Snow day a'coming: what that really means

Is there really a parent out there (especially a stay-at-home parent!) who enjoys a snow day? Especially a Monday snow day when there's not enough snow to sled? I think they're few and far between. I think possibly there is one. Picture it. You've been together all weekend. In all likelihood you've maxed out your ability to enthusiastically read and role play in a believably engaged fashion. You've played Old Maid and Go Fish, Chess and Pentago more times than you can count. You've made s'mores, "eaten" snow, lit a fire and watched as the damn pyromaniacs got a mite too close and threw 9 pine cones in even though you told them the sap would crust up the chimney. Grr. And finally, mercifully, you-thought-you'd-never-get-there Sunday night comes, and the kids purposefully pour a bucket of water out of their bath. At that point, you might raise your voice, bathtime might definitely come to an end, but ultimately you pull yourself together because...dunh, dunh, dunh dunh!! Monday will be here before you know it.

Until that rug's pulled out from under you. Because, it's.a.SNOW.DAY!

I have lived in DC long enough to know when the other shoe is about to drop. As our nation's capital -- and to be fair, the lame-in-weather 'burb commuters -- cannot handle the slightest bit of precipitation, the snow we received today as well as the ice it will surely become in sub-freezing temps tonight, will definitely result in cancelled everything tomorrow. I can just see that 5:30 am text from the school now.

Once again I will let you know that for many of us at-home parents, this is a bust. We schedule our days down to the seconds, time delineated into the with- and without-the-kids segments. When you suddenly lose 6 or 7 hours, you are way behind the eight ball. And then you still have all the hours you'd already budgeted into the with-the-kids side of the equation.

Tomorrow, for example, instead of kissing my darlings 85 times at 7:59 am, then shoving them out the door into T's car and exhaling slightly until 2:50 pm, I will be on the hamster wheel from 6:10 am until bedtime, more than 12 hours later. That is a big damn difference.