5 stages of snow day grief or: how i learned to stop worrying and love the snow

it's not the kids. that's not the grief issue. snow days are great and terrible. they are great because you eat your weight in junk food. one of my snow days preparations is to have cream cheese, eggs, sugar, chocolate chips, graham crackers, pudding and cake mix on hand. it's terrible because you eat your weight in junk food. i have the cucumber sliced and ready to go, but it easily pales next to my lemon squares and my 2 layer brookies(brownie layer and chocolate chip cookie layer). it's terrible because the fact IS that snow isn't very fun if you don't have proper snow attire and i make it my business to make sure WE WILL NEVER HAVE PROPER SNOW ATTIRE. we live in south carolina for a reason. we are heat oriented people. snow days are great because you don't have to go anywhere but terrible because you can't go ANYWHERE. (go ahead and DON'T tell me how you have "real snow" where you live and our 3-8 inches is a light dusting. it rained yesterday before the snow so our road are slick!)

the 5 stages of snow day grief

1. denial.  i never tell my kids until the morning of that school is  cancelled so that i won't be cajoled into extending bedtimes and by some miracle they will sleep in if i don't get them up for school.

2. anger. a. because i have a vehicle that is used to heat and humidity and when it drops below 20 degrees, my driver's side door likes to unlatch. b. and while i really do love having my kids home, i've got stuff to DO.

3. bargaining. because schoolwork still has to be done. we're anticipating at least 2 days off from school this week so it doesn't have to be done NOW, but it still looms in the air like a fart in an elevator.

4. depression. because it's cold. and practical shoes are ugly. so ugly. 

5. acceptance. it's cold. the messes are out of hand. so you bake cookies until you are out of flour and call it good.(some people "play" in the snow. i just like to stare out the window and watch it fall.)

we had our first snow day last week. they let school out early at noon and reagan ran around the yard until it finally snowed.

scarlett's version of "playing" in the snow is "posing" in the snow. 

 i was safely ensconced inside.

there had been much talk about power outages and school cancellations with the next round of ice storms predicted for this week, so yesterday i took myself to walmart at 1030am to get some additional necessities. we could potentially be out of school from tuesday to friday and the prospect of taking all three kids to the store in the snow makes me sympathetic to the cannibal-like tendencies of the donner party. i squeezed in my trip to walmart after i did an extra hard workout since i didn't know when i would make it back to the gym this week. i smelled BAD. everyone and their dog was at walmart too, making the experience especially unbearable and noteworthy(2 different people with BIG FACE TATTOOS! how do you not stare at that?)

(cutest baby in the check out line.)

(CHECK OUT THESE LINES!!! and that lady's face who is photobombing! we chatted it up and became fast friends. you will always make friends in the check out line at walmart in the South. southerners are chatty and we can't help ourselves. i also met a lady who had moved here from texas and a lady who was from rochester, ny and was caring for her 90 year old mother and her 92 year old mother-in-law.)

 at noon, after much navigating and strategy and 20 minutes in the check out line, i reached into my bag for my wallet to pay for my goods. my wallet was not there. 90 sweaty, grueling minutes at walmart for naught. i will admit that i fled to my car and CRIED! sobbing, heaving, gasping tears. i drove home through a veil of tears, ate a GIANT brownie that i was saving for the kids to split after school and i drove back to walmart. they had my cart at customer service with some extra stuff from other people thrown on top. i had to sort through my cart, get in line at customer service only to find out that the cashier had not left me a receipt to recall my transaction, then had to get back in a regular check out line, wait for 25 minutes this time and finally recheck all my items, pay my dang money and run out of the store at 115pm like a woman who had been there since 1030am. because i HAD been there since 1030am. then i went home and showered and picked up the kids from school.  and now i'm ready for the snow day(week).

and today's snow:

lovely from the inside!