My Priorities May Be All Out of Whack

We're having a very strange winter. 70 degrees one day, snowing the next. It confuses me. And makes it very hard to get dressed in the morning. Hmmm...it looks sunny, but there might be snow in the forecast. Or hail. Or giant blobs of Rice Krispie Treats. See, what I mean? It's hard to plan for both sunshine and the potential of falling sugary treats.

This week we had snow on Monday. If you're from someplace where it regularly snows then we didn't get much snow. If, like me, you're from Southern California...it was the end of the world. And how did my adorable children greet me on the morning of the end of the world? By screaming at the top of their lungs, "it's snowing!!!!!!!!" And then there was some traditional kid-tribe snow dance of joy followed by hands and noses smushed against the windows.

And what did I say in the face of this boundless joy and glee? "Time for schoolwork!"

Yep. That's right. No snow days here. (Insert villainous theme music here).

Now, in all fairness the kidlets did get to go outside and romp in the snowy snowness later that day. After their schoolwork was done.

But here's where I think my priorities may be just slightly misaligned. Two days later I declared it a school-free day. Gasp! I know. So why had I suddenly transformed from the merciless mommy who makes them do schoolwork while staring longingly out the window at the falling snow to some kick back mom who cancels school? Well, I'll tell you. Major Dad was home from work and decided to rearrange our office/library/cluttered room of doom. So in order to properly take advantage of our slave labor....uh, wait...I mean in order to effectively use the cheerful and completely voluntary assistance of our munchkins, I cancelled school.

So, no cancelling school for possibly-the-end-of-the-world-snow days, but I'm perfectly fine with closing down the homeschool for Mary Poppins style cleaning days?

Yep. Works for me.

Teacher Hooky

When kids are homeschooled, it's kinda hard to play hooky. I mean seriously, where are they going to go? "I'm not going to school today...I'm...uh...staying home." Haha...gotcha!

What's even worse is when homeschooling parents want to call in sick and go play hooky. How many other teachers have to actually take their students with them when they want to ditch school?

That's me today. I feel like playing hooky. And I'm not talking, "hey, let's take a field trip or do a nature walk." I mean, I don't want to do anything educationally related at all. Nothing. I don't even want to correct my kids manners today. I will because I'm OCD about their manners and proper grammar, but aside from that I don't want to pull out the counting critters for addition, I don't want to do map work and I don't want to discuss the reign of Queen Elizabeth I. Nothing, nada, zilch.

See, we've had two very long days and nights in our house. The kids were up late two nights in a row, which is generally a recipe for chaos anyway, and we've had Verizon digging up our neighborhood to install big orange cables of some sort and the jackhammering, digging and coffee inspired good natured comaraderie commences at 7am. Toss all that in a big bowl, mix it up and you have a healthy dose of exhaustion with a heaping side dish of grumpy. Not me...the kids. I'm not grumpy. I'm not. I'm just expressing my very strong desire to avoid my teaching responsibilities while blaming it on anything and everything that shifts the blame to something that isn't me.

So I have declared today to be a snow day. (It's not snowing) Or a holiday. (Today is National Almond Day)* Or a teacher workday. Take your pick. It is a workbook free day.

*Today is in fact National Almond Day. It is also the anniversary of both the first 911 call and the day King Tut's tomb was unsealed. All items of significant historical importance that are being sadly overlooked. Hence, my selfless decision to hold a solemn school-free day to honor almonds, emergency services and Indiana Jones.

The Invisible Monkey Solution

Winter is not my friend. I despise being cold. And I'm not that fond of rain unless it's a thunderstorm and I'm inside under an electric blanket sipping hot chocolate while the power stays on. And I don't like ice. Which is weird since I spent most of my formative years as a figure skater and I now spend 2-3 days a week at an ice rink watching my kids skate. Maybe it's long suppressed emotional scarring. Or maybe it all goes back to the first thought...I just despise being cold.

Anyway, I've also discovered another drawback to winter. My kids go completely bonkers with cabin fever. If there was lots of fluffy white snow on the ground I could at least let them run around outside until their runny noses were officially frozen to their faces. But today it's just icy and cold and drizzly and yucky. I can't in good conscience let them go play in the frozen wasteland but to them even a thin layer of dirty cracked ice should qualify as a snow day.

So now we're all in the house, schoolwork is done and the bickering has begun. Here's the scenario....Ella & Jack are playing zoo. It's an invisible zoo, which is awesome & full of imagination, but keep in mind it's invisible. After building all the invisible cages and filling them with invisible animals, Ella decides to take the invisible monkey on a walk. At which point Jack declares that he is the official invisible monkey wrangler.

Ella: "But he's my monkey."

Jack: "It's my zoo too!"

Ella: "Why don't you go walk the elephant."

Jack: "I don't want to walk an elephant. I want to walk the monkey."

Ella: "Go get a lion. Lions are cool."

Jack: "Elllllllllllaaaaaaaa."

At which point my head threatened to explode. So Mommy the ultimate arbitrator stepped in.

Me: "Here, I just bought another invisible monkey for your zoo. Now you have two."

Ella & Jack: (after a moment of stunned, wide eyed blinking silence) "Oh, ok."

And off they went with their invisible monkeys.

So, what time is Spring?

Pre-Snow Snow Day

By now you've all figured out that we don't close our homeschool for snow. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow as long as I've got my fuzzy socks and comfy sweater, we're cracking the books. Today however we had a pre-snow snow day. The weather smarties have warned us of a big ol' storm heading this way that may dump close to 30 inches of snow on our humble Southern hamlet. So today, school was closed so we could prepare for the storm.

We had to return books to the library, stop by the grocery store (along with everyone else who lives in this town apparently), get gas and go sledding. Wait, what was that? Did the merciless mommy just say sledding? Yes, in fact I did. Since we will probably be trapped in the house for the next two days, the kids and I bundled up and hit the slopes. Well, we hit the slope on the side of our house. It's actually perfect for sledding. Sometimes it's good to have a house up on a hill. Not when the driveway is iced up and the mini-van can't get traction, but when you've got two kids with sleds...totally worth it.

I did try to squeeze some educational time into the sledding. Ella keep heading to the left and sliding up the embankment before skidding to stop in a small ditch. No matter where she started she always ended in the ditch. So I told her a little bit about gravity and the shape of our yard, but she was usually swooshing down the hill with an "ok Mommy!" before I finished the sentence. And Jack, my fearless 3 year old, was right behind her.

So today our school was a crowded grocery store (emergency preparedness) and a snow covered hill (physical education and the physics of sledding...tell me you wouldn't have signed up for that class in college). Now tomorrow, when the snow is actually falling it's back to books and hand rolling beeswax candles. More on that project later.