Snow Day? They should call it Heightened Productivity Day!

I'm not a homebody. I like being out in the world. Spending too much time at home tends to make me claustrophobic. It doesn't help that I share a small apartment with four very large characters. They are large and they are loud and they are messy. So, at the end of a day spent at home, I have:

A huge freaking mess
A headache from yelling at the kids to clean up the mess (and still, it remains a pretty sizable mess)
A headache from the general cacophony of kids at play and kids in fights and kids being kids.
A guilt complex from how much screen time they'd had
Did I mention the headache?

To stave this off, when we are stuck at home, I go into Super Intense Prpductive Mode.

So when my kids hear "snow day!" they think, "Yay!! No school! We can take it EASY!"

And I think, "Time to get shit done." If you dramatically re-enacted this scene for television, this would be the musical montage where you'd see close ups of me rolling up my sleeves, tying a doo rag over my hair and punching my fist into my open palm  in the universal, "It's on!" gesture.

I get VERY productive during snow days. Very. And I cannot help but involve the children in my intense industry because the largest project is always the "Rehabilitate the Children" project. Which is totally great from a multi tasking point of view. If this continues, my kids may very well be the only ones in the U S of A to hate snow days.

The real secret to my success for last week's snow day was that we dragged Nonny over to stay at our apartment for the blizzard. It was supposed to be this historic storm, and we didn't want her on her own. Also, we needed her to mop the floors and then wash the mop and generally help me take my Mommy Dearest act to new levels.

We did laundry.

We made chili.

We cleaned out our closets.

We changed the bedclothes.

We practiced math word problems.

We matched the mountain of unmatched socks (well, 20% of them, the rest have no match. But we hold out hope for them! Single socks will not be tossed away in our house! On a related note, we may be borderline hoarders. Not sure.)

We made piade, which are Italian tortillas.

Then the kids were poised for revolt so we let them play Just Dance for a while and then we made homemade Italian crema to forestall mutiny.

We super glued every item in the large pile of toys and accessories and hardware and home decor that has required super gluing.

We paid bills.

We cleaned out the high cupboard that only David can reach without a ladder.

Primo did most of his big school project on the Civil War and Seconda wrote an essay for a summer program she's applying to.

We scrubbed the bathtub and threw out the 8 year-old bath toys which probably carry dysentery.

It was so much FUN!

Then, when even Nonny could take no more productivity, we watched Pee Wee's Big Adventure and everyone, even the doubters among us, laughed their tired asses off.

And when the kids found out there was school the next day, I think they were more than a little relieved.

October Snow

This is OCTOBER?

On Friday, Primo told me, and his sister, that it was going to snow tomorrow and my reaction was to get really annoyed that he'd gotten both their hopes up about something that would clearly never happen.

"I guess its possible but HIGHLY UNLIKELY," I assured the kids, "So don't get your hopes up. At all."

I have PTSD from the night last year when everyone said there'd be a blizzard and the next day would be a snow day and so my kids were so excited they stayed up til MIDNIGHT and -- guess what? -- it was a freaking dusting of snow and NO snow day. I can still hear the shrieks of disappointed anguish when I broke the news to them that there would, in fact, be school. The moral to this story is, don't let your children ever get TOO excited about anything, especially something as capricious as the weather.

But, lo and behold! Primo was right, big time. End of October blizzard, we had. The snow delivered. And the kids were ECSTATIC Plus, what's even better, it didn't interfere with trick or treating tonight.

Happy Halloween everyone!.

I Hate Sledding: or thanks to global warming, now I’m the bad guy?

Here’s the deal: sledding, like ice skating, or apple picking or trick or treating, is something I do exactly once a year. It is a terrifically fun activity but only if every instance of it is separated by roughly 11 months. If I have to go sledding more frequently than that, I get cranky. I thought EVERYONE felt the same way about this. But, no, now it appears that people genuinely enjoy sledding which leads me to believe that perhaps something is terribly wrong with me.

Its all global warming’s fault. Snow should be something which falls all at once in a big blizzard, about twice a year. But thanks to the world heating up, I guess we’re just going to have to get used to it snowing all the freaking time now. If you want to hear the myriad reasons this excessive snowfall annoys me, they are plentiful and persuasive. But I’ve just discovered another reason I hate the increase in snowfall which is that people are constantly inviting me to go sledding.

When I was picking Sec up from school we asked her friend if she wanted to play and the friend’s babysitter said, “Oh, we’re going sledding, Do you want to come?”

I all but yelled, “But we did that ALREADY!”

It is exactly like when I tell Sec to go to the bathroom before bed and she says “But I just did peepee YESTERDAY!”

Except that, unlike sledding, one HAS to urinate on a regular basis.

Look, don’t get me wrong. I LOVE being invited to do stuff (and when I’m not , I bitch about that) but I just end up feeling like a royal Scrooge, a real Grinch whenever I demur and that doesn’t jive with the way I like to see myself, lover of adventure and brimming with joie de vivre.

The main reason I’m so sledding-averse is that I’m really lazy, and getting to Prospect Park involves a thirty minute tromp through the snow, straight uphill. Not only am I lazy, but my children are as well, and after a block of jubilant shrieking and running, they instantly become exhausted and collapse in the snow. In order to get them to the park, I then have to drag them, stick them on my back or pray fervently to God. Getting there, and getting back, is just no fun at all.

So the next time someone invites me to sled, I’m going to reply, “No thanks. But if you want to join US, we’ll be wandering around outside our building, making ineffectual snowballs, eating handfuls of the build-up, and rolling around on the snow-covered ground like a bunch of drunkards. No hill required.”

Its official -- Snow Day.

Does the NYC Dept of Ed care nothing for my deadlines and general state of happiness?

My survival plan:

Put the Netflix DVD of An American Tail on for the kids, maybe on repeat play, so I can work.
Let Primo play Angry Birds to his heart's content.
Let Sec soak in the tub as long as she wants.
Force the children to listen to Farmer Boy, the next installment in the Little House on the Praire series.
If things get bad, I'll bake some chocolate chip cookies.
If things get good, we'll make a pinata for Sec's upcoming birthday.

Oh, and yeah, we'll make a snowman.

Snow, it is OVER between us

It has officially happened. The love affair between snow and I is over, for this year at least. And I do mean completely over: not waning, or ebbing, but freaking kaput. Its slightly ahead of schedule – usually I can last til end of January -- but with global warming making it snow all the freaking time starting in December, it was inevitable.

Yesterday’s ice-and-slush-apooloza was the final straw. I didn’t know you could have ice and slush simultaneously, but apparently, it’s possible and it is the worst of all worlds, because with no warning, you go from sliding around precariously to sinking ankle-deep into freezing puddles of melted snow mixed with dog piss. Also, you can’t push a Maclaren stroller through that shit. So, yesterday morning, after taking three steps outside into the gall-inducing street conditions, I was forced to about-face with my stroller, bring it right back home and take Sec on foot to nursery school.

I am aware that this doesn’t sound so awful. Many almost-four year-olds are capable of walking 15 minutes to school, If you ask my father, he did it barefoot and with joyful abandon. My daughter, however, is a Non-Walker. This means that although she CAN walk, she WILL not. Whether it is sheer laziness (probable) or the deep-seated delusion that she is a princess who should be carted around in a gilded carriage, she can’t go for more than half a block without collapsing in a pile, whining like an injured animal. At her age, Primo walked everywhere, mainly because he was so insanely tall, he wouldn’t fit in the double stroller anymore. And also, we forced him. With Sec, we are old and decrepit and lacking stamina. We are no match for her supernatural tenacity. It is just so much easier to push her ever-growing form up the hill than to beg, plead, threaten and cajole her to walk. It also takes approximately one tenth of the time.

But yesterday, there was no choice. She had to walk, holding her umbrella, and it took us a full 30 minutes to get to school, not to mention I sustained what is probably irreversible damage to my cardiac health.

By the time we got to school, her boots were soaked, her socks underneath were soaked, her pants under her snow pants were soaked and I was dripping, not just with rain, but rancor. There has GOT to be an easier way, I thought. This weather is not just inconvenient; it is an affront to reason. It is an OUTRAGE. That is when I fell out of love with snow. Snow can come back, but I’m not going to receive it with open arms, I’ll you that. I’m not going to cross my fingers for a snow day. And over Feb break, I may just go to Florida.

Scrooging on Snow Days

By Tuesday afternoon, both my son and daughter's schools had decided they'd be closed Wednesday. This struck me as a little hasty, a little drastic. It was highly inconvenient timing as I

A. was at the absolute height of my sickness, an upper respiratory something or other that has laid me low, oh low this week
B. have a deadline today, the fulfillment of which seemed unlikely if everything went according to plan, much less if I was violently ill and if I had no child care.

In other words, I was Scrooging on Snow Day.

To be clear, I am not the sort of person who uses an umbrella in the snow. I am not heartless. I like snow . . . once or twice a year. I take the kids out and build snowmen and go sledding and all the other perky activities required of me, and I do it with a smile. But when its the 4th or 5th big snowfall of the season, and I've had a pounding sinus headache for three days and can't hear out of one ear, AND I have a deadline, I do not embrace the snow. I curse the snow.

Tuesday night, after I read Primo his bedtime story (just finished Carroll's Alice in Wonderland and are on to Dahl's The BFG), he got up to go to bed. And the sweet darling that he is, he looked back at me,lying in bed in my pink fleece bathrobe and crooked eyeglasses, with a pile of snotrags beside me, and I guess he felt the need to encourage me, so he said:

"I think tomorrow will be a better day for you, Mommy. Its a snow day so you won't have to take us to school which will make it easier for you."

Because the really tough thing is taking the kids to school, not being stuck at home with them all day and night when I'm supposed to be working.

Bless his little heart. I did feel guilty after that, and so yesterday we did all of our favorite snow day activities

1. Watched Alice in Wonderland
2. Made Cinnamon Rolls with copius icing
3. Read chapters and chapters of Roald Dahl
4. Took out every single toy, book and game and left the mess there like some team of servingwomen would take care of it

David even took them outside to eat the freshfallen snow.

It was an easier day after all.

Winter Wonderland

Spent the weekend at my parents' place in New Jersey. And it snowed! How picturesque.



Primo and my father made a snowman, or, to be more exact, a snow-demon who had fallen down and sustained a serious blow to the head. Esoteric son and father I've got.

Then we listened to Dean Martin and Elvis Presley sing Christmas carols and trimmed my parents' tree. Or, I should say, Primo did it. He decked the halls like it was closing time.

And when we were done, it looked pretty lovely:


And Primo said, "I have a feeling it is going to be the best Christmas ever."