It’s been a really long week at the office, and I think I’ve been ready for the weekend since Tuesday. Not that I have anything special planned … it’s just the usual laundry, dishes and decluttering … but I am looking forward to getting reacquainted with my comfy couch.

Last week’s travels, the late nights and early mornings, have plagued me all this week. While I haven’t nodded off in front of my work computer, the one evening I did get to spend at home this week was cut short by a beckoning feather pillow and Grandma’s handmade quilt. I was in bed by 8:20, and slept until about 8:30 the next morning … certainly a rarity for me.

With that dreaded "S" word in the forecast through the weekend, I told my mom this morning that I was going to make a batch of beef stew in the Crock-Pot and settle in for a weekend of solitude and sleep. I’ll probably dig out my DVD of "Grumpy Old Men," and "Grumpier Old Men," for a little Jack Lemmon/Walter Matthau movie marathon (these are my two must-watch movies every winter) and just avoid looking out the window as the snow piles up.

Like pretty much everyone else I know who lives in the region, I am sick and tired of the snow. I feel like a caged rabbit … I just want to run and play outside (all right, I want to walk around the lake and see the kids playing in the park … an activity that doesn’t cost me anything!) I want the sun to shine and the temps to be right in that 68- to 75-degree neighborhood … not too warm, not too humid, but just right!

I should be grateful that I spent a week in the south last week and missed all the bad weather in southwest Minnesota, but all it really did was make me question why I live here, make me wish I lived somewhere else or, at the very least, that I had a job that would allow me to be a snowbird.

I’ll get off my whiner’s box now … finish writing my story for Saturday’s paper and head home a little early. I hear that couch a’beckoning.