Desert Snow Day

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January 5, 2017

My son was born on the 12th day of Christmas. After today, we can put up all the decorations and kind of go back to a normal life. It marks the end of the holiday season, officially, for us. The next two January birthdays are the daughter's and her toddler who was adopted out, neither of which we expect to celebrate. So we're good until April.

It was snowing when we got up. I scraped the car and the sidewalk and took my daughter to orchestra at the high school. Then I made my way home and picked up my husband, who took the pot of coffee and his pillow and we went up to his mom's house to wait for the washing machine technician. He did the morning chores at his mom's since my daughter needed picked up. He'd lay down and try to nap. The tech's window was between 8 and noon, and he wasn't ready to be up.

Since it was a school day, my daughter and I had our bakery stop. We always go after orchestra. It was a kind of bribe to make sure she went every day and didn't skip one--if she skips one day of orchestra, we stop going to the bakery. We picked up a cake for my son.

Back at the house we grabbed the boy himself, also not ready to wake up. While he dragged himself into shoes, we fed the dogs so they would be happy while the house was empty. I scraped the car again and shoveled the walk for the third time. We carefully headed up to wait with dad. On the way, the washing machine tech called and said he was there, and was this white car us? (no) and there was no way he was making it up that hill to the house. I said I would call and have my husband meet him, or I would be there in five minutes, either way. It took me ten because of the storm, but he wasn't in his van. Also, the white car was right in the middle of the driveway and I couldn't get around it. So, my son and I tromped through the snow to the house and my husband tromped back to the car and drove it over a desert shrub of some sort to get it around the white car.

The washing machine needs a part. The tech knew quickly, and checked his inventory, and ordered it while standing holding his laptop in the snow in the middle of the driveway. The snow was still coming down. He returned to his truck after leaving a service ticket with us; he hadn't been able to get to the next town over because of terrible visibility, so he stayed at the bottom of the hill for quite some time. I wondered for a while if we were the only job he could accomplish today.

We wrapped all my son's presents in newspaper in about a million layers because we're an ornery family like that, and brought it all to the Matriarch's room to share the opening. My melty-mommy heart was in full force as he appreciated everything with such joy and didn't complain or be sarcastic or anything actually normal for him. He loved all his gifts and hugged his granny and immediately started in on the new board game.

Though we brought the cake, we didn't eat it, and we left about the time we would have done the second visit of the day. We did all the afternoon chores before we left--diapers, food, dog water, blankets, laundry, dishes, more cans of V8 and Coke and fresh ice packs in the cooler.

We didn't have to tromp through the snow on the way back out.

Birthday entertainment spotted the rest of the day, mostly revolving around snow, as the storm continued and six sidewalk-shovelings later you still couldn't tell I had shoveled.

The evening visit of the day was kind of treacherous. The evening chores got done quickly because we had to go make dinner. Then we got stuck in the snow on the way out, and had to message the friends that dinner would be later than we expected.

The snow day ends snowily, still snowing, and with an extremely happy and snuggly 12-year-old.




checklist , daughter , Matriarch , son , support