We took down the tree and most of the decorations in the living room weeks ago — earlier than we usually do but certainly later than many. The decorations in the kitchen, though, stayed up.

“Just a little longer,” K assured us. I personally don’t really care how long the holiday decorations stay up: not having grown up with them, I’m kind of ambivalent and also kind of enjoy them. I guess you could say I’m largely ambivalent about how long they stay up. There — contradiction resolved.

It seems to be the end of winter as well. We had a massive (for our standards) snow storm Saturday, but by Sunday afternoon, most of the roads were clear. Nonetheless, because we do live in the south, school was canceled for Monday and Tuesday. We were out last week Monday through Wednesday because of the ice storm, so we’ve been in that time-defying what-day-is-it period for some time now. But weather is returning to normal here: it’s supposed to be in the sixties this Saturday, a week after it was in the twenties.