Shoes On The Wrong Feet

The school district phone call woke me up at five, as my cell phone by the bed rang.  Two hour late start due to snow and no preschool.  Five minutes later the home phone, which is also forwarded to my cell phone rings, same message.  Husband is just getting out of the shower so we briefly converse about the school change.  I tell him to drive safe and he heads out to work.

I get up at six, feed the dogs, let the cat who is not our cat in from the cold, drink a cup of coffee and check my email.  The boys wake up about fifteen minutes later and immediately start in building chair and blanket forts.  I get a fire started and breakfast on the table.  We have three and a half hours until Cody’s bus comes.

I start laundry.  The boys play.  No one shows any interest in going outside which is fine with me.  It is dark and cold and the snow is more slush and ice than fun snowman snow anyway.  The boys play with hot wheels, setting up a race track with a loop and launcher.  I clean the bathroom and transfer the laundry from the washer to the dryer.

I give the boys a bath.  While they are splashing and building funnel-washcloth-drippy machines I clean their bathroom and scrub the floor.  The boys seem happy in the bath so I sort the mail and file random important papers, setting bills aside to pay later.  The boys are done and the water is chilly so I towel them off and they run shrieking through the house buck naked.  I sop up the stray bathwater and threaten the boys with underwear and clothes.  They start up a game of naked hide and seek.

I clean the kitchen table and finish packing Cody’s lunch.  The boys request a snack of pretzels.  They eat sitting side by side at the table still naked, their wet heads bowed close together while they discuss the various shapes and letters they can make by eating certain parts of a pretzel.  They praise each others ideas and I smile.

I finally get them dressed.  They bust out their wooden train track and start madly building a series of tracks after I tell them we are out the door in ten.  Sock and shoes.  Jackets and a backpack.  Into the car we pile because, even though it has not snowed a flake all morning, it suddenly decides to dump and the bus stop is a ten minute walk at best.  I feel like a horrible mother because I forget Cody’s mittens.

Carter and I get back home.  We bring in the empty trash can, wrestle the garden/wood cart from the backyard up the hill and around the garage to the woodpile to restock our mini woodpile by the front door.  Leather work gloves suck in the snow.

We shiver out of our wet jackets and line our boots up by the fire.  I crank up one of my Pandora radio station (think Los Fabulosos Cadillac’s, Manu Chao, and Buena Vista Social Club) and we make some homemade bran muffins.  I wonder how we are going to fill the rest of the day.

That all happened yesterday before lunch.  This morning there is already about 5 inches on the ground and it is still falling.  The school called last night to report that there would be no school.  I do not feel that magic snow day excitement that I used to as a child, in fact I am  missing my morning alone time.  Perhaps I need to grab some of that snow day excitement from my boys and (0nce the sun comes up) go out into the snow and make snow angels and snowmen with abandon.  Then we can all come in, strip off our wet clothes to dry by the fire, and have a naked pretzel and hot cocoa snack.

I think I will opt for clothes just in case the UPS man shows up.