Snow Day

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January 6, 2017

The snow is deep. Since my husband got the car stuck yesterday in the evening, I chose not to try to drive up the hill. I pulled off the road at the mailbox, rummaged around in the snow for the papers from the past two days and found them both. I had a grocery sack in one hand and the newspapers in the other, and had brought gators for my legs to protect them from the snow, a super furry rabbit hat for my head, and waterproof gloves for my hands. It almost felt like overkill. I tromped up the road like I had done yesterday out of necessity, but today I did it out of choice and perhaps over-caution.

Since the snow was so thick and the city can't afford snow removal (since there is so rarely snow, especially over 24 hours of falling snow, there is rarely a need to budget for snow), schools were delayed two hours and a friend of mine texted me the schedule so I knew if and when my daughter had class. The delayed-start announcement doesn't affect most people: they just go to school two hours later and do whatever is posted and the bells and teachers tell them to, whether that's shorter periods or no class at all. Homeschoolers who only use an extracurricular class for one period a day, and not the first period, are left in the dark about whether they just have a short day or all short periods. It was quite generous for my friend to send me that info. My daughter was less pleased, though, and I made sure she knew to call me before actually leaving the building since I still had to go take care of the Matriarch.

I was about 15 minutes over schedule with that trip, because of the walking and the roads. She called just as I was lacing up my boots.

It was convenient that school was starting late in that the Matriarch had decided to ask us to visit just twice a day. Instead of a 8-9:30 window, a 12-1:30 window, and a 6-7:30 window, we would just visit in a 9:30-11 window and a 5:30-7 window. She has always tried to make it easier on us and reduce the number of times we have to come up. It's going to be inconvenient for most other days, in that the 8-9:30 window is perfect for school days where I drop my daughter off at 8:10 and pick her up at 9:10. I can care for her and do a few other errands before returning to pick up my daughter, make our bakery visit, and then go home. Especially since the school is 5 blocks away and the bakery is 5 blocks away. There's not really an inconvenience there. On the new schedule, I'll not have to leave my 5 blocks, so I'll likely just head home and do something at home for an hour before heading back out. And then I'll have to go home for another half-hour to hour before heading back out for the first visit of the day. I do not see this as an efficient use of my time.

Go away, come home, go away, come home, go away, come home...

I wonder if there's some other way to make this change, though, because this is not a reduction in load for me; instead, it increases the impact of the interruption.

It worked for today, though, and that's enough for right now.



daughter , Matriarch , self-care