In the particular valley I live in, snow is a rarity.  Once, maybe twice every few years it’ll come down, bringing life to a halt.  No one is prepared for snow here.  It’s like the end of the world when it happens, but in a nice way.

Born and raised in the midwest, this is of course, funny to me.  Let’s say someone from Florida moved somewhere far, far north, and one day the temperature soared to a record high 80 degrees.  Everyone would step outside their doors, jaws slack in wonder, as they sweated and watched the historic event.  Everyone, I guess, except our imagined Florida transplant, who might step outside and think . . . finally.

Oregonians are sometimes like that.  They get all funny when it snows too much or even, get this, it rains too much.  The news stations will even name the storms sometimes, giving a whopping 5 or 6 inches of snow the prestige of a hurricane.

Me, I stepped outside and shoveled the walk, remembering the time my 78 year old grandpa made me join him in shoveling a foot of snow off of our one mile long driveway.  I kid you not.

I have obviously been reincarnated as the super domestic, early 20th century housewife.  You never hear about that possibility when you come across reincarnation.  It must be the hidden secret.  I need some help!  My son must be some sort of mitosis king, dividing and growing, redividing and growing all over again at an unprecedented rate.  He’s on a feeding frenzy.  How many meals am I supposed to prepare in one day?

I’ve sought a little help from the Be June Cleaver website.  I don’t have a husband, a pretty dress, or a string of pearls.  But coffee I can do, and a hearty breakfast (WHAT?!  ANOTHER MEAL?!), and if forced, I’ll drag the vacuum around.

I’ll let you know if any of it works.

The time of being alone with my house of machines is about to end.  We’ve enjoyed each other’s silent company for two days, such as it is, and now it’s time to slip across town and retrieve the little man.  And I literally mean slip.  Our snow turned into two days of freezing rain.  It looks nice and glossy outside.

But writing about one machine made me think about another.  With my son on his way over, I couldn’t help but wonder if televisions enjoy playing one show over another, or if they’re just indifferent.  The television’s main job when I’m here alone is to balance a picture on it’s head and help maintain the barebones feng shui of the place.  In layman’s terms, this might sound like:  That big blank wall needs something big and blocky in front of it.  And it’d be nice if it held a picture.

But when the little man arrives, the television’s entire job changes.  One quick click and the house is filled with the sights and sounds of cartoons.

Maybe my television has two jobs.  Maybe with me it just moonlights.  Hanging out with me is like going to work as a night watchman, where it sits and stares at the back of my head like it’s a security monitor, playing a never changing view from a camera aimed at the lower levels of an empty parking garage.  It’s usually a two day shift, sometimes one, seldom three.  And then it’s over.  I imagine it sighs with relief. ahhhhhhh In less then an hour, little hands will seek out the television’s remote, where the favorites button is preprogrammed with nothing but cartoon stations.  As far as televisions go, that has to border on dream job.

It seems the son of Imaginary Keith lacks possessiveness.  Good for the world, but in this case, bad for his mother.  I give to you a recent sample, pulled directly from the page of his second grade report on a large, stuffed bear that he brought to school for sharing (show and tell for the old people).

This is my mom’s bear she had it hand made at a stor.  My grandma has a black won.  But my mom’s is gray.

And then the clincher.

My mom is about four feet tall and about four feet side-to-side also.