Seasonal affective disorder (SAD), also known as winter depression or winter blues, is a mood disorder in which people who have normal mental health throughout most of the year experience depressive symptoms in the winter.so holli and i have the winter blues. at first i thought we were just in a rut, but then i realized that we've been like this for the past several winters, and the only thing that drives it away is spring. this diagnosis was somewhat hard to accept, as i'm pretty skeptical of "phantom" psychological disorders in general, but the symptoms are impossible to ignore. guess i won't be so dismissive of similar psych issues in the future. look at that, i've just changed my outlook on the world when presented with irrefutable evidence. if only everyone could be so honest with reality...
it's sad, really (no pun intended). i used to love winter, but now i want to move to ecuador. back in the day (seems about a hundred years ago now) i was a big skier and winter-outdoors guy, and i welcomed the snow and cold. just loved it. but i haven't been skiing since that time bz and i went to cascade in wisconsin, and brian gave some kid a forearm
in midair and knocked the kid on his ass. ah, i wish i had a video of that, you'd die laughing.
anyway, we haven't been posting with any regularity, which is sad for you, the reader (again, no pun intended). so let me update you with the news from this small patch of mother earth:
as holli mentioned in a previous post, liam took it upon himself to cut his hair. he used safety scissors, but considering how close to his scalp he was able to cut, i don't think "safety" should be used in that title anymore. seriously, he cut it to the skin. the only way it could have been closer is if he used my razor, which is now on the top shelf of my medicine cabinet, although i doubt that will prevent him from getting it if he really wants it. so there was nothing to do but buzz the poor kid's head, and now he looks like caillou, the adorable yet extremely irritating cartoon character from the self-titled show the boys like to watch. i call him telly savalas and cueball, and he doesn't seem to mind.
max just wanted to let you know that he was holding pliers. don't forget it.
max is now three years old, and that vexes liam to no end, as he wishes his birthday was first. of course, it makes no difference when you tell him that he was born first, which i would think would be an endgame kind of fact.
hmm, what else? i'm tired of shoveling snow (stupid lake effect), holli is sick of working night and day, liam and max are in love with the thomas trains they got from their grandma (thanks, mom!), the upstairs bathroom renovation is nearing completion. oh, holli never blogged about the fun part of that!
so we're finally redoing the upstairs bathroom, and since we've never done tile before, we thought it might be a good idea to have some professionals handle the job. so the pros ripped up the old floor, redirected some piping, raised the toilet outflow pipe (in consideration of the higher floor level with the new tile), and other stuff, and in the course of their work, they discovered that a floor joist directly under the toilet had been severed and required a sister joist to make the floor secure and prevent us from falling through to the kitchen directly below. so the floor was partially torn up. during the several days the floorboards in the bathroom were missing, i kept noticing that greta and dora (the cats) had lots of sawdust and plaster chunks on their fur, but i didn't put it together. turns out that they were hanging out in the subfloor; there was plenty of room because the ceiling in the kitchen had been lowered in a renovation years or decades past. unfortunately, i didn't realize the cats' hiding place until about 20 minutes after the contractor closed up all the holes he had made in the floor. so i went up to the bathroom, called the cats' names, and sure enough, there was dora looking up through the cracks in the floor. and where one is, so is the other. so after ripping up the recently replaced floorboards and some coaxing with special food, dora emerged, but greta was nowhere to be found. i got the bright idea to stick a camera into the subfloor, and here is what i saw:
eventually greta came out too, and they spent the rest of the night locked in the basement. stupid cats.
so that's what's going on here these days. we're all ready for spring, working too hard, and playing too much (well, the boys, at least). i'm cooking italian soup tonight, so that should be good. and we're watching the oscars later, even though we haven't seen any of the nominated movies or roles. i have it on good authority that heath ledger will win, although the bad guys never win oscars.
