Monday was looking less and less like it was going to be either a back to work or a back to school day. Kyle walked in the backdoor from his fifth rou...d of snowplowing for the day, and found his wife sitting at the kitchen table filling her coffee cup with crocodile tears. Removing his snowmobile suit, he asked, ‘What’s the matter?’ ‘I can’t drive in this stuff.’ Throwing her arms up in total frustration, ‘How am I suppose to get to work tomorrow?’ Disgruntledly, he snapped, ‘I’ll get you. I was still laughing when Sarah, Becky, and Sarah’s mother Nancy came out of the house. I rolled down the window to talk to her.“You seem to be in a good mood,” she said.“Oh, I was just thinking about a conversation at work today. How are you, Nan?”“I’m good Jace. Lloyd should be home next weekend if y’all wanna come over for a barbeque.”Nancy’s husband Lloyd was a truck driver and spent three weeks a month on the road. Lloyd had played football for our high school’s rival. Nancy and I had. The meetings were well attended and the imperial theme played. They all bowed and stayed that way till Roderick told them to arise. Across the planet, I was told, most of the other Tandra watched if not able to attend personally. He talked very well about the way the war was being fought and what I had to do with it. From the crowd I got a feeling of relief. He turned to me and touched on the fact that he was not getting enough assistance from the group in front of us.I spoke for the first time. On Saturday, Keri had managed to break Kate free and had dragged her off to Sacramento and showed her the secret of dressing well on a budget. Kate was introduced to an exclusive consignment shop that was a well-kept secret frequented by female state legislators and the wives of legislators. She had gone a little crazy with new items (to her) for her wardrobe, aided and abetted by Keri and the owner, a heavily botoxed flame-haired woman who could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy..