Geeky Mom

We (actually the boys) shoveled the driveway and the sidewalk and stairs.  Geeky Girl and I built a snowman and a fort.  Then we had a snowball fight.  I think Geeky Girl and I lost. Part of our fort collapsed in on us.  We’re wet, but not too cold, safely ensconced inside now with hot chocolate.  It’s a gorgeous day outside, which feels really at odds with the weather from the last couple of days.

We haven’t had a lot of snow since we’ve lived here, and the snow we have had hasn’t been good snowball/snowman snow.  I have fond memories of playing in the snow as a kid.  We built forts and snow people and once, I remember, a fairly sizeable snow maze.  The largest fort we built was a neighborhood effort.  It was as tall as the tallest boy, about 5’8″, and a complete circle.  We topped it with plywood.  We built a doorway into it and we just hung out in there.  They didn’t really plow and scrape the streets the way they do now, and they almost always closed off a couple of roads and designated them for sledding.  These were large hills and going down them was a true Calvin and Hobbes level adventure.  They would never do that around here.  We have very few hills and where we do, the roads are main thoroughfares.  The other thing we did when I was a kid was to ski and sled behind the car.  We tied a rope to the car and then we held onto the rope to get pulled around the neighborhood.  We did this at night when there wasn’t much traffic and the cars drove at probably 10 mph max.  We never went down hills that way, just around the flat parts of the neighborhood.  And then we’d all end up at our house usually, drinking hot chocolate and the grownups drank wine or mixed drinks.

I also skied when I was younger, but I haven’t skied since my late teens.  I think I was a junior in college the last time I skied.  It’s an expensive hobby, though it was less so when I was growing up.  We eventually purchased skis for the whole family.  Tickets at the nearest ski resort were fairly cheap, and my parents regularly pulled us out on a Friday or Monday so that we could ski when it was less crowded.  Even on the weekends, though, it wasn’t too bad.  It just hadn’t quite caught on where we lived.  The last time I went skiing, I remember being disappointed at the ratio between waiting and skiing.  I waited in line for 1/2 hour or more and then made it down the slope in 5 minutes.  I can remember plenty of times earlier when you’d ski down right into the next chair lift.  So skiing isn’t something we’ve taken up with the family, though Geeky Boy went with his school last year and really liked it.  

We’re pretty moderate outdoor people.  We like being outside, but we don’t have to be outside.  And we’re pretty happy being inside.  We live in an area where outside, quite frankly, isn’t that exciting.  We are surrounded by houses and yards and the city, not by trees and ponds and shrubs.  We’ve lived in places like that, and when we do, we tend to be outside more.  The snow made the outside more interesting for a while, so it was good to spend some time in it.