Eyes Hurtses

[With apologies to Gollum, whose troubles with bright sunlight I sympathize with.]

I got up this morning because my alarm clock was going off, and as I turned it off, the telephone rang. Our school has this autodialer that calls us up when school is closed, and it said "Closed today, Friday, January eighteenth, due to road conditions".

We had no snow. But a lot of the side roads (it's all side roads here) were very icy.

So the child had no school. For once he was disappointed, because he was all ready for Career Day.

And the husband had no work, having put in his 40 hours already, via four-tens (four ten-hour days).

Our big plans for Friday originally were to go out and test-drive a Scion xB while the kid was in school. They didn't change much: since the roads were great, and when the sun came up, the sky was clear, we just took the kid to do the test drive.

Ow. Now I know I really am a true Michigan winter troglodyte. All that low-angle sun, even with no snow, hurtses us. My eyes feel like after I've been to the eye doctor and had them dilated.

I brought a couple of pairs of socks along, but it was just too bright to knit.

The Scion xB was the new one for 2008. They've changed it and made it less boxy. (They also moved the all-important cupholders from between the seats, into the doors.) I sat in the front and back and tried to imagine taking Ajax to the vet in it. Hmmm. I think I'll have to drive one of the older, more boxy ones and see about those.

Note to Toyota: cupholders in the doors? Slosh, slosh. Not one of your greatest ideas.

(And after all the posts about the curse on my husband's car, I guess I should confess that the one we are still planning to replace is not his Honda Civic, but my Honda Odyssey. C'mon, I'm driving a 12-year-old vehicle here.)

How about an abrupt change of subject?

This is what's left of the fruitcake my mom made and gave me for Christmas. If you are one of the people Mom makes fruitcake for, and you secretly don't like it, email me and I'll take it off your hands.

If you're my mom, yeah, that is all that's left of it. And um, no, I don't know if my husband has had a piece yet. Around fruitcake, you snooze, you lose, I say!

Now that the lovely cloud cover is thickening up, I'm going to make some tea, have another slab of fruitcake, and work on my socks. One pair, anyhow.