Favorites on Friday--Facebook

It has been snowing on and off for the last three days, coating everything in layers of ice and white. I've been out in it, to shovel, to sled with the kids and play some ice hockey, plus one quick emergency run last night for more marshmallows and crickets for the toads and sallies. But for the most part, I've been home. I've been reading, writing articles and reviews. I've been baking everything from pork roast to GF pizzelles, and I've been teaching the kids--science experiments on crystals, math measuring and more poetry. As a bonus project, inspired by my friend Beth, we organized pounds and pounds of little plastic Legos by color. (Strangely satisfying!)

This is typical January and like the three riled-up feisty cats (not to mention kids!) there's some cabin fever brewing. Yesterday I drank too much steaming coffee and ended up washing all the downstairs walls. And then the baseboards. I only quit because I shredded all the magic erasers.

This is why today I am thankful for Facebook--the ability to be here and gather information, to be passive, cozy by the fire, but connected... To play online word games and catch up. To get news--from the local (why schools were closed today when the snow is under control) to the global (this alarming link on the cyber-reaction to the situation in Egypt.) I can commiserate with others who lost power but have iPhones, drool at photos as a friend's garden in Florida flourishes, and briefly acknowledge or ignore the birthday of a classmate I haven't thought of in years. 

Last weekend my father-in-law was perusing vacation real estate and asked me if I could move to a remote Caribbean island with a population of less than two hundred, where groceries are intermittent and mail unreliable. I thought of all the books I still have to write, of the way our homeschooling makes travel infinitely more possible and I said, "Yes!" But it was on two conditions: that my family comes with me, and we have reliable internet. I need my Facebook.