For the birds

Happy Monday! I’m sitting at my kitchen table, watching it snow and blow outside. We have maybe four inches on the ground right now – it was worse to the east of Washington DC, and we live to the west. Still, this is more snow than we’ve gotten this entire winter here, and even though it’s March 1 and I’m pretty much over all things winter, I have to admit, it’s awfully pretty.

Of course, in typical DC-area fashion, THE WHOLE WORLD IS SHUT DOWN. Schools! Courts! Governments! Daycare Centers!  The TV news reporters sent their people out for LIVE TEAM COVERAGE. They are brushing their feet back and forth on the sidewalk to show that the SNOW IS ACCUMULATING! They are attempting to gauge snowball-readiness by crunching fistsful of snow for their eager viewers.  They are advising people to “stay home and don’t go out unless you absolutely need to,” because around here, we need to give the road crews room to work. And keep our children safe.  Because half a foot of snow can KILL YA!!

They can’t possibly overreact like this in parts of the country where it actually does snow from time to time.

Soup Husband Curt failed to heed the news reporters’ dire warnings. He is on his way to his second day of his new job. Otherwise, he’d be here. Nobody loves a good snow storm more than my husband. Fortunately, we have a 4×4 Jeep that will get him there, as long as he stays out of the way of the GIANT SNOW PLOWS and all the amateur drivers out there who never really learned how to drive in the snow.

I have the best view out my kitchen window of our bird feeder, and let me tell you, it looks like the feathered set is having a fantastic fete out there.  There must be 10 to 15 of them swarming around the feeder and the pile of sticks at the bottom.   Once they have their fill, they flit over to the holly bush right in front of our window so we can get a better look. There appears to be a variety of species involved – an inclusive party for sure – and a better person might bust out the bird guide and actually look ‘em up.  I can tell the cardinal from the rest, but other than that, I can only tell you that there are some black ones, a few brown ones, and one with a yellow beak. Curt said it may look like a party, but in reality, it’s probably Darwinism at it’s worst out there, with the big birds intimidating the little birds and whatnot.

A better-equipped blogger would insert interesting photos of birds in the snow right… HERE. However, I loaned my camera to a friend, and she thinks the memory chip she put into it may have, um, sizzled it, to the point where she admitted that she might owe me a new camera. This was not a special camera, just a digital point & shoot, but it suited my needs just fine.  We have bad camera karma – it was our third camera in, oh, the past 4 or 5 years. They keep getting dropped or fried or otherwise rendered nonfunctioning.

So then – as we begin what will probably (hopefully?) be the winter’s final snow day, I wish you all a wonderful day. Stay warm and dry, indulge in hot chocolate or homemade soup.  And try to view this day through children’s eyes, because there’s nothing quite as magical as waking up to a snowstorm big enough to have canceled school. 

…and I’m certain my oldest son will feel that way, just as soon as he wakes up… it’s 9:00 a.m. and he’s still blissfully unaware. TEENAGERS. Harumpf.

Nitpicky

My wise husband always says that comedy = tragedy + time.  If you think about it, it’s true -  eventually, you can laugh at situations that make you want to cry when you’re experiencing them.

I’m not laughing about today. Yet.

I spent all morning helping to decorate the elementary school gym for tomorrow’s big event: Colonial Day. Yesterday, I said it reminded me of my class’s hands-on learning experience (we did a Mexican fiesta to learn about our neighbors south of the border), but today, with all the kraft paper and tape and tempera-painted murals, I was reminded of decorating the high school gym for the prom. The tradition at my small, rural high school was to hold the prom in the gym. In the neighboring, just-as-rural district, they managed to have their prom at some hotel in the nearby “city” of Harrisburg, PA.   We Wildcats were sooo jealous of those Buffalo.  They got to go to a carpeted ballroom with crystal chandeliers and a parquet dance floor. We danced on Saturday on the same floor onto which we had dripped sweat during second period P.E. on Friday.

Anyway, I’m in the gym, chatting with the other helper-moms, and a couple of them said, we shouldn’t let the kids try on the wigs at the (Colonial) barber shop, what with the lice going around, and I’m all, whew, dodged that one again, we’ve been so lucky to have avoided that whole ordeal!

I returned home and enjoyed a quiet lunch, read the newspaper, started some laundry, and generally revelled in my quiet house.  It was nice. Oldest son returned home from school and while he was out walking the dog, the phone rang.

I recognized the number as the school nurse at The Boss’s elementary school – the same place whose gym I had just helped to transform into a colonial village. According to my clock, he would have already been on the school bus.

“Your son’s teacher sent him to the health room at the end of the day,” she said. “Because he was scratching his head.”

“Oh…?”

“Yes, and I checked, and found a couple of nits, and blah blah blahdeblah and nothing live, so he’s on the school bus, but blah blah blahdeblah deblahblahblah,” she continued, but I had stopped listening at “nit.”

(Alternate title for this post: “Nits? SHIT!!!”)

“Tomorrow is Colonial Day,” I said. “What do I have to do so he can be at school tomorrow?”

She outlined the procedure with the special shampoo and the comb and the washing in hot water of all the bedding (and the boys share a room, so the washing is times two) and coats and… “bring him to me first thing in the morning, and if I don’t see any nits, he can stay.”

And BAM – just like that – several extra hours of urgent work for me and the husband!  Because in addition to the normal stuff that goes on in my house on any given weeknight, I had also promised to make dozens of Johnny Cakes, plus a batch of corn bread, for tomorrow’s delicious Colonial lunch.  I started counting the hours of sleep I would have to give up and pondered whether to give them up on the front end or in the morning.

One $50-trip to CVS later, I was back at home and attacking the poor child’s head. And this is the kid with the long blond locks that everyone loves and comments on.  The kid who looks like Owen Wilson, or some west coast surfer dude. He has vehemently refused haircuts, even just a trim, despite his bangs being in his eyes, and because his hair rocks, we’ve allowed him to let it grow.

But desperate times call for desperate measures. “If you wanna go to Colonial Day tomorrow,” I told him, “you have to play by my rules. We are CUTTING some of your hair off. I don’t want to be combing all night.” I brandished my scissors.

Realizing I was not asking, he acquiesced. We washed and dried and vacuumed and sprayed and replaced bedding and bagged up bed pillows. I washed and cut and combed and inspected his hair.  In 12 years of parenting, this is our first encounter of the louse kind, so I didn’t exactly know what I was looking for, but I really don’t think I discovered anything foreign to the environment.

And the Johnny Cakes? Started ‘em at 10pm, and now it’s after 11 and I am almost done for tonight. Each batch is taking longer than I thought it would, so I’m blogging between batches. I have one more batch to make tomorrow, maybe, before I trot my shorn son to see the school nurse so he can be declared nit-free.

I swear, I will never use the term “nitpicky” again without thinking of today.

Colonial Day

THE TRADITION in our elementary school’s fifth grade is to put on a big Colonial Day each year.  The Boss has reached this much-anticipated milestone, and as his parents, so have we. Our son has an acting role – he will be a British soldier at the Boston Massacre – and the whole class will learn about crafts, activities, food, and everyday life in our country’s colonial days by visiting a “village” erected in the school’s gym.

Guess who erects the village, demonstrates the crafts, cooks the food, sews the costumes, and sets it all up and then tears it down and puts it away after it’s all over?

The parents do! And some teachers, and some other good folks from the neighborhood, but mostly, the parents of this year’s fifth graders.

And thus, we are earning our Good Mom Badges and Good Dad Points by Volunteering to Help. Dad was in the gym last night, setting up the village “shops” (mostly, the apothecary and the blacksmith).  In a little while, I’m going over to help with the “decorations.” And then later tonight and early tomorrow morning, I am going into fire up my griddle and churn out 4 or 5 batches of Johnny Cakes, to be served with apple butter (which is really hard to buy at the grocery store when you grow up eating homemade apple butter cooked in giant iron kettles).

This is a rite of passage for both the parents and the children, and I have found myself thinking a lot about the big hands-on educational experience from when I was my son’s age: THE MEXICAN FIESTA!

Ole!

Yep, that’s me, about 30 years ago. (!!) I’m sure my mom must have sewed the skirt and shawl for me, and I remember thinking I looked really cute in that choker with the red flower. We transformed our classroom with colorful blankets and giant sombreros, made more God’s Eyes than you could shake a twig at, danced the Mexican Hat Dance, and stuck reams of tissue paper on I-don’t-know-how-many pinatas. And, of course, there was Mexican cuisine, all made by the parents. (This may explain my affinity for Baja Fresh.)

The whole shebang was designed to help us learn more about our neighbors south of the border. (Also in the same World Studies textbook: Canada, our neighbors to the north! But of the two, nothing says “party!” like a big Mexican fiesta. Sorry, Saskatchewan.) And Colonial Day will give our children a taste of life in early America. Or at least, we hope so.  In the spring, they take an field trip to Colonial Williamsburg, VA, which will certainly reinforce what we’re trying to do in the school gymnasium. Also, it’s an overnight, so of course the parents! kids are really looking forward to that.

So, as history repeats itself, I’m ready to dig in and do my part so my son can enjoy this big event, and maybe learn something, too.  And in seven more years, I’ll have the chance to do it all over again for The Peezer, and please don’t even ask me to think about how old I’ll be then.