>Diary of a Snowed-In Housewife
>Friday, January 29th, 2010
7:30am: Ordinarily, I’d be up, dressed, and getting Punky ready for school by 7am. But today, I sit at the kitchen table in my pajamas, feeling blissful as fat snowflakes fall outside. Between seven and nine inches of snow are predicted to blanket Nashville over the next 24 hours and we’ve already stocked up on milk, bread, eggs, firewood and wine. It’s going to be a great weekend!
1:30pm: The snow continues to fall. Hubs is at work and the kids mercifully have no interest in going outside. Instead, we find other ways to stay entertained.
4:00pm: The children are getting a little stir-crazy but it’s snowing too hard to play outside. Other mothers might feel a little frazzled right now, but not me! I don’t get enough time with my children! Chocolate milk explosion in the den? No problem! Dried boogers smeared on the walls? I can totally handle it! Hooray for snow days! I’ll keep repeating that to myself and it will be true! Hooray for snow days! Hooray! Hoo. Ray….
8:00pm: Hubs finally arrives home from work and helps me get the kids to bed early. Thank. God.
Saturday, January 30th, 2010
9:00am: I spend the morning cleaning up the mess from the day before and baking banana bread. Hubs gets home from a morning shift at work and we begin the process of getting the kids dressed to go outside, which takes about three hours. Tights. Long johns. Socks. Turtlenecks. Fleeces. Jackets. Snow pants. Gloves. Mittens. Hats. Scarves. Boots. Now it’s my turn to put on snow gear. The children stand whimpering as I quickly put on my coat and scarf. “We’re hot!” they complain. “We’re itchy and hot!”
Finally, we all get in the car and head over to a friend’s house in the next neighborhood. They have a hill in their backyard that’s perfect for the ten and under crowd. They also have a kitchen with wine and beer that’s perfect for Hubs and me.
Hooray for snow days! We have a blast.
Bruiser doesn’t need to be asked twice to climb aboard.
At first, Punky doesn’t think she wants to sled. She’s scared. She needs to “get used to it.” But finally, after much prodding, she agrees to ride with Daddy.
One ride and she’s hooked.
Absolutely, completely, irrevocably hooked. She will spend the next two days sledding as often and as fast as she possibly can.
Hooray for snow days!
Sunday, January 31st, 2010
10:00am: It is 14 degrees and most of the secondary roads are still covered in ice and snow. We decide to skip the drive across town to church- Luckily, they are streaming the services live on the web. We watch the sermon at the kitchen table in our pajamas. Hooray for snow days!
Afterward, we spend two hours putting on our snow gear and head over to the Natchez Trace Parkway, where we’ve discovered The Perfect Hill. We spend the next two hours sledding down it while I curse myself for forgetting my camera. It is the perfect day- so warm and sunny, we all strip down to our fleeces, yet still cold enough to keep the snow from melting.
We come back home and Hubs and Punky build a snowman outside while I stay inside with a sleepy Bruiser. By 5:00, everyone’s back indoors and exhausted. It’s been a great weekend, but I’m secretly looking forward to school starting back up tomorrow, as well as a chance to meet up with some of my girlfriends in the morning. I need to get out of the house and back on schedule.
But then…
“I’d bet our life savings that school’s canceled tomorrow,” Hubs says.
I stick my tongue out at him. “Yeah, right,” I say. But then, as soon as he’s not looking, I look up our district’s website online.
SCHOOL CANCELED MONDAY DUE TO INCLEMENT WEATHER.
My heart leaps to my throat. How much of a snow vacation can one mother take?
Monday, February 1st, 2010
Bruiser wakes me at the crack of dawn. I stare dully at the hateful white snow outside my window, the snow that just. won’t. melt. Soon, Punky’s up and both children are running wildly around the house, screaming and laughing their heads off. Hubs is at work, along with our four-wheel-drive, so leaving the house is out of the question. I am a prisoner in my own home and there isn’t enough Dr. Phil in the world to make me feel better.
Snow days. Paaaaaaah. Who needs ’em?
