Ha-ha, Tuesday, I beat you this week!

Tuesday, Tuesday, after last week's trampling, you may have thought you had today in the bag. School was cancelled, Tom left for NY. The odds were good that it might be a tough slog. But, you lose. Although the boys woke up before 6 am (horrid) and the snow started melting about an hour after things looked positively picturesque, this gal (and her little crew) had a lovely day. When we all finally slugged out of bed, I made some insanely good bluberry-Meyer lemon muffins on which we all gorged. Then the snowman ("Jack, why the dowel?" "Uh, to hold the balls together, Mom." Such an engineer this young one!), Home Alone, etc. And, I must give credit where credit is due and thank the heavens for an afternoon babysitter. Conversations about butts, sibling bickering, a bloody lip and also a bloody nose did have me fairly beat by 2 pm. And then, cue heavenly music and rays of light, the sitter arrived. While she was here, I mostly ran errands and worked on a piece, but even going to the dry cleaners and standing in a long line at a department store were fun. It is clear that sometimes I simply need to be by myself. While queuing, I considered -for possibly the 185th time in my life- that I wish my last name started with 'van' or 'van der'. Seriously, that is the surname equivalent of Ministry versus Cabinet or Office of. Cool versus less so. I'm not sure T would cotton to the idea of adding adjusting our name in this way; he's so literal when it comes to heritage and such. Just because we have no Dutch ancestry AT ALL shouldn't mean we can't adopt a bit of a name. In my opinion.

How is it 8:16 pm already? Surely, you're thinking, I can't mean that bedtime is near. But that's precisely what I mean, and so the mint chocolate cookie recipe that is staring at me with hangdog eyes -please make me, pleeeaase- will have to wait yet another day. I'm almost done with a book -who can believe it?!- and need the sleep. #gettingold #notsleepingpast6inasmanyyearswilldothat

For dinner I made some pumpkin ravioli in a sage-brown butter sauce and also enjoyed a cup of yesterday's potage. Even better today. Dinner = delicious.

On a serious note, have you read the first two installments (yesterday and today) of the Invisible Child series headlining the New York Times this week? It is a terrific, moving, heartbreaking call to action. The featured child is an 11-year-old named Dasani who, for the past two years, has lived with her seven siblings and parents in a mouse-infested, rotting, 520-square-foot room in a shelter in Brooklyn. Wow, wow. Please make time to read the pieces if you can.

Snow!

Though much has melted, the snow this morning was really beautiful. No school so play, a quick trip to the market, popcorn and Home Alone have made for a good day.

Snow day a'coming: what that really means

Is there really a parent out there (especially a stay-at-home parent!) who enjoys a snow day? Especially a Monday snow day when there's not enough snow to sled? I think they're few and far between. I think possibly there is one. Picture it. You've been together all weekend. In all likelihood you've maxed out your ability to enthusiastically read and role play in a believably engaged fashion. You've played Old Maid and Go Fish, Chess and Pentago more times than you can count. You've made s'mores, "eaten" snow, lit a fire and watched as the damn pyromaniacs got a mite too close and threw 9 pine cones in even though you told them the sap would crust up the chimney. Grr. And finally, mercifully, you-thought-you'd-never-get-there Sunday night comes, and the kids purposefully pour a bucket of water out of their bath. At that point, you might raise your voice, bathtime might definitely come to an end, but ultimately you pull yourself together because...dunh, dunh, dunh dunh!! Monday will be here before you know it.

Until that rug's pulled out from under you. Because, it's.a.SNOW.DAY!

I have lived in DC long enough to know when the other shoe is about to drop. As our nation's capital -- and to be fair, the lame-in-weather 'burb commuters -- cannot handle the slightest bit of precipitation, the snow we received today as well as the ice it will surely become in sub-freezing temps tonight, will definitely result in cancelled everything tomorrow. I can just see that 5:30 am text from the school now.

Once again I will let you know that for many of us at-home parents, this is a bust. We schedule our days down to the seconds, time delineated into the with- and without-the-kids segments. When you suddenly lose 6 or 7 hours, you are way behind the eight ball. And then you still have all the hours you'd already budgeted into the with-the-kids side of the equation.

Tomorrow, for example, instead of kissing my darlings 85 times at 7:59 am, then shoving them out the door into T's car and exhaling slightly until 2:50 pm, I will be on the hamster wheel from 6:10 am until bedtime, more than 12 hours later. That is a big damn difference.