Snow

our bedroom

pretty sunrise over too much snow

Tessa's art work  She s 7

I had bought the thing over the door at the estate sale

Entry to our bed room. Mirror wall on left, doll wall on right. Yep I am weird

I usually hate November for its bleakness and closeness to winter, my least favorite season. I hate to see all my flowers die that I had spent so much time making nice. Usually though, it is warm enough to continue running and biking. Not this year!! On Veteran's Day 10-12 inches of snow fell then the temps fell to record lows. More snow has fallen since so I have been exercising on our elliptical trainer in the basement and spending more time on my weights. I hope this is not the new normal, 6 extra weeks of f***ng winter. I don't think we got snow like this until January last year. Bonus, the schools had to close so we had Maya again. We had her the week before because of election day. They used to keep the schools open for elections but then the gun nuts insisted on carrying their guns into the schools. Guns and kids don't mix (as I write this, another shooting in California in the schools).

Extra bonus: things are breaking down. The thermostat is broken on the hot water heater. For a while, it would have least heated water to luke warm but now, nothing. I took a shower at Shanna's. We also spent tons of money for the tree guys to come out (as the snow began to fall) to chop down our dead trees and trim the living ones. They have to return to treat our spruces for a variety of diseases Of course my evil neighbor accused me of spreading spruce disease but the tree guy said it was all over the place for two years. But our formerly beautiful white pine is now gone. We have another huge one that seems healthy.

Hard to stay positive.

But I did go out one night (during the coldest night ever in November) to see JoJo Rabbit. At first I thought it was in very poor taste having a Hitler character seem like a nice person but it was a lonely 10 year old boy's version of Hitler as an imaginary friend, of course he would be what the boy wanted him to be. It took place towards the end of WWII in Germany. The mom (unknown to the boy) is part of the resistance and she is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic whom the boy discovers. He slowly discovers that she isn't at all like the stereotype he learns about in in his Hitler youth camps and then questions everything. Hitler is played by the director and writer of the movie who is half Maori and half Jewish, an unusual combination. I am sure this movie will get lots of Oscar buzz. At the very least, the kid actors (and Hitler) will be nominated. Extra bonus, the movie was filmed in Prague and nearby Czech villages so a few things looked familiar.