Winter Protest

Toward the end of the Christmas break and in the middle of the first nasty cold spell (we're in another now, but so far it's not quite as bad), we awoke to a plan afoot.

From the billows of my warm down duvet and through the gossamer haze as I emerged to the conscious world I heard: "We need some sticks to make posts for the signs" and: "we can put our coats on and march on the sidewalk".

Uh... What? That can't be good.

So up the stairs came the questions: "Mom! Dad! can we have some sticks to put our signs on?" Requirements for sticks for a project is never a good sign.

"For what?"

"For our protest![1] We're tired of winter and we want to have a Beach Party!"

Oh. Well that makes perfect sense now.

It turned out that it was too effen cold to go outside to protest and I didn't even have to get into the logistics discussion of "who, exactly, are you protesting to?" (and more importantly, I didn't have to get sticks). Although, in the interests of just getting fresh air (relax, they wouldn't have actually stayed outside for more than 30 seconds) I probably wouldn't have bothered to fight it.

So we decided to have a Beach Party anyway. [That's an extremely loose interpretation of the term "we"]

We prepared snacks and drinks for our beach blanket. [Also a stretch of "we". This time - probably obviously - in the other direction]

And we went swimming in the pool - a blue blanket on the floor ["we" is used correctly here]. We practiced the safe way to dive into a pool that has pretty severe surface tension.

And then we sunbathed. We had all donned our bathing suits. When asked why I didn't *actually* have mine on, my response was that my imagination was just more advanced than theirs and I didn't need the physical manifestation of their metaphysical world[2].

I have no idea whether that actually makes sense, but they didn't challenge me and that's all that matters.

Well. That and we all had fun.

[1] Unasked and therefore unanswered throughout this was: "where did this notion of 'protesting' come from?" I don't recall the idea of civil disobedience ever coming up (disobedience, oh yeah, but never civil). Just chalk it up with the others in the long line of "how the hell did you piece THAT together" that started about when Norah began speaking and I imagine won't really end.

[2] OK, so I'm usually not warm enough to put on my bathing suit in the "worst" of summer (sorry, but for some reason, my brain will not come up with any decent adjectives to describe an unpleasantly hot summer day! Can't imagine why), I sure as HELL am not going to do it when I am in visual range of a snow bank - even if it is on the other side of these triple-paned beauties.