Snow Days = blow days

Remember when you were a kid and snow days were the most awesome days in the world? I'd wake up to a world of white and just as soon as my mom got "the call" that school was canceled, I'd be out there with my neighborhood friends building snow forts and going sledding down Suicide Hill.* Good times.

Now that I'm an adult, I loathe snow days. As a mom who works from home, snow days are days when NOTHING gets done. It isn't just because the kids are around all day, either. It's because I know I have to get out and shovel said snow from my sidewalk. And since my house sits on a corner lot, I have to shovel two sidewalks.

I hate it, too, because I can't just turn my kids out into the snow and say, "Come in when it starts to get dark." Living in the city means we have to trudge to the park which, thankfully, is only a few blocks away; but that means I have to go with them and stand there, in the freezing snow, and watch them play. So, after spending an hour freezing my tukus off while watching my two kids slide down their lame hill (nothing will ever compare to Suicide Hill. NOTHING!) I get to bring them back inside, strip them down, take care of their wet clothes, and then I get to go back outside and shovel.

Of course, what sucks more is when I shovel my sidewalks and then it snows overnight again...which means the kids get another day off and I get to shovel my sidewalks...again.

I'm thankful that we live in a pretty mild climate. Snowstorms like the one we experienced last week aren't yearly occurrences, but this last week set me over the edge. The kids had off from school on Monday for the Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday. Then, it snowed overnight, so on Tuesday, they had a two-hour late start. Then, the school called to say that the kids are being released two hours early, which means they were only in school for two hours. What does anyone do in two hours? I had enough time to shower and answer emails, and that was it. Then, school was canceled on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday because it didn't stop snowing until Friday night.

You might be wondering why I'm so anal with the snow shoveling. Well, 1/3 of me is being considerate, and 2/3 of me is forcing me to do it because I would be the only person on my block who DIDN'T shovel snow off the sidewalk. And I don't want to be one of "those" people. Believe me, all of the neighborhood blogs had at least one rant in each of them, discussing the absolute assholeness of people who didn't shovel their sidewalks. So yeah, I'm trying to avoid shame. On the plus side, a few people passed me on the sidewalk during my shovel-a-thons and thanked me for clearing a path.

One week later and all the snow has disappeared, save for a few patches here and there; but it's like the snowstorm of the century never happened. I hope that's the last of it!



*Suicide Hill was located in the woods adjacent to our backyard. We named it thusly because it was steeper than all get-out and when you got to the bottom, you had to bail out quickly because either a) you might veer to the right and smack into a tree; or b) you might go straight into the frozen Hackensack River. I'm proud to say no one has ever lost their life to Suicide Hill.