It’s a wrap. I am out. I am fine although I can’t say it’s the easiest thing I’ve ever done. “Some people” were worried that it wouldn’t be done quickly but after working for Corporate America for 18 years and seeing their systems evolve a lot, I knew it would be quick. And it was. Done.

After I did the deed, I really wanted to go for a ride out in the county again but today was a snow day. The back roads would’ve been fine (it wasn’t really a lot of snow) but getting there with all the nutso traffic would not be fun.

The pic is one Little Cat Z sent us from the Great White North on the way to an x-c ski area. She’s been staying at the Hoton Lake Group Home and yesterday it was ICE but today was more conducive to skiing as you might be able to see via the pic. There were other pics but I won’t post them because there were people in them. There is more snow there and tons of snow in the eastern yooperland, where the moomincabin is.

I think we put LCZ on skis at about the age of three. We backpacked our baby mouse on that trip – she wasn’t walking yet. At one point, LCZ was solo for a few minutes traveling between me and the GG. I remember hearing her answer a friendly stranger’s question with, “I’m with my mommy and my daddy.” A person who no doubt was wondering why a tiny child was skiing alone. I came around a corner right around that time, which put that good Samaritan’s fears at ease.

Mouse was on skis by the age of two. Tiny red rental skies. She rocked it for a couple days and then I made the mistake of saying I would take her on the “little kid loop”. Oops. Tantrum. I picked her up, skis and all, headed up to the counter in the ski ranch and told Bob, “We’re done!” Having four children of his own, he just laughed.

A few years later, I was skiing with mouse on the Manitou Trail, a 5K loop at the ski ranch. She was a great skier by then but that was probably a bit too long for a five-year-old and before it was all over, I was carrying ALL FOUR of our ski poles in my left hand and holding her hand in my right. (Note that little kids don’t really need ski poles, they just want them because everybody else has them.) We were slodging along for a while when she said (in true mouse style), “Mom, why do I think about volcanoes so much?” How does a mother answer a question like that? I didn’t really know but to be fair I used to worry about volcanoes and things when I was that age too. In fact, non-religious me even “prayed” every night that we wouldn’t get “hit” by a tornado or volcano (and a whole list of other disasters I was worried about). Anyway it was a long slodge on the Manitou Trail that day.

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