Brrrrr!

It is cold cold cold here. When I went to the store this morning shortly after eight to buy a couple of puffy down comforters (thanks, LMIL!), the car thermometer said -3.5C (25.7F) and the thermometer on the jewelry store said -5C (23F). Either way—brrrr! And since our study is very poorly insulated, we have to cut short our computer use when we can no longer feel our shins. So if I break off in mid-blog, you’ll know I can’t feel the bottom third of my body.

Remember how I mentioned all the work that just falls into our laps? I think I know how Tom Jones must now feel about panties—stop throwing so many at me! I was considering taking on another English-tutoring job, but it would have been too much, and I didn’t really feel qualified to teach business English. But then John told me that some of the students I had taught in his department a couple of semesters ago (wooo! nepotism!) were asking if I am planning to teach there again, because they really enjoyed my class. Yay! I wasn’t a total loser teacher!

In the mornings, I climb up on Hannah’s bed at the foot and put my legs under her covers as step one in the wake-up ritual. Also, it is cold in her room. Then I proceed to tickle her until she kicks and flops and generally wakes herself up with all her attempts to dislodge me from her bed. But this morning, she had the bright idea to use her pincers of doom, aka the toes she inherited from her dad and gwamma. John’s mom can raise a knot on a person with her lobster-claw toes, and Hannah is following in her glorious footsteps (ha ha!). Of course, we have watched Little Shop of Horrors a couple of times recently, so Hannah’s toe-pinching made me start singing, “She’ll be a den-tist! She has a knack for causing things pain!”

Hannah got some kind of gumball (of the tree-fruit variety, not chewing gum) stuck in her hair at school, so rather than asking a friend to help her untangle it, she just chopped it out with scissors. Now she has a bang-length section at the back of her head, but she refuses to let me take her to a barber, because she might actually get a *hair style*. The horror!

One evening, I had gone in to Hannah’s room to turn off her overhead light, and she started talking about how she had just noticed my freakishly large forehead. And of course, such a large forehead is a sure sign that I am a nerd. I had never heard that large forehead = nerd (and how nerdy is that, that I make a mathematical equation out of it), but maybe she has secretly been taking a distance education course in phrenology. Anyhoo, I pointed out that she looks just. like. me. And therefore she has a one-way ticket to Nerdsville. Her Nerdland passport was issued at birth. She is a native speaker of Nerdish. Ha!

I think that except for a couple of stocking stuffers, I have completed my xmas shopping. My amazon order from the UK won’t be here in time, but at least I made my choices. Hannah refuses to actually buy anything for us or her friends or anyone we ask her about, even if we offer to pay. She is getting to be quite a tight-wad, but I guess that is better than the alternative.

The glacier is creeping up over my ankles... must. stop. writing.