I vote no more snow days

Let's see....rough weekend with children, followed by one day of work, followed by two snow days trapped with children, followed by two work days, followed by two weekend days with children....

You get the picture. I hate to be all child hating and whatnot, but my kids are OUT OF CONTROL with winter boredom right now, and having the fracking malls close for inclement weather doesn't help matters. No Chik-fil-A. No playzone stocked with new germs. No Nordstrom's for mommy.

We never did get the snowmageddon we were predicted to get. We did get an inch or so of freezing rain and ice followed by five or six inches of sleet. You know how I know it was sleet, even though it's white and you can sled on it? Because my irritating know-it-all oncologist neighbor's five-year-old son made SURE to tell my sons every single time they yelled SNOW IS FUN that it WASN'T SNOW, it was SLEET. There was a point when I, the adult, actually said "R, who cares? Snow, sleet, it's still fun to sled on!"

Yes, I'm not proud of that moment. Good thing he wasn't listening to me at all but was busy thinking about how brilliant he is. Brilliant, and yet oddly unfamiliar with such regular childhood things like The Outside.

Anyway, the day flew by, my kids rampaged the house, I kicked them out a few times to sled, I scraped ice and shoveled sleet (remarkably heavy, by the by), and I fielded a late afternoon phone call telling me that surprise! my boss is no longer with the company, which is corporate lingo for she is no longer with the company and it wasn't her choice. Aaaannnnnd scene.

You know what? A local career in real estate is looking mighty attractive right about now. No travel. No corporate dramas. No oversized egos. No income.

Hmmmm, this is going to be a tough one. Good thing I have one more snow day to ruminate on it all. Somebody call me late tomorrow afternoon, would you please? Just a courtesy check to be sure the inmates haven't overtaken the asylum. Thanks.

- H

Waiting for SNOWMAGGEDON

There's nothing like a bunch of amped up St. Louis weather reporters to get an entire region super nervous about some impending weather. Yes, we've had a crazy cold winter so far. Yes, we're probably going to have some snow this week.

But the thing that totally freaks me out is the excitement in the voices of the weather reporters. They're all totally psyched that we might get two inches of ice, followed by up to eighteen inches of snow. They like to pull out their historical video footage of way way back in nineteen-aught-eighty-two when our fair city got fourteen inches of snow in a two day period. HOLY COW. Fourteen inches?! How do you manage with that much snow?

Oh, that's right. All the other cities that aren't total wussies (which is NOT the word I wanted to use but my better judgment prevailed) manage just fine every other week in the winter when they regularly get fourteen inches of snow. Small, fairly nondescript cities such as Chicago. And Boston.

So, I sit here at my desk, working through work stuff and glancing out the window every now and then. Waiting. Waiting for the STORM TO END ALL STORMS to start. So far I see a little bit of rain and some of it has frozen. Pfft.

The worst part about it all is that no matter how much snow we'll get, the schools will be closed until Friday. That much I can guarantee you. I vaguely remember me saying something last night to the effect of sweet mother of God, please let Monday morning come quickly when these two Devil-children will be off on their merry way to play with friends and leave mommy in peace and quiet to interact with adults and her laptop, in silence. Or something like that. It was a rough weekend.

The older child, who had regained his hearing temporarily, caught another cold and has lost it again. Either that or he totally figured out the whole if-I'm-deaf-it-gets-me-out-of-trouble thing and is totally playing me. We go back to the doctor and the hearing lab on Thursday. Oh happy day.

Ok. I'm going to go back to glancing out the window and cursing at the weather reporters with their overnight bags and cots laid out in the weather room. I'll keep you posted on Snowmageddon's progress towards The City With No Snow Removal Equipment. Saint Louis.

- H

I'ma gonna kick yer -

Ah, good times. Did I mention I suffer from night terrors? Actually, I don't suffer from them, but my husband has been known to be battered upon. I had another one last night, which is odd. I don't know why they would crop up again now, when all is hunky dory in the world.

Oh, yeah. I guess maybe all isn't hunky dory and that stupid house guest STRESS is visiting again and I'ma gonna kick her ass outta here cause I hate her. Today I was on a last-minute conference call !surprise! letting me know I'll be travelling to a meeting the same week my husband is away at his meeting.

Now, I'm no mathemagician, but I'm thinking two little kids, one one-eyed terrierist, a gigantic brown moron and zero adult parents is a bad equation? My mother (I should really just start referring to her as The Saint) will be flying up from sunny Florida to care for my brood for three to seventeen days and then flying back to sunny Florida unless I kidnap her and don't let her leave. Did I say that out loud?

But I didn't even know about all that shit when I found myself sitting up in bed fighting the Bad Guys with my arms all aflail, sweating and flailing and cursing and sweating. Then my husband pushed me down and said "go back to bed" and I couldn't because my heart was beating too fast.

I started getting these stupid things when I was pregnant with my oldest. I'd jump up in bed, fighting the good-albeit-imaginary fight, and scared the crap out of my husband. Who was at the same time trying to heal from a horrible surgery to his bumside, and oh my God it just hit me why I was having night terrors! Newlywed. Newly pregnant. Husband with newly surgery affecting his bummy (I always revert to mommy talk when I'm uncomfortable). Now it all makes sense!

Anyway. They continue. They go away for a while. They come back. Just like adult acne. Yay! I've won the shit lottery.

Still, it's good to know that if I really needed to, I could go all Chuck Norris on someone's ass and give it a good kicking. Always makes me feel confident when I think of it that way.

Oh, and hey! Funny story from today's parenting chronicles. We (meaning the two anklebiters and me) have been having some funny car conversations lately. Today Griffin and Ruby went with me to pick up Cooper from his school. As we were meandering through the streets of our little town, we discussed why we can't have a cat (Dad's allergic). Which reminded Cooper of what he's allergic to.

C: "I can't have cotton candy. I'm allergic."
Me: "Huh? Ohhhh, that's right. Yes, you are allergic to cotton candy."
G: "I'm not allergic to cotton candy."
Me: "Oh. Well, you might be too. We'll have to ask Dr. Julia next time we see her."
C: "You're allergic to cotton candy, too, because we're twins."
G: "Yeah, we're twins."
C: "Mom, what are twins?"
Me: "When two babies live in a mommy's belly at the same time and come out at the same time, they're twins. You and Griffin aren't twins, you're just brothers."
C: "Oh, right. We're brothers. But you might be allergic to cotton candy, too."
G: "Yeah."

Which reminds me to be careful of my crack team of excuses on the spot of why my kids can't have ___________ [fill in the blanks]. Being allergic is very handy.

- H

Christmas is going to be so awesome this year.

*Gratuitous brown moron in a new sweater shot.*

Every winter, at least the past four since I had children, I get hit with this moment. One year it actually happened in February. This year I had it last week. I was riding in the back of a cab on my way to a hotel where I'd spend the rest of the week in a meeting for work.

I glanced at the snow, and I thought "Christmas is going to be pretty this year."** And I didn't mean Christmas 2011 either.

I have no idea what that's all about, except maybe Christmas would be better appreciated in January than in December. By the time the hubbub of the holidays is past and I launch myself into the next year with gusto (or the next year is launched onto me regardless of how I feel about it, whatever), that's when things finally settle in and I'm totally ready to appreciate the holidays.

This also somewhat explains my feelings when looking back at pictures of my children in their various developmental phases.

I looked at my calendar this weekend and I believe I'll be able to come up for air sometime in March. Which is cool because March is officially spring to me and God knows I am not a lover of cold winters that drag on and on. Hopefully I'll find something to write about before March, if for no other reason than to keep the BlogHer ads team from descending on me.

I do want to give you an update of my Sugarbusters success story. Just give me a couple weeks to lose the weight I regained at Christmas, and then I'm totally on it.

- H

**Don't shoot me for using the word Christmas in January. I know, it makes you crazy, it makes me crazy too. I'll stop. Christmas.

Check me out with all my positivity and junk.

I've been meaning to write a super thought-provoking New Year's post, full of insight into what went wrong in 2010 (and oh hell there was so much where would I start?) and my high hopes for 2011. But then I didn't. Because two weeks at home with two pre-schoolers and I finally decided a successful day was one where no one ended up in the ER with stitches, not one where mommy got to write her manifesto.

You may or may not have noticed, but I've brought my alter-ego back. It was there that I started to construct a "that what I made in 2010" post, and only got so far as April before chucking it. Holy crap, I made a lot of stuff last year, and much of it was crap. I am definitely adding a goal of do not make any more crap to my list this year. Heh. I'll be so full of the awesome by the end of this year you all won't know how to handle me.

In putting together that post, I got to read a lot of my old posts. A lot. And that's when I realized, that's what this blog is good for.

If you're a blogger, you've undoubtedly had one of Those Moments. The moment when you think "why am I doing this? What is this all about anyway?" You start to get bogged down in the popularity contest instead of just enjoying what you're doing, and why you started doing it in the first place. It starts to feel like a chore instead of a joy. I think it happens to everyone at some point. When it happens to me, I step away from the keyboard. Luckily, my mojo has always returned and my fingers start tapping away.


It was in reviewing old posts that I had this AHA moment (no, I will NOT pay Oprah royalties for using that phrase). This blog has been the best diary, the best journal of what's happening in my life that I ever could have imagined. I'm so glad I added the LinkWithin widget, because now when I go to read an old post, I see pictures from even older posts, and suddenly I'm carried away to two years ago, when Griffin was just a baby and still in love with his toilet brush.

I won't lie to you. There were many tears wept over this walk down memory lane and many memories I wish I didn't remember. I cried a little for all the bad memories that came flooding back, but also for the fact that WE SURVIVED! I kept the band together! It's a small miracle considering what we had to overcome, but so far we've managed to do it and that is something.


So. I have no grandiose resolutions for this year. I hope to not spend as much money on marital counseling as I did last year because we don't need it. I hope there aren't as many dragons to slay this year. And I hope I stop and look back and smile a little more often than I did last year.

- H