Over at Aleteia Today!

Having ten days with no school has its upside; it can be a source of great inspiration.

The 9 Stages of Snow Dazed Snow Days (not in anyway not inspired by real life).

Breakfast...Lunch....Dinner

Today is a snow day.  I don't mind snow days, they break up an otherwise bleak season of the year when there are few holidays.  What I do mind, is the 24-7 diner that opens up in my kitchen every time the good folks of Montgomery County declare there is no school on account of weather.  I'd like to declare a snow day from the snow day consequences.  

This morning for example, my 9 year old arrived promptly at 7:30, her normal get up time.  Graciously, she ensured that all those younger than her were also up.  They wanted cereal.  No problem. Four bowls, four spoons, debates over flakes with sugar or squares with sugar or little o's and x's with sugar, milk, milk, milk, milk and we're good for twenty minutes.  

My almost 11 year old gets up, and he's a planner so he doesn't just want to know what's for breakfast, but also what's for lunch and dinner and snack for the day.  A brief survey of the kitchen and he's satisfied and commences to fix a bagel for himself while I make my husband's lunch as he didn't get a snow day, just a delay.  

The teen goes to the coffee machine. It's a dangerous point in the morning as her activity can trigger an avalanche of people meowling for hot chocolate. (Once they learned the Keurig makes them in a minute, they don't see why I should ever object).  I object because once they've made the hot cocoa, they want it to cool so they can drink it, which usually means they either sit staring at it and scalding their tongues or they leave the table and an hour later, room temperature chocolate remains waiting their return.  

Fortunately, the younger set is distracted by the toys in the basement so the Swiss Miss stock is safe for now.   I've made it through seven of the ten in the household by ten, but I haven't eaten yet.   The twelve year old does go for the hot cocoa but she knows how to be stealthy about it.  She also makes herself peanut butter and toast.  The younger ones come through, convinced second breakfast should be served.  They'd like toast too.  The six year old breaks out the toaster strudel from the freezer, but I declared the kitchen closed to seconds before everyone gets firsts.  

The fifteen year old son also rises.  He is a conundrum on food, but he's also a surly morning person.  Seeing him enter the kitchen, the younger ones decide Mom's right, it isn't second breakfast time, it's go back downstairs to play to stay out of his way time.  Normally, he feasts on a protein shake and oatmeal with bananas.  But that's on a school day.  Today is a snow day.   He breaks out the mushrooms, onions, tomatoes, spinach, cheese and peppers.  He wants an omelette.  I love that he loves these things.  I rue that he's watched enough food network in his lifetime, he thinks sous chefs are part of ordinary living. Guess who is the sous chef?   I've taught him to dice up the veggies, but he likes when I do it.  I think I'm being played but I also admit, I don't mind if it gets me a pleasant conversation with my 15 year old son.  

Everyone's eaten.  It's 11 o'clock.  Huzzah!  There is a pile of dishes in the sink and my 16 year old returns to fix herself lunch.   Knowing the rest will come within the hour making the same demand, I feel tired at the reality of the rest of the day and how it will play out, and cut myself a slice of pie. Maybe I should adopt the Montgomery County school policy and declare the kitchen to have a two hour delay.      

Hey Mom....what do you do when I'm at school?

We've spent the past five days together owing to snow and the weekend and while I've loved every moment including when I got schooled in Mario Go Cart this morning, the weather indicates they'll be back in school tomorrow.  But the kids wondered, what do I do while they're learning reading, writing and arithmetic?  What do I do with those 6 and 3/4 hours they're away five days a week?  

10) See any crime in our neighborhood?  No?  That's because I'm secretly Batgirl.  Except I patrol during daylight hours.  

9) I practice Mario Go-Cart, but I don't want you to know I am a master gamer so I just pretend to be incompetent and put the remote in the steering wheel backwards and come in 12th every time by trying to drive the track in reverse.   

8) I write the next blockbuster best seller, and then fantasize about what I will do when I finish writing the next blockbuster best seller.  I then conduct interviews with the famous me and give my replies until I wake up and realize, I haven't updated the blog in over a week.

7)  I clean the house from top to bottom with the radio on the station I want on every floor and then I chug a diet coke before grabbing my coat and racing down the driveway to meet the bus.

6) I binge watch Sherlock, Dr. Who and Top Gear when they nap, and Team Umizoomie and Bubble Guppies when they don't. 

5) Think about exercising, then make a list of all the things I need to do that will get in the way of actually doing it.  

4) Play the piano and wonder if I'll ever get past page 4 of the Moonlight Sonata.

3) Engage in a made up cooking show with Paul and Anna when it's lunch time, complete with a British, Italian, French or Southern accent depending upon what I'm serving.

2) Pedicures, bonbons, bubble baths, naps. 

1) Wish it had snowed another few inches so we could have one more day.

Hahhahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Snow Day!

This Tuesday of drudgery has been interrupted by the weather.  For those of you not in the line of 4 to 8 inches of white stuff, have fun working.  I shall gloat with my hot chocolate and warm blanket, as I sleep in tomorrow and read books until someone tells me they need to eat. 

There aren't many perks to having this thing called winter. It takes 15 extra minutes to get out the door, roads are bad, my hands get cracks from the ice and then there's the shoveling.  But, we do get snow days! 

I'm done gloating.  --I'll blog more tomorrow. 

Quick Takes Friday

1.

Six More Weeks of Winter

I'd be fine with the ground hog's prediction if I could sleep for 42 more days.  If I were the critter, I'm not sure why I'd ever predict anything else. As it so happens, Phil did see his shadow and we are under a BIG SNOW alert.  We are expecting 2-3 feet of the stuff.  It will start around 10 a.m. today and go until 10 p.m. tomorrow.  Then there will be more snow Monday and another storm Friday.  Personally, I'm praying for just a smidge of global warming and in the meatime, I'm off to Home Depot in search of a snow blower and more shovels.

2.

Can I take My Toys and Go Home?

I am very tired of political parties declaring that the other guys are the worst thing since original sin. There is plenty of blame to go around for Republicans, Democrats and Independents.  The deficit is insane. It's scary.  I don't see anyone actually engaged in fiscal restraint or even slightly less exhuberance towards spending.

3.

Hold Please, I'm Mad Libbing

I'm giving up multi-tasking.  I was on the phone and trying to switch the laundry and I couldn't figure out how to spell the name of the town I live in giving those A as in apple, T as in Tom type aids.  Got stuck on R, used "Not" for N and had an unnatural pause before adding the final "G."

4.

Placebo Parenting

With the youngers, citing an outside authority often allows me to enforce order when my own status is insufficient.  The age old "Wait until Dad gets home" works, but for swifter results, I talk about how maybe this situation  (whatever it is) might be the inspiration for a blog.

5.

Maybe It was Bad Then Too

Why does the fact that my middle daughter found and fell in love with 8o's rock (which as a teen I adored), disturb me?

6.

You Could Read a Lot More if You Weren't So Picky

After a steady diet of children's books, my brain feels fried and flat.  My daughter only reads fantasy and I've given her all the good ones I can think of, and am trying to broaden her literary tastes. It's a bit of a problem because I too get into funks where I'm just not excited by the literature around our house. Then of course, there are the crazy ambitious moments when I hoarde titles like a squirrel preparing for winter. 

They stack up and I weed through them until I find the really one I want to read and the rest gather dust until the next manic literary craze hits.  Having finished a book last week, I'm still in the reading zone and thus I'm really pining for a good book.  After rejecting my latest offerings, my daughter suggested I write her one.  Maybe I need to write the book I want to read too.    

7.

But There Is No Chocolate

My husband went shopping for the big snow. He bought chips and ice cream and milk and paper products, diapers and bread and beef, in other words, Man Food!  Now with the Super Bowl in two days, man food is required stuff, but really!  We're going to be snowed in for a few days.  How am I supposed to survive?

P.S.

Husband just called, he's taken care of his omission.  I will now go and purchase a snow blower to make this bearable.  Sorry it took so long to put this up but there were more than the average number of interruptions to writing this morning. This was fun, but getting to seven was hard work!

 

Weather or Not

Weather or Not
Remember the good old days, when everyone talked about the weather but no one tried to do anything about it? The sun shone. The clouds gathered. Sometimes it rained. Sometimes it didn’t. People went about their errands without feeling a need to check the NOAA website or have breathless announcements about the five day forecast every fifteen minutes on the 8’s.

MoCoLoco (Montgomery County, Maryland to all non locals), has been insane about what comes from the sky ever since I moved here. I remember the first year, we had a five day blizzard resulting in schools being closed down for over a week. The rest of that winter, the mere prediction of a flake falling was sufficient to close the county.

I thought they were nuts.

Even a Texan could drive in less than an inch of snow. Buses and hills were the given explanation, but that also didn’t make sense, as the instant a cry went out predicting snow, there was a massive stampede to the grocery store to collect bread, milk and toilet paper. The shelves would look ransacked as people lined up with carts bulging with multiple gallons of moo juice, enough bread to feed the 5000 and 20 roll 2 ply Scott packs. I considered asking why these were the only items considered vital in a blizzard, but deemed it ultimately unwise.

Two years later, in the spring, school was cancelled on account of heat. Mind you, the schools had air conditioning and running water and thus were able to provide sufficient shelter from the extreme weather conditions. The temperature was a sweltering 96 degrees but still, there was no further explanation of the county wide day off. All I could think was the Superintendent got up, heard the fishing was good and thought, “Sick day.”

So stricken are Marylanders by the announcing of inclement weather, that one local wags on the radio has taken to shouting, “ABANDON YOUR CARS NOW!” when the forecast includes a chance of snow.

With the advent of the 24/7 news cycle on the tv/radio and internet, every change in temperature that is outside the standard deviation, be it for wind, moisture, heat or cold, cloud cover or time of day is charted and measured and compared to the norm. If it’s a slow day, there are even interviews of local climatologists when things are too hot or cold, and tips on how to endure the heat or the ice. People stand out in the snow to show us that it is in fact snowing. People stand out in hurricanes to show us it is wet and windy.

Then, to make sure we’re extra prepared, they also remind us to go out and stock up on essentials like milk, bread and toilet paper.

I bring all this up because this week, we had two snow days. They were unplanned and unanticipated. The whole neighborhood was covered in snow and ice, making driving extremely dangerous. I called my husband at work. “I can’t get out to the store.”

“What do you need?”

“Milk...bread…and…”

Imponderables

It's a snow day so I don't have the quiet to think, that's why lists are a good cheat. Enjoy.

10) Why does my six year old still think the top of the stairs is a good place to practice an arabesque?

9) How come my three year old raids the food pantry for poppy seed rolls and stores them under her bed? I mean, if it had been cookies I would have understood. She's done ice cream and apple juice before. I've taken to checking underneath her bed for grocery monsters.

8) Why can my adolescent daughter be the high scorer on both her basketball teams and not put clothing in the laundry basket?

7) What made my four oldest think stacking soup bowls face up in the dishwashing machine was a good idea?

6) Why is it that the child who has the most shoes, can’t find any two that match when I’m in a hurry?

5) How do all my kids know how much they are owed in allowance when some of them don’t know which day it is?

4) Exactly how messy does a room have to become before a child will recognize that such a state of being is unhealthy?

3) Why is it all the times she loved baked potatoes are negated by the one time she threw up?

2) Why can a boy wear the same shirt for three days and fuss if he finds a speck on a bowl at breakfast?

1) Why do multiple children act shocked when they've been pegging their brother with snow repeatedly, that he retaliates?

and the final question, When is Spring Break?