my standards anyway.  It reminded me of the snow I used to experience growing up in Fife during the 1970s and 80s: proper snowman-building, snowball pelting and, yes, sledging snow.  Our rental house comes with a shed and in that shed are some sledges so we packed those into the boot of the car (I might one day demur to it being called a trunk here), swaddled our children in layers of clothing and set off for the nearby state park which we had noted on our last visit had a slope nature clearly intended for just this purpose.

Forgive me if I’m repeating myself but where we moved from, on the West coast of Scotland, we didn’t experience much in the way of proper snow.  We did get snow, it was certainly often cold enough, but it either never settled or lasted long because of all the salt air involved in living on the shore of a sea loch.  We got ice in abudance, plentiful hail storms and terrible deluges of brain-freezing rain but proper snow was a rare occurrence for us. Of course, snow would land and settle in the mountains and sometimes the mountain pass that we drove through to get to the city would close off as a result but whenever proper snow appeared we had to be sure to make the most of it as we knew it would not last.  Consequently my children had never been sledging before.  Well I think they may have been pulled along a path while sitting on a sledge once but that was lame and surely doesn’t count.  

My 8 year old didn’t want to sledge.  He’s not really into physical pursuits, preferring activities that are creative, imaginative and preferably indoors.  He, therefore, spent his time running up and down the slope (sometimes becoming an additional obstacle) and jumping up and down in the snow drifts at the bottom of the slope and making snow angels.  The other three boys, however, had a blast sledging, sometimes at high speeds, downhill.  This was especially true of my 6 year old who is possibly emerging as a bit of an adrenalin junkie.  After one slide down with his daddy, he was gung ho about going down solo and did so with gusto.  Over the course of the two hours we were there he was managing to steer and slide with increasing confidence in his efforts to come to a stop further and further from the bottom of the slope.  He loved it.  The only person who possibly loved it more was my husband.  As soon as he saw that all the other dads were hurtling downhill on sledges and inflatable tubes and the occasional snowboard, he too was taking his turn on the sledges.

No doubt we will go sledging again when the next big snowfall happens.

Here are some photos from my kids’ first experience of sledging.  Or sledding.  Or tobogganing.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And a photo of me too just for the merry heck of it.

Weather

According to national stereotyping, British people are supposedly obsessed with the weather.  I confess that to be true by and large.  It’s a rare conversation that doesn’t involve some mention of the weather.  There are even people who claim they can predict the weather using their bunions and bladders.  It’s an island thing I’m sure, borne out of earlier generations needing to know exactly what gust of wind was going to do what when.

However, as much as I was part of that British cultural phenomenon of talking about the weather even to random strangers, I was never as obsessive about the weather as I have become in the two and a half months I have lived in America.  Not only do I now own a smartphone (a marvel for me in itself since I had the equivalent of a neanderthal mobile phone in Scotland) but I have weather apps on it.  Yes, apps plural.  Before October, I had heard of apps, got the concept but had never been near one.  Almost the first thing I did when I had a smartphone in my mitts was download weather apps.  I felt I needed more than one for verification purposes.  That was the first sign that the obsession was taking hold.

My husband always talked about how, growing up in the Washington DC metro area, he and his brother would watch the Weather Channel.  I always scoffed at this, judging it to be a lame use of time in the “paint drying” vein.  My husband also likes to watch the map on flights, even when the little plane symbol is just slowly moving pixel by pixel across the ocean.  I thought watching the weather channel was akin to that.  But lo and behold I now have the weather channel app on my phone and I have found myself watching (just a couple of times mind) the actual channel.  The obsession was taking root.

I think it is symptomatic of having moved here as Winter was coming (Mr Pict would say that in a Ned Stark voice) but I find myself checking for updates on the temperature and predicted precipitation and whether said precipitation will be in the form of rain or snow.  We have also had a rash of weather warnings in the past few weeks linked to the snow fall, some freezing rain and, today, a warning of severe wind chills for the coming days.  All those potential little “red alerts” just feed the growing obsession.

What the boys are obsessed about, of course, is snow days.  They just want to know if the weather is going to be so bad that they get to stay tucked up cosy in bed past their usual “rise and shine” time and stay home playing instead of going to school.  I have to admit to quite liking their snow days myself at the moment but perhaps that novelty will wear off.  I prefer the snow days that are called the evening before rather than receiving a trio of phone calls (each of our cell phones plus the landline) at 4.30 in the morning.

I wonder if there is an app for overcoming Weather Addiction….

Snow Days

M kids experienced their first ever snow day earlier this week.

They have had “bonus” days off school before, when we lived in Scotland, but those were down to high winds and power failures.  This week was their first experience of being liberated from school because of snow.

The first day they just had a two hour delayed start but on the second day there was no school whatsoever.  And lo there was much rejoicing in the Pict household as four boys got to stay home all day, building a snowman in the garden, having a snowball fight and then getting cosy indoors with hot chocolate.  It was also special that Daddy did not go into work that day, also because of the snow, and worked from home which meant he was home to eat dinner with the rest of us.  As a consequence, they are now hoping for more snow days – but not so many that they need to make up for lost time in the summer break.

For my part, I am impressed with the school district’s notification system.  It is not especially pleasant to be woken by a phone call of a recorded message at 4.30am but at least it is adequate notice that there is no need to run around in a frenzy trying to get everyone ready for school on time (because we may live next door to the school but that does not eliminate the need for nagging and cajoling every morning).  What was a bit annoying was that the home phone went, then my husband’s cell phone and then my cell phone, all staggered just enough to mean there was no chance of us nodding off back to sleep.  But that was cool because at least, even wide awake early in the morning, we didn’t have to leap out of bed and start barking at our kids like a sheep dog herding a flock.  And just in case we missed the phone calls, I also had an email telling me there was a phone message from the school district.  They definitely wanted us to stay at home.

This Winter could prove to be very snowy indeed.  What I am already appreciating about Winter here, however, is the light.  Even now, in mid-December, the sunlight is strong and the skies are crisply blue and bright and the sunsets are spectacular.  By now back in Scotland the days would be dark.  I often remember one year when I was teaching in an internal classroom, with just a skylight, and I was travelling to work in the pitch dark and travelling home in the pitch dark so was going for five days straight without seeing daylight.  It was horrible.  I realised then that being a vampire would never be for me.

Winters where we moved from were harsh.  We normally didn’t get much snow because of the salt air from the sea loch but what we did get was brutal winds, hail stones that could dent your skull and rain.  Relentless rain.  Rain so hard that the sky should have become parched like a prune.  And then even more rain.  Cold and rain is not a pleasant combination.  Being soaked to the skin from freezing rain so that your skin is blue where it is not blotched with white is not a pleasant sensation.  I would moan every single Winter about how hard the winters were there.  So it will be interesting to see if I prefer this climate as we progress through the season.  If the snow days keep up then the mini-Picts certainly will.