(SN)O(W)MG

It rained for two daaaaaaays which, I gotta tell you, did not help my mood.

Then! While Minnie was at her gym class and I was grading papers in the lobby, I looked up to see SNOW MUCH SNOW. 

I thought about grabbing Minnie and driving straight to Coop’s school, even though it was only 1:20, and he is in school until 4:10, but I figured I could wait like 35 minutes until the end of class and things would still be ok enough for me to get him.

BIG MISTAKE, guys.

Zero visibility. Huge, fat snowflakes piling up on top of 2 days of puddles and slick roads. I realized there was no way I would get to Coop’s school and back home before Dorothy got home at 2:30, and she would have no way of knowing where we were. So. Minnie and I sloooooowly slooowly slowly drove home, and by the time we got to our neighborhood, my poor sad minivan could not handle the snow and slippery uphill road at all, and I got totally stuck. Luckily, I could veer into a dead end baby street that might someday be a real street but for now is a tiny little short street where some guy usually parks his boat (but thankfully there was no boat).

Minnie and I walked the block or so home and got totally soaked and frozen, but that was the least of my concerns. All I could think about was Cooper and how the heck he was going to get home. I called the high school and excused Harry and Jack from the last hour or so of class, figuring they should avoid parking lot snafus if possible and texted them to come home. Then I called Coop’s school and explained to the front desk that he has never ridden the bus before and would need help finding his route and stop but that my car was stuck in the snow and I couldn't come get him. Then I asked if his high school brother could pick him up, and the front desk woman said he could and that she was worried thinking about him figuring out the bus for the first time in a blizzard. ME TOO, SISTER.  Sooooo, I called Harry and asked him and Jack to go get Coop, which seemed like the best bad option.

Then, I just sort of paced the house and stalked the boys on Life360. Harry got to the middle school no problem, but then they got stuck twice on the way back to our house. I called the police non-emergency number since they were in a line of stuck cards, but before anyone came, Harry saw a private plow on its way to a neighborhood and maneuvered out behind him. He was able to follow the plow to a more traveled road and made it back to our house pretty quickly after that. 

The boys were excited to tell me about how they almost crashed at an intersection when they couldn’t stop (OMG OMG OMG), but that was the only terrifying detail. The Prius has always been top notch in snow— I think because it is so low to the ground. My Toyota minivans were always OK but not great, but the Honda Odyssey? IS TERRIBLE. Just high enough to be super wind blown and slippery. And if there’s ANY snow, the tires get zero traction. I hate it, basically.

Evening activities (tennis, drama, speech team, dance, diving) were all cancelled, so the 6 of us had a super cozy night at home. Ben had to stay late for a work dinner an hour away and made it home around 10, when the roads were actually better than they were between 2:30-4:30. He was also able to get my car and bring it home. Harry and I walked over to try after the boys’ harrowing commute, but we made it worse by getting the back half of the van into the middle of a busy-ish road and then some nice neighbors helped us push it back to where it was before Harry and I tried to rescue it (and we all almost flattened Coop, who was digging out a tire and didn’t know we’d be accelerating).

ALL’S WELL THAT ENDS WELL THOUGH

EVEN THE CITY PLOW GOT STUCK

YAY SNOW! I can say that TODAY when everything is slushy and drivable.

Where my car spent the storm— I took a pic of its little outline on my way home from dropping Minnie off today

 

Snowed in

 Welp. I am old enough to hurt my neck and shoulders shoveling snow and be, like, impacted by the discomfort.

 Also! I started tracking my miles to see if I could maybe go 2,024 for 2024, and… probably not? But! I think in a couple of years, I could match my miles to the year with some slow-burn routine tricks, so this year I will track, and maybe by 2027, I will be jogging across the 2,027 finish line. 

( i do not mean it will take me 3 years to go 2,000 miles. I mean it will take me 3 years to figure out how to fit 2,000+ yearly miles into my life. This year, I think I will be closer to 1800).

I think we can leave the house today, which is great because I need lotion for my face, a birthday gift for my MIL, a new broom, and some butter. All very specific and necessary.

Face lotion! I have been using THIS (I got a 1/2 ounce trial size in my giant makeup Christmas box), and I love it, but the price point is steep, which makes me think maybe I should explore other lotions at that price point because if I am going that far in, maybe I need to go all in, you know? But! This give-a-mouse-a-cookie thinking leads me to analysis paralysis, so I am going to Von Maur and coming home with at least the Absolue stuff. Unless Macy’s has a Lancôme gift or something. Then I wil go to there and not be distracted by my million other options, SEE? THERE I GO. (Maybe Blue Mercury is the place to start, actually?)

LONG STORY SHORTISH, I need to leave the house today.

Ben and his team of mini Bens are all outside shoveling right now, and a plow went down our street thank goodness, so I have hope!

Minnie didn’t like the blowing snow AT ALL and found it hard to walk through piles that went up to her hips, so she mostly had a craft day:

With many costume changes

Ben’s office decided to use their MLK holiday Friday since we had a blizzard, so the kids and I are home together on Monday when Cooper returns to FULL ACTIVITY SCHEDULE and dance starts up again. I suspect everyone will be home with me again on Tuesday because it is likely going to be too cold for kids to stand at the bus stop, meaning no school. And then Wednesday and Thursday, I have meetings on campus, so at least I will be leaving the house. I guess it could be too cold on Wednesday, too, but I have 2 built-in babysitters, so I’m not worried about it. It takes a village, even if you have to give birth to that village all by yourself, you know?

I would have taken pictures of the boys, but they were Downstairs People who wore Comfys and played video games all day long. They came upstairs when I was going to bed, hunting up a 4th for a euchre game. Hashtag bro life.

I was shocked the kids had Thursday school since the streets were so terrible it took me 35 minutes to take Coop out for our weekly coffee, and he ended up being SUPER LATE.

I went to Aldi after drop off, which was a fun treat since I don’t usually remember to go to there

Then I grabbed Minnie from school to find that she made me a book mark **heart eyes**

AND WE HAVE BEEN AT HOME EVER SINCE.

Cozy, yes, but I am ready to put on people clothes and do people things again.

Hope you are warm and well-snacked, friends.

Snow Day: An Adventure

 To be fair, the adventure started at 5pm the day before the snow day when two things happened at about the same second: 1. School sent an email cancelling Tuesday classes on the basis of weather forecast models alone. 2. Ben had to step out of his car where he was idling on campus for pick up Cooper at diving practice so he could THROW UP. In the street. (When he felt better yesterday afternoon, he brought the scarf he was wearing into the laundry room to wash, carrying it in a plastic bag because he used it to wipe his face. HE WAS SO SICK).

Soooooo. 

We planned on him being at work during our snow day with an overnight bag packed in case he couldn’t make it home and had to stay in a hotel. Instead, he was sequestered in our room doing unspeakable things to the bathroom.

**Yikes face**

I slept on the couch, and Minnie bellowed IT’S WAKED UP TIME at 6:24, the second her ok-to-wake clock turns green. She joined me, and we watch TV and the snow fall on her swing set in the back yard.

I went to the co-op for coffee last week and left with $100-worth of odds and end that fit in one single grocery bag— something the cashier marveled at for its efficiency but I was like dud e that’s not cute at all; inflation is the worst—and one of those things was buttermilk in a huge bottle that’s in date for WEEKS. All this is to say, we started our day with brown sugar buttermilk pancakes, customized to order:

Except for Harry, who just wanted cookie dough in Jack’s mini waffle maker.

Everyone cheerfully trashed the kitchen like it was NBD

Every counter was demolished, plus some of them ate at the table **eye roll** I was kind of grumbly, but they took Minnie downstairs to play, and I cleaned it up and made my own pancakes **chef’s kiss**

Minnie spent a little time drawing. You can see she always makes her tomato people look worried. Also— the scribbles are the letter “M,” and you can see a coupe of randomly placed attempts at “i”s as well.

We did that whole stereotypical thing where you spend forever getting ready to go sledding and then stay out for mere minutes. I think we went too early— we had really pointy snow and high winds early in the day, but the afternoon was still with the biggest snowflakes you can imagine. I tried to rally the troops to make a snowman, but everyone was over it by then.

We had from-scratch pizza for lunch— a meal and an activity! (I remembered to start the bread machine for dough before we left the house).

The afternoon was lovely and lazy. Harry and some friends went sledding (and a friend went into a newly frozen retention pond on purpose (??) so they all came home to get dry clothes and hang out in Harry’s room while chaos raged.) Dorothy talked to a dance friend on FaceTime for quite awhile. Jack and Minnie watched a bunch of Star Wars (Minnie loves all of the movies) with plenty of light saber fight breaks, and Cooper played Fortnite with hockey friends. Harry was mad briefly because we wouldn’t let him drive to pick up a friend who lives in an adjacent neighborhood, but we pointed out that his other neighborhood friends could not drive either, and neither could the kid he wanted to pick up. Eventually, his friend just walked over. I love that Harry had the confidence to think he could drive in a storm and that we would let him. Then he asked me to help him with the zipper on his jacket. LOL for days. That’s a 17 year-old in a nutshell.

Ben felt well enough to clean the bathroom, air out the bedroom, take a shower, and sit on the couch with Minnie while she played, so I went out to shovel. Jack did the first round, and Cooper and Harry did another, but it had been quite some time in between, so I spent 2 hours listening to a book and clearing the driveway and sidewalk. It was so nice to be outside, be active, and be alone. Ben joined the boys for round 3 with the snowblower after the snow finally stopped at 8pm, and he and Harry have big plans to do an early sweep before Ben leaves for work today. (Harry also went out the night before the storm while Ben was occupied being sick to get gas for the snowblower— he’s such a helper).

I LOVE SNOW DAYS so much.

We’re back to the grind today, and I hate driving on snow. Minnie’s class has been studying hibernation as part of the “cozy home” unit, and I joked with her teacher that we were going to operationalize those lessons. She was like see you in the spring, and I wish I could really just hunker down until it’s warm and green again.

Also! Cozy home! The sensory table has laundry stuff, and there’s a toddler bed with lots of babies in it, and the loft has a hot cocoa bar. It’s adorable and also low-key subversive. Even a couple kids ago, the preschool units were much more stereotypically boy-centered. BUT COZY IS FOR EVERYONE, and all kids should learn how to cultivate a cozy home. Laundry is a  sensory delight, after all. Love it so much. (We actually put several preschool units into practice— pizza, cozy home, teddy bear picnic, etc— yesterday. Minnie has been set up to ace sow days).