Digging out from the ice to say hello

So when you take a nearly-month-long blogging break, the first post back is kind of a pressure-filled thing. I mean, I've had twenty-eight days, surely in that amount of time I can come up with something fabulous.

Apparently not. I've spent the past four days watching news coverage of Winter Storm '09, and even though they really haven't said anything new about said storm in the past 48 hours, I can't look away for fear that the ultimate picture of ice-covered, sagging power lines will appear and I will have missed it because I wasn't paying attention.

I've also spent a bit of time feeling grateful that I'm spending Winter Storm '09 plugged in, since we spent Ice Storm '08 huddled around the fireplace. And we weren't huddled around there because it we were feeling rustic. We were huddled around there because we had no power, so we really WERE rustic.

But seriously, people south of us got socked. The damage is horrible. And I am grateful for the power. Theodore and I discuss it every 15 minutes or so:

I'm so glad we have power this time.

Yes, me too.

We reverse the lines every now and again just for variety.

The kids, on the other hand, talk about how great it was to camp out in the family room and ask if we can do it again "just for fun."

So even though this is my dream come true (being stuck in the house with my family and my books), I haven't got much reading done. Part of the reason is that I'm spending my days in the kitchen helping children in and out of snow gear. The rest of the time I'm watching the extended news coverage.

Doesn't make for interesting blog posts.

Actually, I almost have too many ideas going right now. And while I am fully aware that many of them might turn out to be hopelessly lame when I get them on the screen (my Blogger Dashboard is full of drafts that started out as brilliant blog posts gone horribly wrong), I think that trying to put everything I now want to say in one post would drive the few of you that are still checking in away forever.

So for now, let's just pretend that I never stopped blogging, and this is just your typical update post.