1. It snowed. It is pretty:

2. When you have a 4 1/2-year-old who is beside herself with excitement about the fact that today is the day she finally (!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) starts ballet lessons, it can be difficult to get said loony-bird to stand still long enough for you to get a decent picture of her in her finery.

That teacher, by the way, deserves a Congressional Medal. I feel like I white-knuckle it through my Monday karate class sometimes, which is all 6-10-year-olds, some of whom have the attention span of a gnat, and all of whom seem to have the uncanny ability to wander into their classmate’s kicking range at inopportune times. Handling ten 3 and 4-year-old girls who want to grow up to be ballerinas, though: Oh. My. God.

For those of you who do not follow me on facebook or twitter, Eliza and I have been away, in Texas, hence the no-comment-y (Jim does not have any spare vacation time yet, so he sat this one out at home). I am not even going to attempt to catch up with my commenting, but know that I was reading and thinking of you, whether your news was happy or sad. Know also that my mom and I gossip about you like we have met you in real life. Summary of said chats: we think you’re the bee’s knees. My mom even made one of Marie’s recipes and we agreed she is way too glamorous for a pregnant lady. Also, Dina’s kids are gorgeous. (And Mama D, you will be pleased to know we think the Olympics are awesome, watched faithfully every night and rooted for Canaders when possible. We like that nice Alex Bilodeau.)

I learned that small people are not deterred in their ocean-going by such a small thing as low water temperatures. Even though the surf was cold enough to give us ice cream headache of the foot when we stepped in it, Eliza played in it with abandon and ended up mostly wet.

I was dismissed from my parenting duties long enough to go see Avatar. I loved it. I really wanted to hate it (I have a knee-jerk reaction to things that get hyped that I really need to get over). Yes, the villains are very mustache-twirly, and yes Cameron stitched the story together from a compendium of sources that include, near as I can figure, Ender’s Game, Dragonriders of Pern, Aliens, Lord of the Rings and possibly a wee smattering of An Inconvenient Truth, but, but so help me god, I LOVED it. I totally forgot I was watching CGI, and in 3-D no less, which is why I was nearly out the door before I noticed I still had my 3D glasses on. I am Dork, hear me roar.

I went running a few times, and man, Texans are total temperature weenies. I’m out there in a tank and knee pants, and everyone I meet is in sweats, gloves, hats, etc. Oh yeah, I wear gloves too. To wipe my SWEAT. It was 60 degrees Fahrenheit, not Kelvin, ya big wussies.

Also, to share with you what kind of heathen I am, on my first run, on Wednesday, I was trotting along briskly when an old dude came barreling in my direction with dirt on his face. I was all, “Oh no! Crazy person!” And then I remembered it was Ash Wednesday. Clearly, those years of Catholic school did not take.

Plane travel continues to be my nemesis. We actually got there in one piece, albeit a piece whose stomach was somewhat churned up by the small planes, but getting back was another matter.

I have to say, the kiddo is a master traveler. She insouciantly whips out the handle on her suitcase and pulls it smartly up to the counter and hefts it on the scale and brings it to the TSA people, all business-efficient with a disarming amount of pink cherub-ness. Then she neatly strips off shoes, jackets, etc., sorts everything into bins, shoves them through the X-ray machine, and prances through the metal detector. She startles the bejesus out of people while we’re sitting at the gate with her sudden shrieks of “LOOK! A PLANE! IT’S TAKING OFF!” She can also ID several airlines by color. She must have a window seat at all times so she can comment on the passing landscape and/or clouds, can ID by sound the wheels and the flaps coming out, and likes to do countdowns to touchdown. If you are a nervous flyer (raises hand) she is an excellent distraction.

Anyway, to the WOE part of our tale: On our return trip we were supposed to fly (Mom’s city) to Houston to Chicago to (near my city) on Sunday. However, some sort of Snowpocalypse was anticipated in Chicago that prevented us from leaving Houston in time. But it was actually more of a Fauxpocalypse by evening, so the plane in Chicago was NOT delayed. (Yeah, it makes no sense to me either.) We had the distinct pleasure of seeing it taxi away as we ran up to the gate. Dudes, you made my kid cry! Fie on you! Fie!

We rebooked to finish our journey the next morning with flights from Chicago to Philly to (airport somewhat farther away from where we live), and slept at our gate because they were apparently not handing out free hotel vouchers. Or, I should say, the kiddo slept on some chairs while I lay there and imagined horrific scenarios of someone sneaking up behind me and slitting my throat. In case you are wondering about my overactive imagination re crazy people, I read Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News while I was on vacation. An EXCELLENT read, but not a relaxing one.

We made it home, but not before another sprint when the Philly connection got all jacked up and a 40-minute layover turned into a 15-minute one. By the way, if you are a business dude standing in the middle of the terminal thumbing your Blackberry with your carry-ons arrayed around you and some woman and her kid are racing straight at you saying loud hint-type things like, “Keep running honey, our gate is STRAIGHT AHEAD!”, it would behoove you to move out of their way. As it was, I finally got to put to use all my Friday Night Lights-watching, lowered my shoulder and pushed the dude out of our way. This definitely makes me an @$$hole, but at least I was an @$$hole who caught her plane. I do not kid; the jetway doors slammed shut so close behind us they just about hit us in the rear. Don’t worry, god paid me back my stealing my suitcase for 24 hours and giving my a crick in the neck for going on 48 hours.

So yesterday I powernapped in the car home (Jim drove), taught a karate class I do not fully remember, then slept for 10 hours and now I am WIDE awake which is really a problem.

This is what Eliza looks like enjoying hot cocoa after going snowtubing:

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There is no photo of what I look like when we roll out of bed into the car to do same. Unwashed, hat-headed hair = cute Valentine’s Day outfit FAIL.

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There is also no photo of the expression on my face when the frat boy who was DJ-ing while we awaited our next turn apologized for playing a raunchy song. First of all, I didn’t notice anything raunchy, so parental fail there, my poor child’s virgin ears (What? Oh, he’s talking about your SOCKS being on fire, honey! Stop, drop and roll!). Secondly, since when do I look like the kind of person to whom one would apologize for playing something raunchy?

I found this depressing, even more so when he attempted to rectify the situation by playing the clean-cut American Pie. I may have my citizenship revoked for this, but I hate that song so much. Not only does it suck, it sucks for, like, a half hour!

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Luckily this was but a blip on an overall delightful day. Turns out that if me and my kid go snowtubing, she will cackle like a mad professor the entire way down and, when we tromp back up the hill, will scream, “AGAIN! AGAIN!” at the snowtube-hill-push-you-down-ers.

I highly recommend dare-devil 4-year-olds for snowtubing. Also, on our last run, somehow, she sat down wrong (I took her on my lap for all of our runs because it seemed like the good-parent thing to do), and her snowpants fell off her butt. I hung onto them for dear life so they wouldn’t fly the rest of the way off during the run. And then we both laughed so hard we couldn’t get up.

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Sidenote: I don’t care what the Olympics announcers say, that town in Montana has got to be pronounced “BUTT,” not “Buh-YOOT.” That’s like those astronomers who keep trying to convince us that the planet is “YOUR-innus” instead of “your-ANUS.” Why, oh why, deprive the world of such fantastic double-entendre opportunities?

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Bonus: Since I had so selflessly offered myself up to go tubing, I was off the hook for skiing with the husband. I love that man, but I do not love skiing with him. I suspect that the feeling is mutual because there was yelling the last time we tried it. By me. At him. His fault, totally, because he wouldn’t let me take my skis off and walk the rest of the way.

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They had a Valentine’s Day special where you and your sweetie could get 2 lift tickets for the price of one. Only catch: you had to kiss in front of the cashier to prove your love. Since I wasn’t skiing, Jim could not benefit from this offer. As we parted to go to our separate hills, I told him that he was welcome to smooch another girl if he could convince one so he could take advantage of the deal. The girl in front of us eyed us with alarm.

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Then we went to a fancy brewery where they had mead. I love mead. LOVE. I’ve thought about making it my “thing,” alcoholically speaking, but it’s kind of hard to get a hold of, and that’s a whole lot of pretentiousness to bring into your average gathering, so I’m holding off for now.

The Kings of Leon are playing Bonnaroo in Tennessee this summer. How badly do you think it would piss off my mother-in-law, whose winter home in TN we have yet to visit, if I roadtripped to the festival in June, after she has come up here for the summer?

Yeah, I thought so.

See, if there is one thing I have on my bucket list, it is to attend a music festival. I did the Lilith Fair in the 1990s, but I want to go to one of those big, outdoor, mud-pit debacles just once in my lifetime. The one I really want to do is Rock Werchter in Belgium but it will never happen so I will have to content myself with the U2 kidney infection concert, which was held there.

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A few weeks ago Jim and I were discussing summer vacation plans and he brought up the idea of a vacation involving physical activity, such as hiking, etc. But then he was all, sighingly, “Oh, but you won’t like that. You don’t like to do stuff.”

After I, the woman who runs a race then teaches karate 30 minutes later, stopped laughing at him, the dude who won’t go to the Y two days in a row, I realized he had me exactly where he wanted me, because it quickly became obvious that he was calling me chicken.

I don’t want to ski downhill, snorkle, scuba dive, or jump out of a plane because I do not want to puke, be eaten by sharks, splat into a tree, or otherwise ruin my vacations by dying. Sitting in a goddamn airplane is traumatic enough, thank you.

But, fine. He implied that I was a pussy, and so now I have apparently agreed to jump out of a plane on our 8th anniversary. I bet you didn’t know peeing your pants in fear was a traditional anniversary activity, did you?

Luckily, I have nearly 8 months to arrange the apocalypse so I can get out of this stupid dare without losing face.

Eliza’s morning school has a new “friend of the week” activity. Each week, a new child is “friend of the week,” and during said week, he or she is encouraged to talk about his/her family and bring in favorite foods to share.

Last week, the first child up kicked off the festivities thusly: On Monday, his mom came and baked with the class, and everyone got to take a baked good home. The next day, the dad read a story. Then his brothers came in and sang a song in English and in Chinese. One played the trombone and piano, the other just piano. This was all shared in the weekly newsletter.

Eliza is the last kid to be friend of the week, and as I told Jim, going by the usual theory of inflation, we will be expected a pull an entire freaking circus out of our butts by the time April rolls around.

This morning he emailed me that he had overheard other parents stressing over this exact same problem vis-a-vis “the Von Trapp Family” as he has taken to calling them. Furthermore, the kid who is this week’s friend of the week brought in her grandmother. “Great! They’re already escalating generationally!” I said.

And because we are apparently 12, we spent much of dinner speculating what the best Lady Gaga-ish My Life Is a Performance-type response would be. Dismissed as possibilities: hiring Bob Dylan (too scary), They Might Be Giants (too obvious), asking them to swap Eliza’s “friend” week so we could bring my mom fresh from the Boston Marathon, thereby accomplishing the “multi-generational family member from out of state who is more awesome than YOU” trifecta (too logistically complicated). I entertained visions of bringing the entire dojo, with weapons, while Jim wondered if the b-list celebrity who appears in ads for his new firm could be induced to make a guest appearance, Troy McLure-style.

Don’t worry, we will behave.

Probably.

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In related news, whenever I complain lately, I like to finish my rants by shouting “First World Problems!” and jumping into sort of a gymnastics dismount pose. I find it helps me keep things in perspective.

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I’m so not kidding about the whole “losing my mind because it’s February” thing, y’all.