Diary of a snow, 1 (hopefully only)

**This got published on HuffPo Comedy!!
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Well, my favorite thing in the world has happened. An epic snow. Truly, I can't imagine anything I'd rather experience.

I love being housebound for days. Playing every game in the house with children who alternate manically between whining and laughing is dreamy. I adore shoveling one pile into another pile right next to the original one like some sort of deranged Sisyphean loon. There are never too many puzzles to complete, and your hips will not fix forever into seated position as you try to conquer your collection.

I can't think of anything I'd rather do than run out of lemons, milk, kindling and sanity- all before 3pm when it is entirely too early to imbibe and all stores are closed and your car is snowed in anyway, so who cares and what would he/she do about it anyway?? #amiright?

It is tremendous to watch your lovingly tended plants be crushed under banks of white death. It feels good to be on live-text with your girlfriends as they implode. It is even more fun to pay for both school and after-school activities and then watch your kids enjoy 10% of all that. My sides are aching I'm laughing so hard. Beyond question, this is prime living. 

"I'm alive!"

Truly, winter is idyllic. Especially in cities that, each year, appear to experience winter as if they've just discovered something new and potentially dangerous.

• "Can I touch it?"
• "How do I do this thing called snow?"
• "What is driving and functioning in temperatures of 20 degrees? Is life possible?"

Clearly I am being sarcastic. Well, except for the lemons. I despise being without lemons because really, it's like the sun might as well have burned out. 

Being snowed in is like a detox of sorts.

The first 48 hours are miserable. I mean, you NEED a fix. It's horrid. And then you accept that you can't make hot chocolate because listen, there is no more milk. And if your kids go across the street to their snow fort and you cease checking on them because you're enraptured with your New Orleans puzzle? Well, they're fine. 

You start to realize just how great all that senseless shoveling is for your physique, and so you double-time it out there. Because you can. Plus, your cat fancies himself a snow leopard and traverses with spy-like glee the extensive pathways you've dug out for his wimpy canine friend's bathroom needs. And you've eaten chili for three days straight and could use some alone time in the fresh, open air, if you get my drift.

That chicken in the freezer? Girl, it was time to roast that bird anyway. Get busy. It's #notchili. And if you are also supposed to be packing? Get a garbage can and watch out world, because you am gonna tear through this joint like it's your job. Nothing is safe. 

Soon enough, you're gonna find some more lemons and with them the sun, and those goddamn white banks out there are gonna melt. And it's back to school, back to everything. Onward ho!

Diary of a move, 2

You will never guess what I found yesterday while packing!

Him: 

Oh my flipping god  

Sweet baby Jesus in the heavens, this man is on fire. He is impossibly sexy, elegant, rugged, intelligent, gentle and handsome. I could die.

The boys had yesterday and today off of school. I am going to be honest in telling you that I am quite keen on their returning tomorrow.

For starters, they have demanded a roaring fire in the hearth for pretty much the entirety of this homestay. I like a nice fire, and it's exceedingly cold here in DC, but I am A) nearly out of kindling and not terribly interested in foraging for more in single-digit temps when most everything is frozen to the ground, and B) rather sick of their burning small effigies, Sith plane replicas, and all other "but it's just paper and wood, Mom!" creations in my living room. It's morbid and not relaxing.

Today, for example, Oliver freaked out and rescinded an offer to the fire. "Mom, I want that one back. PLEASE!" Which meant fishing a nearly-aflame masterpiece from atop its pyre and dousing it with ash before any ruin commenced. Not relaxing, people.

Secondly, we have played approximately 712 games of Spot it! which is a delightful game (that I frequently win, heh!) but one whose art director seems to have taken one seriously wrong turn.

When you look at this disk, what do you see?

I see a clock, moon, man, eye, balloon, taxi, tree, and black-eyed tampon with a ball and chain.

Why is the tampon a prisoner? Why has she been fighting and yet continues to smile? Why is she on a children's game? 

I have been asking myself these vexing questions all day instead of packing. I do not yet have an answer. I have only packed one box.

Until this move is a wrap, I have let T know that we will be having extremely simplistic dinners. Fortunately, as long as whatever I put in front of him is flavorful, not mustard or turnip greens, and includes meat at least five days out of seven, he does not care.

Tonight? Bucatini with spicy tomato sauce and speck. Bellissima!

Good night, peeps!

A taste of teen

"Um, Mrs. Grossi, Dr. Perez says he can fill the cavity on the upper right, but the tooth on the upper left is in such bad shape, he would rather pull than fill it. Is that OK?" asked the lovely dental hygienist about Jack's teeth yesterday afternoon. 

"Of course," I responded through slightly gritted teeth, "but please don't tell Jack more than he needs to know because he tends to freak out about possible blood loss."

"Okay, we will give him laughing gas first."

Great. Add it to my tab.

Tom and I have learned that we passed outrageously shitty dental anatomy and weak dental bacteria on to Jack (and likely Ol) and that T has also gifted our children with his family's micro-mouth trait. Long story short, Jack's mouth is the perfect storm for dental decay and excessive cash outflow. What we've spent on fillings (is it eight now? nine?), laughing gas and early orthodontia is not an amount I like to consider, not least because half that money is packed into baby teeth that will fall out in the coming years. 

But since we aren't sharks, I don't joke around with dental care, and the fifteen minute appointment I'd promised Jack ("just X-rays, honey") stretched into a long hour. J was a real champ about the pulling and filling, numb face and consternation over his lazy flossing habit.

Until he wasn't, and I dare say Teen Jack roared into our home like a time traveling apparition. 

It began with enormous eye rolls and mean trash talk toward Oliver who was diligently working on his Spotlight Student poster (things that are important to him include cinnamon toast and Garfield but not his family, apparently) and snowballed over the next two hours into a giant ball of red-faced tears, slammed doors, a thrown wallet ("WHAT? THERE IS NO WALMART IN DC? WHY? I NEED A BRICK OF MAGNESIUM!"), and outrage over "the stupid, baby sentences we have to write with hyphenated words that SHOULDN'T EVEN BE HYPHENATED and this week's GODDAMNED GRAMMAR RULE."

I admit that I dissolved into a puddle of hysterical tears over that last bit because even though I love grammar, J's use of goddamned flowed in marvelously smooth fashion, I happen to agree that goodbye does not require a hyphen, and I never imagined I'd see my fourth grade son apoplectic over using roly-poly and some form of there/their/they're in one simple sentence.

Don't you see a roly-poly over there?

But I digress. 

He spent a full ninety minutes crying, cleaning the rotten tooth Dr. Perez had pulled, rolling on his floor, and circling his math packet and language homework like a wary beast trying to psyche itself up to attack.

I suggested he consider that if instead of these inefficient uses of time he buckled down and accepted that while his homework might suck, it still has to get done and the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. He looked at me like I was speaking Swahili while pulling worms from my ears.

I attempted to remind him that he's going to have homework for the next, oh, twelve to thirteen years so might want to reframe his thoughts on how to approach the assignments he finds repellent or mind-numbingly dull. He said he instead planned to talk to his teachers about cancelling "stupid assignments." Which is hilarious to consider because neither -the conversation or the cancelling- will ever happen.

He then screamed that at the end of this year, he planned to burn every bit of homework that had made him mad. I said, "Great idea. We can certainly do that."

Finally, I took the hard line and said, "Jack, stop it, man. Get ahold of yourself. Take a deep breath RIGHT NOW." It was like the face-slap people in movies use to bring a panicky person back to reality. 

He was too exhausted to resist, fortunately, and then the babysitter arrived, amazing grace, and I left for date night with T, and this morning Just Jack was back although he reminded me that the Tooth Fairy didn't come.

The TF used all her money yesterday, champ. Maybe tonight!