There's No Day Like Snow Day(s)...

Unless it's a Rain Day.

Thursday, you sweet sweet vacation extender, you.

Krystal: Being teachers, there's nothing like the first snow day. As soon as the temperatures had dipped below freezing, heck, way before that, we had placed a bet about which day of this sure-to-be-too-long winter we would have our first snow day. We both had confidently picked days in mid-December, hopeful that we would have just one before vacation. December flew by, vacation arrived and life was good.

Kate: We were starting to have visions of being on the beach mid-June as opposed to early July and really believed that the Almanac’s prediction of the coldest and snowiest winter in years was false. Then came Hercules. Typically, I would never want a snow day on a Thursday; it’s the best day of the week for me at school, and it means the weekend is close by. Something about returning to school on a Thursday, post New Year’s really did seem awful though, so I was secretly hoping we could have just one more day and return Friday for one fast-paced day before the weekend came. When the news hit that our wish had come true, I knew that I had to do something productive with my bonus hours (since I hadn’t in the week and a half prior, really).

Krystal: God forbid she sleep until noon and lay around in sweatpants all day (My not so secret wish for just about every non-work day…)

Kate: It was time to get down to business. Only after a trip to the gym and some snow day pancakes of course.

This is how I roll.

Krystal: The gym- Ew. The pancakes- yum! But the pressure to perform got the best of me, and I too decided to be productive. I spent the greater part of my room pulling things...all SORTS of things out of my overflowing drawers. I started with my tights- a collection of over 40 that I am overly impressed by. I’ve heard word that teachers shouldn't wear colored tights- it’s a young look to be sure. But as I rolled each and every pair of my rainbow colored leg coverings, I felt supreme vibrancy and started plotting outfits.  

Kate: I had a mission: mop the kitchen floor. For some, this might not be a big deal. Enjoyable perhaps even. But I have never classified myself as a cleaner. I didn’t get the clean-gene. As an almost 35 year old, I figured it was time to start seeing what this hard-core cleaning thing is about.

Krystal: I still have almost five years before this urge is liable to strike...

Kate: I had good intentions a couple of months before when I actually bought a new mop. I conveniently “couldn’t find the time” though before now, what with having to be places like Live Juice, Hermanos, Bagel Works, Portsmouth, and Boston. It’s hard being a socialite (said in sarcastic tone).

First, I busted out the vacuum for a pre-cleaning of the floor. I even moved the baker’s rack that probably hasn’t been moved in years (Kell, you can attest to this). I moved furniture out and was ready to go. And go I went. After about 5 minutes of some intense scrubbing, I was starting to sweat, so off went one layer of clothing.

Would Martha clean wearing this?

Krystal: This is around the time that I snuck out of my room to see what the heck was going on out there...and HAD to snap a picture. The sight was priceless, but I couldn’t sit around and watch; I promptly ran back to my room in case she asked me to help scrub something.

Kate: I was like Cinderella, if she had just come from the gym.

Krystal: I was like the mouse that hides from the evil cat. You know, that fat one...Gus Gus.

Kate: I was feeling so accomplished once the kitchen was done that I moved on to the bathroom. I hadn’t committed to this in my mind once starting because the bathroom in our apartment can be a scary place. It really is true what they say about just starting something though because it gave me the momentum to keep going.

Meanwhile, Krystal was still “organizing tights”. - I knew exactly what she was doing. I mean she does have a lot of tights, but over an hour’s worth???

Krystal: To be fair, I unloaded many drawers...my numerous scarf drawers, my strapless bras and shoe laces drawer, and my broken necklaces, contacts, kitschy buttons, and tacks drawer….all needed to be cleaned, I assure you.

After hours of scrubbing on Kate’s part and hours of avoiding scrubbing on mine, we decided to hose off and take our show on the road. A quick trip to Live Juice for some sustenance and a chilly shuffle down the street to True Brew Cafe, and we were about to do the thing we had talked so long about doing. We started this here blog!

******

There has since been another snow day on Friday- snowy, frigid and wholly uneventful.  

Kate: Unless getting your car door handle replaced is an event.

Krystal: And getting Beauregard, my devilishly handsome 2008 Honda Civic, a little oil jobby and inspection…

Kate: Thank God we had the weekend to relax after all of that. A trip to Portsmouth was just what we needed to get out of the house and mentally prepare for the inevitable return Monday.

Krystal: With my bags by the door, my “I’m such a rebel” nose hoop safely resting in a drawer and replaced with my “I’m a teacher” stud, and my back to school outfit laid out, I went to sleep promptly at 10:15 PM- ready to get back to this teacher thing once and for all.

Kate: Except that didn’t happen. A rain day, however, did: freezing rain, light rain, heavy rain. Rain of all kinds. Which brings us to the present.  

Krystal: Which was, I suppose, a present. Because on this day, the words they were a flowin’. 

You’re welcome.

Project Themoir: The Beginning

Krystal & Kate- If one selfie is good, four must be GREAT!

Krystal: Ah yes, the beginning. Anyone who knows me can confirm this as fact: I don’t tell a short story, nor do I always tell an entirely true one. Sometimes, only sometimes, I embellish. This doesn’t make me a liar, but I guess I am what some might call- an unreliable narrator. But don’t fret, you can trust Kate. Her word is truth. I swear.

One might ask us, “Krystal and Kate, why are you writing a blog? Haven’t you tried this before?” The answer, for me, begins when I was four. Allow me to regale you with the details- most of them are irrelevant, but then, I already told you I don’t know how to keep it short, and I honestly love writing about the topics of “me” and “us”.

****

I have been writing for as long as I can remember. I started when I was in preschool at The Crayon Connection in Concord, NH; I’d scrawl stories about the most mundane topics on that sickly beige paper with the solid blue lines and the little red dashes (or is it the other way around?) ...Pause please while I Google Image the paper of which I am speaking; accuracy matters in these things.

...Back with inconclusive results. Apparently, no one thought to take pictures of preschool handwriting paper back in 1988, and if they did, they didn’t feel compelled to upload it onto the Internet in 2013. 

Anywhosy, as I was typing, I have always had a love of words. Reading was my first passion, but as soon as I was able to hold my pencil correctly, I was scribbling nearly illegible words of my own across the page. Ponies, princesses, real life people, all topics were relevant and fodder for my stories. During my kindergarten year, my teacher Mrs. Donovan, one of my favorite characters from my elementary school days, worried about my sight and fine motor skills. When I wrote, no matter what the story was about,  all of my words flowed together with no distinction between the end of one and the beginning of the other.

Having told me time and time again to space my words carefully, Mrs. Donovan suggested having my eyes tested in case I perhaps suffered from some horrific sight deficiency. Upon testing, I was diagnosed with shockingly perfect vision (It wasn’t until several years later that my sight decided to shit the bed). With my eyes cleared of all blame, my patient, angel of a teacher decided to teach me a trick, and by trick I mean she forced me to put my dirty little index finger down between each word to ensure adequate spacing.

In addition to the fact that it was highly embarrassing, I distinctly recall thinking to myself, “Who has time for this?!”  What she didn’t realize was that I had no time for spaces or finger tricks-I had ideas a-flowing. Words were flying through my brain, and I had to get them onto paper as fast as I could. I was convinced, even at that young age, that I was going to write the next Noisy Nora or Blueberries for Sal (my personal favorites at the time).

Years have passed (nearly 25 in fact...I’m chasing 30 like a run away dog!!) and I managed to figure out how to write quickly (thank you, computers!) and space my words correctly (tap the space-bar and voila!) I have never run short of ideas. What I have run short on in self-confidence and at times, motivation. Thankfully, I met Kate.

...Hmmm...I don’t think I answered the hypothetical question that one might ask us upon hearing we started a blog. Kate, can you take this one?

Thanks pal.

Kate: Unlike Krystal, I am not going to start from the from the first time I picked up a writing utensil; after all, I am five years older, so we could be looking at a significantly longer background story. I’ll spare you the details and skip to the good part.

Some of you may remember a little blog called “The High Five Herald” that Krystal and I started writing in the early days of our friendship. It was a blog about the highs and lows (mostly lows) of our dating experiences at the time. We had a blast collaborating and writing together, but sadly we realized that continuing to write about our pathetic love lives was not sending the right message to the Universe, so we said goodbye to “The High Five Herald” - not that it changed the dating situation much...

Back to the point: Over the last 5 years, we have had a lot of ideas for other writing ventures that never came to fruition; we even tried our own solo projects, but without each other to hold one another accountable to keep writing, they fizzled out. FYI, Krystal may have been inspired to continue with a genius blog she started, “Fatter, Poor, Almost 30.” 

Krystal: I was! Check that business out here. 

Kate: I approached Krystal with the idea again to start a blog.  I just have this feeling that we were meant to do a creative project together.  We are best friends with different points of view and writing voices. We experience 99% of our lives together being roommates, working in the same school, and sharing the same core group of friends. Why not write a blog about our lives from both perspectives? And hence, the idea of the Themoir was born.

Krystal: After re-reading my diatribe, I realize that my story was long-winded and off topic (shocking). When I asked Kate if it worked, her response was, “It’s funny.” You can blame her for the fact that I truly believe I am hysterical and fail to censor or revise my work even when knowingly off-base. All joking aside, our hope is that we can produce a joint work that is both funny and insightful. We hope that our words will make you laugh and think- maybe run out and buy a book or download a new song you hadn’t heard of. Maybe, you’ll even start writing yourself. There can never be too many words in the world.  

Kate: We are constantly telling our students to do what they love, follow their passion, and take risks. We thought we’d follow our own advice and do the same. New year, new beginnings, new adventures.

“I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.” - Oprah (Krystal: Classic Kate…)