we don't need no sled-ucation
Yes, the title of this post is the worst pun ever. I am sorry.
The children in my class were good in gym today. So much so that the gym teacher made a point of telling Mrs. Beaty afterwards that he wasn't sure he had the right group of kids. And that was even we took them outside and made them run up and down the hill as many times as they could in our half-hour recess time.
No, not really: we're not slave drivers. When we make them run to try and deenergize them a little it's always on flat ground. In this case, they ran up the hill on their own because they wanted to slide down it. See, like the Waldorf school in Lexington but better, Mason-Rice comes with a beautiful hill that slopes down onto the yard. So, when it snows, everyone who remembered to bring all their snow gear gets to come out and take advantage of the conditions. There aren't any sleds, so usually things don't get too exciting for an experienced sledding professional such as myself, but today things were just right: a reasonable amount of wet snow followed by a bit of rain and then a good hard freeze. And, to provide the key element, the snow day yesterday allowed the local kids (some of them from my class) to come out and pack the snow down with their sleds, before it had a chance to form a crust. The paths of the snow tubes made little frozen bobsled runs, just as smooth and glassy as you could ever wish. I have to say, I didn't stand on my dignity one bit and had three or four good runs myself (of course I had brought my snow pants!). And to make everything just perfect, the frozen solid nature of the middle of the hill made climbing up that section impossible, so everyone walked up the edges without constant shouted reminders from me.
In other news, our heat and hot water went out completely this morning, and have now been fixed. I imagine the gradual cooling trend we experienced in our showers (and faucets) was related to this problem, and hope and expect to see (or rather feel) piping hot water again next time I turn the tap.