Happy February!

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Good morning! I have a day off from paid work today, but two kids are home sick from school and I am the available parent in charge, so it will not be a day (or even morning) off from work after all. January always feels like a rough month. I think it's because the two months worth of holidays at the end of the year (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, and everything that falls in between) are officially finished, the pretty lights get put away, and we return to the drudgery of "real life". This year, my household dealt with natural disasters (although we fared better than most -- no mudslides or loss of property for us, just lots of wet) and a job loss (although again, we're faring better than most), as well as shifts in the household balance related to jobs and people returning to school. Tomorrow, a whole bunch of people in Western Pennsylvania will witness a long-standing ritual where a particular rodent is held up to see if the dreariness will end soon. Will he predict an early spring? Probably not. His emergence from his den, however, reminds us that we're halfway through the hard part and that the dark part WILL end soon.