Snow on the Brain -or- Being Nacky

"In which the title of the blog post is revealed in the first two paragraphs."

I suppose it's safe to say that we've all been bitten by the cabin fever bug, and are getting a bit stir-crazy. My close friend's mother used to say she had "water on the brain." Well, around here, the temperatures dropped, the water froze and fell from the sky, over and over and over again. So we have SNOW on the brain. And it's no wonder. I don't think the kids have had a full week of school since before winter break. Between snow days, two-hour delays, Martin Luther King Day, and President's Day, they've had three- (or four- or five-) day weekends since the beginning of 2010!

Luckily, they are mostly creative and don't threaten, or even try, to kill each other except for about three times a day. When I was a kid and my brothers and I were acting this way, my parents called it being "nacky." Let me tell you, there is some nacky-ness going on in this house! Complaints of being bored have been accompanied by multiple poking, prodding, pinching, whining, pestering, tattling, and pouting maneuvers.

I suppose I was feeling a bit nacky myself yesterday evening, having had my fill of my kids' nacky-ness, so I threatened an early and immediate bedtime unless they figured out a way to get along. I suggested playing a board game and out came the chess set. My 11-year old used to play chess whenever he could and learned when he was about six or seven years old. My 9-year old has played, but not regularly. And they haven't played Chess at all for the past few years, so I was a little surprised by their choice.


It turned out to be just the ticket. They played happily for several hours and even got their dad involved in a few games. Normally, I insist the table is cleared every evening so that it is ready for breakfast the following morning, but last night I let that go and allowed them to keep the chess game out overnight. My youngest played first thing in the morning. They've played off and on all day long, and eventually it led to this:

and this...

and then this...

As for me, I find myself thinking about how my pea-planting date is St. Patrick's Day, yet there are still many, many inches of snow on the ground! It will be interesting to see how planting goes this season. And I've got planting on the brain (not just snow...) because last week, this arrived in the mail:


Ahhh, yes, my seed order. And quite frankly, it's difficult to imagine that this...



is ever going to look like this:




.... again. Ever.


But I know it will, eventually. And being nacky just gets in my way, so for now, I will keep the faith and get back to my tasks at hand.