If We Weren't Snowed In ….

The latest snowstorm, which kept the kids home from school for the umpteenth day, has given me much family time. Rarely can I appreciate such interesting observations that happen only when we are snowbound. In the spirit of an OBXer who began the thread,"If We Weren't Snowed In …." I realized that without these snow days, I wouldn't have had the opportunity to:

• play Bananagrams with the kids, who used their letter tiles to construct such words as "twerk", "pot", "weed", "fart", and "burp".
• go sledding with my middle-school-aged daughters (who usually are aghast to be with me in public) and bruise my tailbone by sailing over a tiny ice ramp and landing on my rump.
• open the chimney damper (thus letting in cold air) to build a fire for the girls, only to see them abandon it after a few minutes … and then feel compelled sit by the fire so it does not go to waste.
• watch my husband and other male neighbors bond over a toy -- the snowblower.
• see these same men stand forlornly with shovels at the ends of their respective driveways, inciting the pity and compassion of the snowplow operator to haul snow away from (instead of block in) each driveway.

So although the kids have lost numerous school days recently, I have gained many educational insights during these snow days. How much longer is winter and how much more can I learn?

What Day is It, Anyway?

With school closed so much for the past 2 weeks, I have lost track of what day of the week it is. Last week, the kids were home on Monday for Martin Luther King Jr. Day and then on Tuesday for a snow day. By mid-week, my time radar was completely scrambled. As I pulled out of the driveway one morning, I spotted blue recycling bins everywhere."Geez," I mumbled, "why are everyone's bins out so early? It's only Wednesday morning. Why not wait until tonight to put them out for tomorrow's pickup?" Then I heard a truck's low rumbling and realized that my neighbors were not all crazy early birds ... but that it was actually Thursday, recycling day.

This week was worse: after Monday off for Teacher's Professional Day, the kids had school on Tuesday but then enjoyed snow days on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday! On Thursday night, I wrote a message on the OBX to cancel a Saturday event "originally scheduled for tomorrow." Luckily, a sharp-eyed OBX reader emailed me to clarify if I actually meant tomorrow (Friday) or the day after tomorrow (Saturday).

Yesterday I ran errands with my kids, thinking it was Saturday (after all, they hadn't had school the day before). We enjoyed a strange sensation of freedom from the usual weekend activities. This bubble of freedom, however, was burst when we were up in Howard County and discovered that we needed to be back in Olney for Friday afternoon piano lessons.

So, today is Saturday, right? Is it the weekend yet? Can anyone tell at this point?