One inch of snow means a Snow Day here.  A Snow Day means the children clamor to go outside, even though this is perfect weather for quietly reading all day.  A Snow Day means the children disappear outside for hours, playing in the (one inch) of snow.  A Snow Day means hot cocoa with marshmallows.

And lucky for me, this Snow Day means the boys end up at the neighbor’s house instead of here for the hot chocolate break and my Snow Girl and I spend the rest of the day indoors after briefly stomping around the front yard, tracking cat-prints and changing the one string of icicle lights that already stopped shining and realizing that it really is cold when your fingers grow numb from the quick light-changing.

A Snow Day in the Pacific Northwest means the roads turn to ice and people abandon their cars along the freeway and it takes six hours to get home from work.

Long live the occasional Snow Day!

We lost Baby Jesus.  More on that later.

Meanwhile, Friday, I left my house by 8 a.m. to shop.  Of course, arriving three hours post-store-opening meant some of the things I attempted to buy were sold out, but I am not insane like some people who get in line at 1 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day so they can spend all night in the cold and then shop at dawn.  No.  Not me.  I was snug in my bed at 5 a.m. when someone else was buying the Knights Lego set for $49.99 that I wanted.

I shopped for awhile, then took a break and saw “Stranger than Fiction,” which was an odd but enjoyable movie.  I haven’t seen any other Will Ferrell movies, so I have no way of measuring his latest performance against his prior performances, but I thought he was good in the movie.  

After the movie (and popcorn, yum), I shopped a little more before returning home at 4 p.m. (a full hour before my “curfew,” I’ll have you know).

Saturday while my daughter went to a birthday party and rest of my family went out to dinner, I insisted on staying home so I could put up the outdoor decorations.  An hour and a half later, I finished and began to frantically wrap gifts at the kitchen table.  I finished before my daughter returned home.  My mother watched and marvelled at my speed, but I told her that I work quickly, not neatly.  After all, the kids won’t examine the seams on the gifts before they tear off the paper.

Sunday means church and this weekend was no exception.  Afterwards, I dragged out boxes of decorations and put up the indoor decorations, including our fake tree.  I never thought I’d be the kind of person who owned a fake Christmas tree, but I have to say that the cost-effectiveness and ease of a fake tree has polluted my former convictions about the necessity of a Real Tree.  We’ve used it for nine years now, so each year cost us about $10.  And I can put it up fast.  The kids put all the ornaments on it, so it’s all haphazard and uneven, but if you squint your eyes, it just looks twinkly and pretty.

I’ve spent the day doing laundry, explaining how to find the perimeter of various shapes to my 13-year old boys and answering email.  Now, already, it’s time to make dinner . . . the darkness outside makes the lights inside seem to glow more fiercely.  Soon, the shortest day of the year will arrive and then light will overcome darkness again, bit by bit, minute by minute.  Funny how you can move forward in time without feeling like you’re moving at all.

Who’d have guessed that this blog would be such a source of comfort and support to me?  Thank you for the gentle, kind comments on my last entry.  I’ll be working on coherent email responses sometime today.  Or tomorrow.

My brother-in-law came yesterday (with my sister, niece and nephew) to diagnose my computer problems.  He thought it sounded like a power supply issue, but when he arrived and took a look, he suspected the hard drive.  Then, he removed the hard drive and decided it might be the mother board.  So, he took the whole thing home with him so he could use his resources at home to diagnose it.

The dilemma is this:  do I spend $100 or more to repair an older computer that I only paid $300 or $400 in the first place?  Or do I put that money toward a new laptop (the desire of my heart because then I could be portable)?  I just don’t know.  Why do expensive things always happen to us around Christmas-time? 

(At least the shower still drains.  Five hundred dollars not spent in vain!)

The other morning, my daughter woke up and called downstairs, “IS IT CHRISTMAS TODAY?”  She is going to absolutely adore the holidays this year.  If it were up to me, I might let the holidays pass without so much as a glance, but I have kids.  I will make the magic happen!  That’s my job, to make memories–and not just the ones where I slam a door as an exclamation point to a hissy fit I might have over sticky things and dirty socks.  (Who me?) 

Oh!  Speaking of memories . . . unless I get a frozen turkey into the fridge to start thawing right now, we’ll have a memory of digging into an icy bird for Thanksgiving.

 

A day in which you must call a plumber is a bad day indeed.  And yesterday was that bad day for us. 

The shower in our master bedroom has been problematic for years.  I suspect that our son shoved a Duplo block down the drainpipe during a shower when he was about three or four years old, but I have no proof.  But soon after he played with blocks in the shower (what?  your kids don’t play with blocks in the shower?) the water began to linger instead of draining promptly.  We called a handyman friend (who charged us a dollar a minute) and he used his fancy drain-unclogging tool thing-a-majig and pulled up a clump of hair and said maybe that would do the trick.

And it sort of did for awhile.  But for the past four or five years, the shower’s been persnickety and uncooperative.  We’d purchase gallons of hair-clog remover and treat the drain repeatedly and usually it would work.  But not for long.  We lived with it, though, like you live with a neighbor who never mows his lawn.  What can you do, really? 

Last week, though, the water stopped draining.  It turned into a fetid puddle with floating hair.  And I poured two gallon-sized jugs of hair-clog remover down the drain.  The chemical-filled water just pooled there, belligerent, daring me to do something.  Stupid water.  Stupid drain.  Stupid pipes.  Do they not know how irritable I am? 

So, after a week of standing water in the drain, my husband called a plumber who seemed like a perfectly reasonable, nice man (with an accent that made me think, Moldova?).  He wrote down the estimated price to repair our impassable drain as if saying the number aloud would be blasphemous.  ($384, before tax and the $50 service charge!)  My husband said, “This is guaranteed, right?  Ha!  Ha!” and a dark cloud passed over the face of the plumber and he shook his head and said, “Not really.” 

Then, he went upstairs where I heard metal digging in the drains.  I heard the loud scritch, scritch, scratch inside the pipes.  I heard scary thumps inside the walls. 

When it was all said and done, he said that the sink was full of hair (duh, I’ve never poured those hair-dissolving chemicals into the sink because while it drained slowly, it still drained and it never felt important to me, but now, I just paid that guy $126 to pull hair out of it, alas).  Then he said that he definitely felt something in the shower drain, but couldn’t pull it up, so he pushed it–he thinks–through the pipe.  The water immediately drained, so he was cautiously optimistic of success.  However, he said he had no way of being certain and that if it happens again, they’ll have to cut holes in the walls and replace the pipes.

Over my dead body.

So, I wrote a check for $484 and all I have to show for it is a shower that drains. 

Last night, just as I was serving dinner, the power snapped off.  I ran to the computers and unplugged everything.  Then I fumbled for candles while pointlessly flipping light switches as I walked from room to room.  The children seemed so much louder in the utter stillness of black silence.  “Shhhh!” I kept begging.  “Shhhhh!”  No need to shout when my head is in danger of blowing a fuse!

The power stayed off for three hours.  During that time, I read a “Good Housekeeping” magazine by candlelight.  The children watched a Netflix DVD on a portable DVD player.  Grace watched a Dora DVD on her dad’s laptop computer until it ran out of juice.  Then she and my husband fell asleep though it was only 7:30 p.m.  I played a game of “Blokus” with my boys, which ended up being fun.  I bought the game for Christmas last year, but we’ve never played it because the second my daughter saw it, she claimed it and interferred with anyone who dared play without her.  (Also, I hate playing board games.)  

Then, glory be!  The power returned.  I plugged in the computers and accessories and everything worked, except my computer which appears to be dead.  Or at least, mortally wounded.  Or in a coma.  The fans hum and a lone yellow light shines on the front, but it does not boot.  I am lost.

So, I am working on my husband’s laptop, which causes me to make typos every other line because I am not used to the letters being all squished together like this.  But I am thankful for it and for the sunshine and blue skies which seem like an apology for the high winds and rain of yesterday.  So, I forgive the weather for killing my computer and the unknown foreign object in my drain which cost me $500. 

The universe owes me some compensation.  

I’ve decided Tuesdays will be my new movie nights, primarily because there is nothing on television that I care to watch, but also because on Tuesday nights, Regal Cinemas give a free small popcorn to their Regal Crown Club Members.  I’m all for a bargain.

But tonight, I didn’t get to see a movie because my husband had a late meeting.  Instead, at 8:30 p.m., I went to the local Albertson’s where I spent over an hour picking out groceries.  A while ago, I signed up for a trial of The Grocery Game for one dollar, which I then completely forgot to cancel before it charged me $10 for a regular membership.  Actually, it cost me $20 for the regular membership because I had three grocery stores included in my membership ($10 for the first store, $5 for each additional). 

Anyway, I was so annoyed with myself for forgetting to cancel it that I had no choice but to use the site for all it’s worth.  Sunday afternoon I cut out coupons and organized them according to category.  I printed out the items on sale at Albertsons and matched them with the appropriate coupons. 

And tonight, I spent $101.57 at the store . . . and “Today’s Total Savings” were $101.18.  (The original total before coupons and sale prices would have been $202.75.)

That thrilled me.  (I think the clerk at the store was less than thrilled with my pile of coupons, especially the ones from other stores which required her to manually change the prices.)  

All the same, next week, I sure hope I end up at the movie theater eating free popcorn instead of at the grocery store on Tuesday night.  Better yet, maybe I can go to a movie first, eat free popcorn and then grocery shop.  I do live on the edge, don’t I?

*  *  *

If you decide to join The Grocery Game, tell them I referred you [Melodee (at) gmail (dot) com.]  I didn’t post this to get free weeks, but it now occurs to me that I might if any of you join. 

My husband flew to Minnesota this morning on business.  He’ll be back Saturday night.

I have a minor cold which I am ignoring.

Today was only a half-day of school and so the neighbor boys spent the whole afternoon here.  They are so loud.

I cleaned out my sock drawer tonight while watching television.

Tomorrow is a no-school day and so I plan to return to bed as many times as possible before facing the day. 

And this concludes the most boring blog post you’ll read today.

Somewhere in the dark hours between David Letterman and dawn, I realized two things:

1)  I needed another blanket on the bed because the air coming in the open window was cold; and

2)  I have a cold. 

Yesterday, I sneezed and sneezed, but I attributed all that snottiness to allergies, which sometimes strike me in the fall.  This, despite the fact that one of my sons has had a cold all week (he’s just now better) and one fought off a cold (had a two-day headache, but is now well). 

So, it was really delightful to wake up super early to fry bacon.  Yes, a delight.  Truly.

To wake up the teenage boys, I used all weapons in my arsenal.  I started frying bacon.  I turned on the overhead light in their room.  I turned the radio on, loud. 

After twenty minutes of this, I sent my husband in to wake them.  They appeared at the table, remarkably conscious.

My 8-year old looked half-asleep, so I sent him up for a shower while the scrambled eggs were cooking. 

And here was the verdict on the breakfast (peach smoothies, cheesy scrambled eggs, bacon and toast): 

“I don’t really like how the eggs taste.”

“The bacon is too crispy.”

“This smoothie is too sweet.”

Tomorrow?  Pancakes.  Much less work and a tried and true favorite.  (And I use a real recipe, not a mix.  Be impressed, be very impressed–not that the children will be.  I used to make pancakes every morning when my twins were in kindergarten until the day one of them said, “Pancakes again?!” in a voice of disgust.  That’s when they started getting cold cereal.)

Tomorrow is the first day of school.  I have my third grader’s backpack filled with supplies, including four dozen pencils and a box of tissues.  Anymore, it seems we practically have to send in the inventory of Target when school begins.

I returned from the store at 10:30 p.m. and faced a dirty kitchen before I could even begin packing the backpack.  I finished putting the groceries away, loading the dishwasher and sorting through supplies by 11:15 p.m. 

Then I sat at the computer to check out what my teenagers’ schedule will be tomorrow and lo and behold (and gasp!), the formerly perfect online school shows that my students have no active courses, even though they have had active courses loaded for the past two months.

So, I guess we’ll stumble through tomorrow, which is fitting.  Every year since we started K12.com, our starting date has been chaotic–usually, our supplies are late.  This year, we have supplies but the internet portion is screwy.  Sigh.

Maybe, a miracle will occur and tomorrow, the computer portion will be fine and dandy.

Meanwhile, my secret weapon for waking up the kids is in the refrigerator:  bacon.  I hope it works.

When our twins were babies, they woke before the sun rose.  Every morning, without fail, they were awake between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m.  If we kept them up later at night, they woke up at the exact same time.  We never used alarm clocks because our twins were alarm clocks stuck on “too early.”

I am not a morning person, so this was a nightmare for me.  For a long time, my husband would get up with them while I slept a little bit longer, then showered, because when you have twin babies, you really don’t have a moment to yourself.  And I would die if I had to get up at 5:00 a.m. every morning.

The early mornings were the worst.  I would say, “Just wait until they’re teenagers!  I’m going to be vacuuming in their rooms at 6:00 a.m. for revenge!”

But the years passed and now they are teenagers.  And I’m sleeping at 6:00 a.m.!  And 7:00 a.m.!  They are sleeping at 8:00 a.m.  And 9:00 a.m.!  Earlier this week, I was downstairs at 7:30 a.m. (getting breakfast for my almost-4 year old) and I heard the boys’ alarm beeping.  It beeps for an hour before it shuts off.

It beeped the whole hour and they did not stir, not even to push the “snooze” button. 

They sleep like the dead, these teenagers.  This is the first summer that they have slept in (until 10:00 a.m. some mornings).  Which has been glorious in many ways. 

But now, it’s past 11:30 p.m. and they are awake.  (I broke up a fight about a blanket just a few minutes ago.)  They will be sleeping at 9:00 a.m. tomorrow, I am sure of it.

And then Thursdays?  They have to be up and ready for school-at-home by 8:30 a.m.  (My third-grader has to leave the house by 8:10 a.m. . . . and his go-to-sleep time has shifted, too–I heard him in the bathroom at 11:00 p.m.!  He’s been sleeping in until 9:00 a.m., too, a remarkably late time for him!)

All the parenting magazines and advice columns say to gradually shift the waking up time of your kids so they are back on track by the time school starts.  I tried, I did, really.  But alas, Thursday morning they’ll be waking up after a rather short night because I have not been able to get anyone to fall asleep at a decent hour.

I have a plan, though.  Bacon.  I’m going to fry bacon at 7:30 a.m. Thursday morning and if I know teenage boys, they’ll be at the table, inhaling the greasy goodness of bacon faster before I can even say “Time to wake up!”

At least that’s my plan.

By the way, over the summer, each of my kids grew a whole inch.  And my son’s voice changed in the past two weeks.  I’m living in a fast-forwarded life and I think I might be missing the good parts.  Why is there no rewind button?

Two more days of freedom. 

Then school begins.

Four more days of having a three year old living in my house.

Then, she turns four.

My knuckles look bony and my hand-skin is saggy.  I’m turning into someone’s grandmother, only my kids are too young to procreate.  My timing’s clearly off.  First things first.  I have to finish raising these kids into decent grown-ups.  (Some days, I’m not up to the task.)

Perhaps tomorrow I’ll actually have something to say.  Or not.