When life is like a jello mold

I awoke at 4:45 this morning, thinking about something or another related to our move. Probably the utterly first-world but nonetheless vexing problem of The Perfect Kitchen Table. Truthfully, you don't know how hard it can be to find The One.

I left my sweet husband snoring soundly and relocated to the basement bed so as not to bother him. In the dim glow of my phone's screen with my little cat purring alongside my thigh, I searched for tables until the boys came to "wake me."

The kids' school posted another two-hour delayed start, so we had a play date and then I dropped off all the munchkins before racing home to welcome the termite inspector, receive a delivery, confirm our moving contract, yada, yada, yada. 

These last few weeks I've felt as if I live in a surreal jello mold--translucent but still hazy with visual obstructions peppered throughout, wobbly, somewhat soundproof. It's hard to orient: what day is and does it really matter? What time do we have to be where? Is there homework or not? No, I don't know why you had "gross chicken with blood" for school lunch. I still don't understand what the chicken with blood was all about but the boys were emphatically repulsed. I laughed.

This jello mold sensation is one I've experienced before, during times of serious flux when I become unmoored in some way. It reminds me how much I appreciate and thrive on structure, even structured times for spontaneity. I know how that sounds, but it's me. It works for me.

It works for the kids too. They have been so wonky these last few days: no school, delays, school, staying up late, eating more pizza than usual. It does a number on them. I can see it in quicker tempers and tears, in inane bickering and tottering klutziness that are always a tell-tale sign of fatigue.

I look for ways to plant a flag and hold us steady. And that, my friends, is the reason for my Perfect Kitchen Table fixation. The reason I've stayed organized with the myriad to-dos for our move. The reason I insisted we start Valentine's making in advance because 51 cards take some time, and time we have had.

On the way home from school this afternoon, we drove by our new house, and despite the ugly mountains of dirty snow and the brown foliage peeking out from behind them, the sky shone blue and we looked at what will soon be home with giant smiles of excitement and promise.

There, I imagine (new table or not), the wobble will still. At least for a while.

Farewell letter to All The Snow

Dear All The Snow,

You may leave now. You're crimping my gutters and pulling boards off AROMO and canceling and/or delaying school and making things die and ripping my Dish off the exterior wall of my home and being generally annoying. You've started melting so the kids' don't even want to play in you anymore.

Please do not come back until 2017 at the earliest. Or, if you do, go to a city that better handles your existence and removal.

Thank you,

Tired and Busy Mom Who Can Play No More Board Games

Diary of a snow, 1 (hopefully only)

**This got published on HuffPo Comedy!!
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Well, my favorite thing in the world has happened. An epic snow. Truly, I can't imagine anything I'd rather experience.

I love being housebound for days. Playing every game in the house with children who alternate manically between whining and laughing is dreamy. I adore shoveling one pile into another pile right next to the original one like some sort of deranged Sisyphean loon. There are never too many puzzles to complete, and your hips will not fix forever into seated position as you try to conquer your collection.

I can't think of anything I'd rather do than run out of lemons, milk, kindling and sanity- all before 3pm when it is entirely too early to imbibe and all stores are closed and your car is snowed in anyway, so who cares and what would he/she do about it anyway?? #amiright?

It is tremendous to watch your lovingly tended plants be crushed under banks of white death. It feels good to be on live-text with your girlfriends as they implode. It is even more fun to pay for both school and after-school activities and then watch your kids enjoy 10% of all that. My sides are aching I'm laughing so hard. Beyond question, this is prime living. 

"I'm alive!"

Truly, winter is idyllic. Especially in cities that, each year, appear to experience winter as if they've just discovered something new and potentially dangerous.

• "Can I touch it?"
• "How do I do this thing called snow?"
• "What is driving and functioning in temperatures of 20 degrees? Is life possible?"

Clearly I am being sarcastic. Well, except for the lemons. I despise being without lemons because really, it's like the sun might as well have burned out. 

Being snowed in is like a detox of sorts.

The first 48 hours are miserable. I mean, you NEED a fix. It's horrid. And then you accept that you can't make hot chocolate because listen, there is no more milk. And if your kids go across the street to their snow fort and you cease checking on them because you're enraptured with your New Orleans puzzle? Well, they're fine. 

You start to realize just how great all that senseless shoveling is for your physique, and so you double-time it out there. Because you can. Plus, your cat fancies himself a snow leopard and traverses with spy-like glee the extensive pathways you've dug out for his wimpy canine friend's bathroom needs. And you've eaten chili for three days straight and could use some alone time in the fresh, open air, if you get my drift.

That chicken in the freezer? Girl, it was time to roast that bird anyway. Get busy. It's #notchili. And if you are also supposed to be packing? Get a garbage can and watch out world, because you am gonna tear through this joint like it's your job. Nothing is safe. 

Soon enough, you're gonna find some more lemons and with them the sun, and those goddamn white banks out there are gonna melt. And it's back to school, back to everything. Onward ho!