Can it be? Internet at home? It's the equivalent of a water dropper compared to a garden hose anywhere else, but still, it's internet. Don't count on it lasting or being a reliable thing though.

Snowed in here. Have no idea whether there will be school for any of us on Monday or not. Unfortunately, by the time I can call, the bus will have left already! Can't they give people some kind of an idea regarding school closures the night before school rather than the morning of? How are folks supposed to plan??? Other than school, I have no good reason for wanting to go in to town (it was email but now I have checked that and found the usual array of things not worth having looked forward to).

And, despite the hassles and closures and rescheduling and whatnot, it is *beautiful* outside! The trees are just dripping with snow and everything looks so pristine out there. The nice thing is, it isn't even that cold.

My sister and her family came up for Thanksgiving, which was a nice surprise. At one point, my brother in law asked me why I think about the past so much. I've been thinking about that ever since. The thing is, she was able to leave here and go to college right away and get on with building a new life. I still live here. I still know the same people my parents knew, even if I hardly see them, I do hear about them. The roads I drive are pretty much the same. The businesses we delivered newspapers to are the same ones I drive right by. And the fathers of my children were inextricably tied to my past in various ways, so it's inevitable that looking at them will occasionally lead my mind along a thread to the past.

On the other hand, I work out the problems in today by working through my past. I know that it isn't possible to escape this stuff, however nice that would be. It follows you- in dreams, in flinching when someone moves to quickly, in small ways that scream loudly to your psyche. Some people can get up and walk away from an accident scene and cry a time or two and not think about it again. I'm not like that. Things affect me deeply, and ruminating on them is what I do to try to make sense of it all.

I still don't know how to respond to that comment, but I guess it wasn't really a question. I think it was more of a shut-up-and get-over-it-and-move-on sort of thing. And don't-talk-about-it-anymore-because-we-don't, too. And I will get over it, but I'm also not the sort to walk off from a half wounded monster. If I'm going to kill something (speaking figuratively) it's going to be dead, period, because I don't want to wake up some night and find myself confronted with it right when I thought I was happy.