is it just me?

apparently the City of Madison has decided to surrender to the snow. We have waved our white flag, declared winter the winner, and now will proceed to stay indoors for the foreseeable future. Yesterday we got some ice and then some snow, which as you might guess is not a particularly favorable combination for driving or, say, staying upright. Rather than even try to contend with such nastiness, everything closed. The buses stopped running, shopping centers closed, churches canceled services. It was big fat 'stay home' which is very out of character for us Wisconsinites, but I think everyone is just too tired to deal. So, we didn't. Well, I did make Mr. Lizard go to the grocery store since I wasn't sure how long baby lizard would last on dried out baby carrots and ketchup. And since she asks for milk approximately 876 times per day and we were out, I was pretty sure I would lose my mind if we didn't do some shopping. We may freeze to death but we might as well be well fed when it happens. Anyway, Mother Nature is seriously pissed off and I think we can all agree (tornadoes anyone? forest fires? droughts?) that this is not a good thing.

mr. mom
On Friday I went over to the apartment of an acquaintance to borrow something for baby Lizard. This woman also has a kid about the same age. I was planning to grab and go, but when she invited me in for tea (seriously?) I felt somewhat compelled to be cordial since she was lending me something. The next half hour was exceedingly awkward. First, she decided we would sit at the table and drink tea and hope that our children would quietly entertain themselves. Which they probably should be able to, but baby lizard does not really feature entertaining herself if she thinks there is any chance you might be leaving without her, and she always thinks there is some chance of this despite the fact that she really never gets left anywhere except daycare. So, I try to carry on a civilized conversation while drinking my tea but the truth is 1) we don't have much of anything to talk about, 2) this woman seems to be in a pretty bad mood, possible permanently, and 3) we are trying to entertain toddlers from a distance. Then her husband came home which was even more awkward. I have met him before, and do not get a good vibe off of him at all. We have never had much of a conversation, but we have been at two social functions, one of which was only two weeks ago. There we actually sat at the same table has their family while we ate dinner. However, when she says "do you know Lizard?" he says no. And not in a "yeah, but I can't quite place you/don't remember your name" kind of way, but in a 'I have never seen this person in my entire life and why is this alien being in my living room' kind of way. It was completely bizarre. And when I said "We met at the potluck" instead of acknowledging this with some sort of excuse he just looked at me as if to say "nope, don't remember you AT ALL". And while I am not particularly memorable (I only have one head) I don't think of myself as completely unmemorable either.

I remember EVERYONE. This is kind of a curse. In fact, sometimes I pretend not to remember people because remembering them would be weird. Because I know that I have an unusually good memory for people, I sort of expect that lots of people I remember won't remember me. I give everyone the benefit of the doubt and hope for their sake that their memories are spectacularly good at something more useful, like why you came downstairs or what you need at the grocery store. But in this case, I feel there is no excuse. Either he was not paying attention at all and trying to make friends/remember people/be a tiny bit social (which would completely explain why I didn't like the guy, which I could not put my finger on before) or he has some kind of bizarrely deficient memory. But I feel bad for his wife. Though, she didn't really step up either. If Mr. Lizard had been behaving in such an odd manner I certainly would have said something along the lines of "you remember Lizard, we met her at so-and-so's" and given him a lok that said 'please try to act normal'. And because he is a nice, charming person he would say something apologetic and self deprecating and we would all move on. However this guy proceeded to ignore me and I got the hell out of there as fast as I could. She said she wants to have us to dinner but I kind of hope she forgets about that. Though, now I want to test it and see if he sees me again, and the last time was in his home, if he STILL has no clue.

that's enough ranting for now.