Sheep Guarding Llama

My alarm went off at twenty till five. I showered and got on the road before five thirty. It was very cold, the weather report saying just nine degrees, but there was no snow yet so while cold it was clear. My drive in was great, perfectly clear roads and sky, almost zero traffic. I actually made it from home to the office in under an hour! A record for me in either direction.

The snow did not start to fall until I was already in Norwalk and it was only heavy enough for me to see that some snow was coming down. The snow did not start to come down with any real earnest until seven when I had already been in the office for quite some time.

During the day, though, the snow really came down.  We were really worried about getting snowed into the office.  It was a ton of snow.

I worked late to account for the snowy roads, hoping that by working till close to seven that there would have been time for the roads to have been cleared, or cleared enough that I could drive home.  Hopefully with other commuters going before me it will not be too bad.

The drive home was not good but it could have been much worse.  It took me nearly two hours to get home so it was well after eight when I arrived.  Parade Hill was, not surprisingly, pretty awful and the roads really were not plowed at all.  Much of the drive I was sliding but at such slow speeds it is only so bad.

Watched a little Doctor Who with the girls once I was home tonight.  It was a short night for us.  I plan to sleep in tomorrow and give it time for the snow to clear before going in now that the snow is already on the ground.  We are really concerned that the snow will not clear before Dominica needs to drive the girls down as they are coming for the company’s childrens’ holiday party at my office tomorrow evening.  They are really looking forward to that.

It was one of those amazing winter mornings with the glistening snow clinging to the trees but roads clear enough that driving was no problem. The sun rising behind clouds of ice crystals making the sky a slow gradient of pastels of blue and pink. I was in bed at ten last night and that meant that I was up very early this morning. I woke up on my own at ten till five. I would have stayed in bed longer but my back was soar, the bed being quite soft being as old as it is, so that encouraged me to get up and get moving on the day.

I was out the door before six thirty, the earliest that I have gone into the office yet from Peekskill. The drive was very nice, the first part being in the dark but the sun coming up by the time that I got to Katonah.

As I came through Yorktown this morning I noticed that the Yorktown Diner, which I have been watching get built out for the last several weeks, was finally open today so I swung in as I was going by. There was no one there, I was the only customer. The owner said that they actually opened on Friday – but I was pretty busy that day so it is not surprising that I did not notice it. I got an egg and cheese on a hardroll and coffee. This is where being back in New York is awesome. Breakfast came to just $2.95 after tax. You aren’t going to find that in Texas. And breakfast was delicious. The deli is Mediterranean and loaded with awesome vegetarian options. Dominica is going to be thrilled since I can easily stop here on my way home and deliver dinner. Cheap and so convenient. They open at six and close at eight. So I can pretty easily hit them heading into or home from the office.

I got to the office at a quarter till eight. It is a bright, crisp morning and we are supposed to see it get pretty nice later in the week hitting the mid-forties by Wednesday or Thursday. We are hoping for good weather this weekend as we are driving out to Ohio on Friday evening after work for my grandmother’s ninetieth birthday party on Saturday.

Getting in to the office really early is nice. So much time to get caught up and be ready before the day really begins. Always strange, though, to be at work as much as two hours before the family even wakes up.

Dominica has to run back to Sears today to deal with the broken tire pressure sensor and to do some grocery shopping while she is out.

Today was a major potty training day for Luciana. Dominica had her on the potty nearly all day and she did amazingly well. Not only is her potty training coming along well but it appears to be fixing her constipation too. She had an extremely “successful” day while I was at work.

I got to leave at a good time today and was home not long after seven. Luciana was still trying to use the potty when I got home but gave up for the night. She was the happiest little girl that I can remember in a very long time tonight. The potty training is really helping her. This was the first night that I can remember in four months or more that wasn’t continuously interrupted every ten to twenty minutes by her running away and standing in a corner and with a pained voice saying “I’m pooping” and then “No, go away!” She was nothing but bubbly and energetic and as sweet and happy as could be the entire evening. Her old self again.

Dominica went out shopping around eight. She had to hit Kohl’s and get a carpet spot cleaner because, well, we are potty training and there is much to clean. And the girls have just made a mess of the carpets in general, yoghurt especially has been a huge problem. Our plan is to buy another Roomba, because we have been so happy with our current one, and forego a normal vacuum cleaner. Running a Roomba all of the time just works so well. We want to have one upstairs and one downstairs and split between them doing the main floor until we take out all of the carpeting and make it into laminate. Then we won’t need a Roomba there, normally.

Then Dominica went grocery shopping. She was gone all evening. Luciana requested that we watch Doctor Who together. Liesl decided that she just wanted to play her new Princess game on her Nintendo 2DS but she conceded to do so in the basement with her sister and me. So she sat on one side of the couch and I on the other with Luciana in my lap all evening. We watched two episodes of the fourth season of Doctor Who with Dominica returning home from her shopping with only about ten minutes left in the second episode.

We got the girls to bed right away, Dominica put them to bed tonight and read their bedtime stories while I did some emergency floor cleaning with the new spot cleaner. Luciana’s favourite story is still “Pete’s a Pizza” but a close second has become “Head to Toe.” When we read “Head to Toe”, both girls jump out of bed and go through all of the actions as we read the story. They are so adorable.

I then went straight to bed. The rumor is is that there is going to be a snow storm early in the morning, starting around five and going all day, so I want to get up very early and get on the road to attempt to avoid it. So I was in bed around ten thirty. Dominica stayed up for another two hours and made sure that the fire in the fireplace was out before coming to bed. She was not tired at all, having been out shopping.

Had bagels for breakfast and saw the Toccos off on their drive home shortly after the girls woke up to see them. The snow has stopped falling so they will probably have a decent drive back up to Frankfort. Once they had left it was time to take Liesl and Luciana out back to work on making a snowman that I had promised Liesl yesterday that we would make today. She loves playing in the snow, it is one of her favourite things. I remember when I was her age loving the snow. The cold doesn’t affect the young like it does the adults. Snow was fun when I was little. Liesl cannot wait to go sledding at grandpa’s house, that is her next challenge.

We got outside and discovered that the snow had melted just enough, and refrozen as it was barely over twenty degrees this morning, so there was that hard ice crust over the snow making it very hard to work with and so hard and Luciana could not get her hands into it at all without working up a good karate chop to break the ice first. The snow beneath was the dry, super cold stuff that does not stick together at all.

I talked to Liesl about the snow and she understood that we could not make a traditional snow man today because of the ice and the non-sticky snow. Being the smart kid that she is, she asked if she could make a snow angel instead, to which I said yes. Then she said that maybe she could use the plastic carrot and other snowman accoutrements from the snowman kit that Dominica had bought for her, to make a “snow angel man” instead. I was pretty impressed with that idea. Liesl said, “I know, I’m a smart little kid.” The snow angel man idea worked out great, Luciana even helped her a little. It turned out pretty well.

The girls played outside for quite a while, at least half an hour. I was out there with them regretting my lack of coat – having nothing but the fleece that I wear around the house anyway. I was just a bit cold. But the girls were very happy.

As soon as the girls were in from the cold we had to get them dressed so that we could get to the Jefferson Mall to go to Sears where we have an appointment to get new tires put onto the Acadia. Liesl wore a new sweater dress and high boots today. She looks so grown up. A very New York / New England stylish outfit.

We got the mall and dropped off the Acadia. They said that it would take about two hours so we had some time to kill in the mall while they got the tires put on. So we went and got ourselves lunch first at the food court. And then planned to just walk around for a bit. We found a GameStop so went in there. We ended up finding a moderately good deal on Nintendo DS games for Liesl, used of course, so we got her three (on the buy two, get one free sale) including a Dora the Explorer Puppy game, a Disney Princess game and a Team Umi-Zumie game. She was very excited. I found, used as well, the only two Playstation 3 games that I still wanted – Uncharted 2 and Uncharted 3 – for less than ten dollars each. They were easily forty or fifty the last time that I looked. So I grabbed those. My PS3 collection is now complete, I think. And my XBOX 360 collection as well. I cannot think of a single game that I still want for either system and as both systems have now been replaced, my guess is that that is all that there will be that I will be interested in. It will probably be a year or more before anything comes out for the newer consoles that I am really interested in, so maybe by next Christmas. Until then, I have all I could want for this year.

While we were shopping Luciana had a bit of a breakdown and I had to take her out of the store. She seems to be pretty tired and, as always, that is combined with her constipation which continues to be a major issue. She has improved some but only a little. It has been a few months of severe problems. She goes in spurts from super happy little girl to nearly crying and very unhappy and anti-social, often over the course of just a few minutes. It has been really rough. I can’t wait until we get this figured out and get her happy all of the time again. We have lost so much happy time with her because of months of constipation issues.

The time at the mall ended up being a total of four hours. A long bit of a Sunday afternoon. That wasn’t fun. Dominica and Liesl got a lot of Christmas shopping done, which was nice, while Luciana and I hung out a bit and tried to relax. Taking Ciana into stores really was not an option. On the way home we had to stop at Walmart too for Dominica to run in and get “chocolate milk” for the girls as our supplies have run dangerously low. It is hard to believe that Liesl still drinks one every morning when she wakes up and one every night before she goes to bed. It has been three or four years of this pattern now. She has had that as a major part of her diet for so long that it is easy for forget that that is what she eats. I’m sure she doesn’t think about it much either. It just is how life is to her. She can’t remember a time that she didn’t have that. My guess is that it will always be a comfort food for her, even when she is an adult.

Once we came home we got Liesl playing her new games on the Nintendo 2DS. She was very happy about that. She is really into video games and is so good at them. She is playing games meant for kids much older than she is.

We ordered in dinner from Nona’s which we used to eat at all of the time down in the Beach shopping center. Time to get back into old habits! Once the food arrived we took the girls down to the basement and we watched White Christmas as a family. Mostly Dominica and I watched it, Luciana used her iPad and Liesl played on her 2DS but we all snuggled on the black couch together and had family time. The girls are a bit young for the movie but we wanted to get them used to it as it has been Dominica and my holiday tradition for over a decade now. We knew that this weekend was our last window of time in which to watch it easily before Christmas actually comes with the travel next weekend. White Christmas is on Netflix this year so we just watched it there.

I managed to get Luciana to eat some prunes while we were watching the movies. She is very good, much better than Liesl, about understanding when a food or medicine is supposed to make her feel better and happily eating it. She’ll even ask for medicine or whatever to make her feel better. After she ate three prunes in quick succession she told me that prunes were her favourite food. Here is to hoping that she feels that way tomorrow too and we can keep her eating them.

After White Christmas, Dominica wanted to watch National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation. Not as classic as White Christmas (but it makes an awesome reference to it late in the film) it is a good film. And after that, off to bed for everyone. An early night for us.

While getting Luciana ready for bed Dominica was able to coax her into relaxing and she was able to poop an epic poop. After that Luciana was so happy and bubbly and ready to run around the house dancing. That is what she needed. Smiles and giggles were all we got until she was falling asleep in bed.

The girls were in bed by nine thirty and I went to bed at ten. Dominica stayed up for a while wrapping presents, this being one of the last chances that she will have until needing to travel. Some of the Christmas presents headed up to Frankfort with her parents this morning.

Dominica and I were up before eight at the Hilton Garden Inn in Norwalk. Dominica got up and looked outside and was dismayed to discover that it had snowed during the night and was still snowing. This isn’t good. My car, the Chevy Spark, is bad in snow and Dominica’s Acadia’s tires are in terrible shape and going to be really bad on snow – which they have never seen before. So we got up earlier than we had wanted to, got checked out and got on the road as quickly as was easy to do so that we would have maximum time to deal with the drive. It was probably about eight thirty when we set out for the forty plus mile trek from Norwalk to Peekskill.

We were unsure of what path to take back to Peekskill as the highway would probably be better for the Acadia and the backroads probably better for the Spark. I have had really good luck on the back roads over the past few weeks, including in the snow, and there is expected to be basically no traffic today so we decided to give that a try. Dominica followed me as I took her on the complicated route back to the house.

We had assumed that Connecticut and New York would have been out clearing the roads. Boy were we wrong. Not only had no plows been out but basically no traffic in the direction that we were heading. In some cases we could see that the other, oncoming, lane was well driven but ours was lucky to have seen a car, let alone a plow.

The drive was very stressful. We had to creep along to keep control of the roads. The worst part came when we took Parade Hill, in New Canaan, between routes 123 and 124. Going up Parade Hill we had someone drive less than ten miles per hour in front of us which nearly brought me to a halt causing me to lose all of my momentum and the Spark could barely hold enough traction to make it to the top of the hill. Dominica was even less fortunate and looking in my rearview I saw her come to a stop on the hill, unable to move.

I pulled into a driveway and ran back down the hill and took over driving for her. I had her get in the passenger seat. With my additional weight and making half a dozen runs at the hill I was finally able to get the Acadia to the top of it. That was ridiculous. There is no doubt, we have to get new tires on this car this weekend. There is no other option. It is not safe to use this vehicle any more, not in winter. So now we have that to deal with this weekend.

All in all, the slow drive back to Peekskill took about two hours! Dominica went straight home. I stopped in Yorktown Heights at Daily Bagel to get a dozen bagels for the family for the weekend. One of the joys of being downstate. Best bagels anywhere.

It was around ten thirty when we got home and the girls were awake.

Today’s projects including fixing network issues and, not surprisingly, figuring out what to do about new tires for the Acadia. We finally found tires that we liked at a reasonable price at Sears. Dominica ordered some all weather Continentals that came in around nine hundred dollars that Sears will install for us late tomorrow morning.

This evening Liesl and Luciana wanted to introduce their grandfather to Doctor Who, their favourite show. So they brought him down to the basement and had him spend the entire evening watching the “first” season of it starting from the first episode and running through the fifth (which we had to make it through as it was a two parter.) He liked it a lot and is now hooked on it.

Today is the company Christmas Party, the adult one (the one of the kids is next week.)  So a slower day at the office.  Dominica parents should get to Peekskill around five and Dominica will head down to Norwalk as soon as they get to our house to watch the kids.  They are going to spend the night so we are able to stay overnight in Norwalk to make things easier.

Dominica left the house just after five to drive down to Norwalk. I walked her through the directions of how to use the backroads, or the semi-back roads of 35 and 123 to get down to Norwalk and how to find the hotel. She did it in the opposite direction, once, at night while following me about a month ago. She knew that the traffic would be much better here than on the expressways at this time at night so decided to give it a try.

I got a beer at happy hour and left the office as soon as that was done, so just a little after five. The hotel, the Hilton Garden Inn, that Dominica had booked last night is basically right across the street from my office complex being right on Main St. diagonally across the intersection for route seven. I got up there and got us checked in and even had time to set up our Internet access and take a shower before Dominica arrived. Her drive went fine and she found the route quite easy to do now that she has adapted to being in the area again but she had really heavy traffic so it took her closer to an hour and a half to make the trip down.

We got dressed and were ready by a quarter after seven. We went down to the hotel lobby and hung out for a little bit. We had just missed the first shuttle of the evening and accidentally missed the second one, as did everyone else in the lobby, no one quite realizing that it was there or that we were supposed to just go out to it. So it was the eight o’clock shuttle that we ended up taking to the evening’s festivities.

We had a good time at the party. We decided not to stay super late, we aren’t late night people anymore. We put in three hours, had some really good food, saw people that I knew, met new people and went back to the hotel at eleven. It was an impressive party in many ways, scale for one thing. I am very glad that Dominica was able to make it down for it.

We were among the earlier ones leaving the party but far from the first. Next year I should know a lot more people, and Dominica probably will too, so we will probably put in a lot more time. And will probably dress more casually too. I think that we made a good showing for me having only been here for two months.

Got back to the hotel and got to bed pretty quickly.