Searching for Chaz

Snow shoveling is a fact of life in Wisconsin. I hate it but my husband likes it so things are usually fine. My problem is what to do when he travels. 

Last year this problem was neatly solved by an extremely entrepreneurial neighborhood kid (let’s call him Jake) who ran a small snow blowing business. This kid was AMAZING. He would be out at 6am before school, he was reliable, he billed efficiently and in the off season he taught me tennis..really! Unfortunately Jake was more loyal to his education than me and he left for college this fall. I had heard to that Jake was going to try to find somebody to take over his business but as of the first major snowfall I had heard nothing. 

Now I have a lead!

Last week I spoke to some neighborhood teenagers who said that, “Chaz” had take over Jake’s business. The problem is that I don’t know who this Chaz is. Where does Chaz live? Does Chaz have a snow blower? Does Chaz have email? Does Chaz have a tennis racquet?

This kind of thing seems to happen a lot. Somebody knows somebody or something that will solve some seemingly major problem in my life. Unfortunately the solution is provided with incomplete information and I am left searching for the answer… the perfect cookie recipe, a great handyman, a fool proof way to occupy a child, the perfect diet. Usually I give up before I find the magic bullet and as luck would have it I seem okay living without these problems solved. But there is always the dream…

So I am searching for Chaz. If you know him, please send him my way!

Winter Amnesia

It is Sunday night and I am sitting on the floor of the bathroom while my two children have a bath. I believe that if I can't remember the last time my children have had a bath then it is probably time for one. So tonight it is. Usually my more patient husband does the bathing but alas, he is on his way to San Diego for a conference.

My husband said that he would rather stay here then fly "as far as possible from Madison without leaving the lower 48" but when I look at the snow outside it is hard to believe him. We have only been in real winter here for about five days and already I yearn for the feeling of sunshine on my shoulders.

Winter doesn't officially start for another 14 days but what we think of as winter in Wisconsin swept in last Sunday with snow and very cold temperatures. If you had asked me about winter six days ago I would have said that I was wishing for snow and not worried about it all. After just a few days of real cold I have been brutally reminded why people move south. 

After you have a baby there seems to be some sort of hormone that makes you forget about the struggles of pregnancy, pain of labor and hardships of the first few months. The same seems to be true of winter (I am coining the term winter amnesia). Some things that I had forgotten about include: the freezing of everything in my car including lip gloss, the half banana left in the back seat, the ink in my ball point pen and a bottle of water. I also forgot about my car windows freezing shut until I went to the dry cleaners drive through window and found myself unable to communicate with the nice lady as I failed to open my windows and was too close to her building to open my door. 

Oddly the winter amnesia thing seems to strike on a daily basis. Multiple times a day I feel warm indoors and then neglect to put my jacket and gloves in BEFORE going outside. Once I get outside it is so cold that it then takes me ten minutes to warm up once I do put my jacket on gloves on. You would think I would learn!

Humans are one of the few species to populate such a wide range of the world's climates. Could it be winter amnesia that makes this possible? Ask me again in spring when my memory of this winter disappeared.