The most incredible, wonderful thing has happened. SNOW DAY. Bless the wonderful, white snow. (Well, that's a bit much.) I present "Chai's Snow Day":
5:00 am: Hubs' alarm goes off. He gets up and goes outside to start shoveling snow.
5:30 am: My alarm goes off at the regular time, even though I know I'll be going in a little later this morning, since I usually drive around the block with Chum at 6:45 so we can smoke before school starts, and she's taking a sick day today to have her physical. She never ever takes a sick day.
5:40 am: Colleague calls and tells me that they have cancelled school for today. (I'm on her list for the Snow Chain. Wooo-hoo!
6:00 am: Hubs comes in from shoveling and I tell him I'm staying put. He has just cleaned off both cars and juggled them around in the driveway so I can pull out first and neither one of them will be plowed in on the street. The martyrdom of Hubs, a state he so enjoys but hasn't indulged in for a few months, begins.
6:30 am: I tell him that, since I'll be home, I'll go out every few hours and sweep off where he has shoveled. (I'm forbidden to shovel because I have bad back.) He says there is no need for me to do this. As we have this conversation, he has already showered and dressed for work and is sitting in the dark family room with the television off, because, since I'm not following my normal morning routine, I haven't come into the family room and turned on the lights or the TV. He's very good at the martyr thing.
7:00 am: He leaves for work. I ask if he wants me to come out and move my car. (I'm still dressed for bed, but I could put on boots and a coat.) No need, he says. I hear him cleaning off cars (again) and juggling them around (again.)
7:20 am: He's all gone and I'm all alone in the house. Wooo-hoo!
8:00 am: I decide to make the half-mile drive to the high school, since I won't be going in next week and I need to leave some work to be done, etc. The snow is really coming down steadily, and the plows are all over the high school parking lot and sidewalks. But the building is locked. Home again. A message on the machine from Hubs says that he has made it into work with little trouble.
8:30 am: Laundry begins.I email the girls to tell them I'm home, their father is safe, and there is a good article on The Simpsons in today's paper.
The Today show is on. I haven't seen it since the summer, since I usually leave the house at 6:30. What the hell happened to Matt Lauer?
9:00 am: I email the SCM with instructions for next week, since I'll be out and I didn't go in and set things up. He asked me the other day, if he had trouble with anything next week, can he call me? I said no. I'm having freaking surgery on Monday. He called me about three weeks after I had my brain surgery and asked me something stupid, like how I wanted a new set of encyclopedia cataloged. I said "I don't care" and told him not to call me again.
9:40 am: Mmmmm ... Pillsbury cinnamon rolls ... all for me.
10:25 am: Installed new software and played with it a while. So I can now copy all the home movies from VHS onto a CD. If I had a DVD burner I could put them on a DVD. Cool. Maybe I'll do some later. It's snowing like hell out there. Watching Golden Girls.
10:30 am: Oh, boy, The Nanny! I love The Nanny!
10:50 am: Scrubbed the bathtub. (Ha, ha, just kidding.)
11:00 am: Sibs calls, her school is closed too. We talk for a minute and half and then the call waiting beeps and it is
11:01 am: R, who wants to know how the roads are because her friend has to drive home (nearby) for an appointment, yada yada yada, she's coming with her and I might have to pick her up somewhere. The day picks up interest and begins to lose a whole lot of charm. Maybe Hubs will make the drive to pick her up wherever, since he's in martyr mode today anyway. But I jest. In nearly 22 years of parenthood, he's done about 5% of the driving. He never refuses, though. His best move was when I would be at the door, jacket on, keys in hand, and he would be asleep on the couch in a t-shirt and shorts and he would wake up and say "Do you want me to go?"
12:40 pm: Attorney General Ashcroft comes on TV and tells us that there's going to be a terrorist attack, but they don't know where or when. This is not helpful. My political comment of the day is that they tell us this stuff to scare us so that we'll all get behind Bush and what he wants to do. I'm not saying I'm right, here; how would I know? But that's how it always looks to me. No further word yet from R. To quote her all-time favorite movie, "Damn! Where is that kid?"
1:50 pm: Heard from R, seems they have been waiting all this time for the driveway at her dorm to be plowed out, so they haven't even left yet. They won't be in NJ for an hour and a half, at least. Time to put the last wash in the dryer and take a nap.
2:20 pm: I'm awake -- did I even sleep? I never know. Well, now I'm really tired, having been awake most of the night after a wrong number at 11:30. Good day to have tomato soup and ritz crackers for lunch. There certainly isn't anything else to eat in the house.
2:37 pm: R called, she is in NJ at her friend's house and will be driven home in an hour or two. This is the kid that always calls to tell me where she is, when she's coming home, etc. What a good kid. Watching Christopher Lowell.
3:00 pm: It stopped snowing, and now it's sunny and bright. What's left on the roads is melting already, so I went out and cleared the front walk so the rest there would melt, too. It was very light snow, although about 6" deep; I cleared the walk before I had finished a single cigarette. All of you in the true north must think we're little wussies here in NJ to think this was a big storm, but really, we know it wasn't. We just haven't had a good old nor'easter for a couple of years now, and we've had 'em before that. Well, since 3:00 is the end of a school day on Friday, it looks like my snow day is officially over.
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I'm watching
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