I'm MEEEELLLTTTTIIIINGGGG

Ok, so maybe not ME. But the world around me certainly is. The lovely powdery white-stuff the kids have been sledding and snowboarding in has melted into a slushy, somewhat-muddy concoction. The snow is melting, and so is my happy little fantasy that the weather would be *just like yesterday* on Saturday, for Tony's birthday party, so that we could have all those kids sledding down the hill and having a BLAST. I can think of no better celebration for boyness than a big fire in the snow, lots of other little-boyness friends, and FUN AND SPEED down the hill. Relatively safe fun, too, because they fly on down there and just kind of run themselves out on a curve before they get to the pond (trees and shrubs completely block the pond...no kids in the pond...no way to sled all the way to the pond...my kids are not drowning in the pond, k?).

In other news, MIL tried to kill herself the other day. OK, so not really. She went out driving on Tuesday. She grew up in HAWAII. She still drives like she lives there. And, hmmduh, she has no idea what to do with the snow and ice. Except, aparently, to go sliding around in circles through a major intersection on SW 320th in Federal Way. Luckily the only thing hurt was her sense of invincibility. Which might be a good thing because she had been planning on driving up to see us. In Fall City. Where there are trucks ditched on the sides of the road and Fran had to use every ounce of his driving knowledge to get our AWD minivan to and from work. Riiiiiiight MIL.

She then proceeded to call Fran in a panic like 20 million times on Tuesday and Wednesday, begging him to stay safe and imploring him to call her the second he got to work, from work, back from lunch, into the car, out of the car, to the intersection...blah, blah, blah. OK, so Fran recognizes a silver lining when he sees one...Niki has PMS, mom is being irritating as hell. Niki, can you call my mom please?

"MIL...""NIKI?! Is Fran home yet?!" "Um, yes, Fran asked me to call you. He's on his way home now, he's almost here. Can you stop calling him please? Please just calm down. He has all-wheel drive. He got to work safely and that is WAY harder than getting back, especially since he's going UPHILL this afternoon and the AWD is good for that. He's not stupid, he's not 16, can you please just calm down a bit? You're calling him while he's driving and if you really think he's in that much danger, I'm sure dealing with the phone isn't helping him any. Seriously, he's FINE. He's been sending me pictures. He's having FUN. You know he likes cars and all this kind of stuff." (Silence.) (It is tempting to fill this silence with babble but I don't.) "OK, thanks Niki, glad to hear he's safe. Love you!" "Love you too, bye!"

MWHAHAAHHAAHAHAHAHA

DISCLAIMER - My MIL is, how shall we say this...difficult to get through to sometimes. I thought my husband treated his mom badly until I really got to know her, and then I realized that she is one of those people that you just need to be really, really blunt with. She wasn't hurt by the above rant, in fact, she called me the next day to chat about whether she needed a fax machine. I'm gentle with people who need gentle, but MIL isn't one of those people :). That was what it took to get her to stop calling. Non-PMS Niki would have hurled the task right back at Fran, who has an easier time being obvious with his mother, but PMS Niki enjoyed the opportunity to let off steam without hurting anyone.