Waiting for the Snow

OK, here's hoping this works out. I finally started a blog. I don't even know what "blog" stands for. But now I've got one. I feel like I'm part of a club and I don't really know what the club is, but I've been told I needed to do this and like a sheep on a bad hair day I am following and trusting blindly.

Waiting for the snow...weather services should really just spring the surprise on us. Otherwise we poor snow-starved saps gravitate to every window in the house, staring hungrily at the skies, willing the stuff to come down. I spent more time looking out the windows today than I normally spend...what? Doing laundry? Putting on makeup? Don't make me laugh. OK, let's just say I spent a lot of time looking out the window. Waiting for the snow. Sounds like Waiting for Godot. Did Godot ever come? I don't know - I got away with not reading it in high school.

(Side note: in 9th grade we were assigned a list of books to read. We would be tested on each of them in discussion-style questions. One of the books was "Innocence Abroad." I never actually read that one, either, thinking in a lame-brained way that somehow I could fudge my way through it. This was before we got into a higher-level class where we were expected to know what we were talking about. I began to write my answer and suddenly realized: wait - is it "Innocence Abroad" or "In a Sense Abroad"? Yikes. I had a 50/50 shot, so I took it. I chose, "In a Sense Abroad." I wrote a fudged discussion answer using the wrong title entirely. The teacher laughed so hard she could barely hand it back to me in front of EVERYONE. Moral of the story: gambling and education don't mix. Don't do it.)

So it's rained nonstop all day and the temperature is hovering at 32.5. It will taunt us like this all evening. Once we go to bed, 14 flakes will fall in our county. Then it will go away. And that will be our March snowfall.

I'm in an unusual position of looking for things to do. Until this past month I homeschooled our daughter Sophie. It was a real job. Lots of time-consuming responsibilities. It was fun, hard, rewarding, and like school everywhere, at times a real pain in the butt. But we both loved it. And then this year, 5th grade, halfway through the year, she told me she wanted to go to public school. Not having been in a few years, she felt there was a certain...glamour, shall we say?...in classrooms, chalkboards, posters and class art, lunchrooms, and oh, my, THE SCHOOL BUS. She wanted to experience it all. I had my reservations but I had to respect her passion for trying something new, I had to let her try her wings. It's been a month now since she started and she's having the time of her life. Oh, she is doing so well, she was obviously ready for this. I really am happy for her and proud of her - I would never want her to fail just so she would come back to me - but I told her she needs to understand that I can be happy for her and sad for me at the same time. It's not her job to keep me happy. Her job is to do her best in whatever form of schooling she uses, not to fix me. That's my responsibility. (She said, "OK!" brightly and skipped of to the bus stop while I stood in the doorway clutching tissues to my eyes.) I lost a job when she went to public school. I also lost a constant companion. Yeah, that's right - I was doing it for me as much as her. I know that. And I was willing to let go for her sake, but WOW has it been hard getting used to it. Our 4-year old son Sam goes to preschool, so for three hours a day, four days a week, I come home to a very quiet house. Now, the cat and the dog see it as a heaven-sent opportunity for me to just plop down and give them backscratches; I hate to disappoint them but that's not going to happen. So instead I've been wandering the house. Looking at an awful lot of laundry. Thinking, "I should really get a life." And instead I look out the windows, waiting for snow. My, aren't I just the soul of responsibility and get-off-your-butt-edness?

I've got some ideas of things to do, ways to fill in the time and make something of myself. Signed up for substitute teaching at Sam's preschool...volunteering at a local hospice organization...and yes, doing that darned laundry. But until inspiration hits, I'm feeling sort of lost, like I'm going through the motions. Homeschooling was like a mission for me, something I really believed in. I still believe strongly in it, it's such a great thing to do with your children. It was better than an alarm clock in the morning for getting me going. It was like nothing else I've ever been involved in. And then Sophie came home on her second day, all bubbly and excited: "Mommy, the way Mrs. Price teaches math, it's now my favorite subject!" *sigh* Well. Isn't that special. Don't feel like you have to go easy on me. But: the bottom line is, math is now her favorite subject! Whether I like it or not, whether I feel special or not, God bless Mrs. Price, because math is now my daughter's favorite subject! And that is a miracle.

No snow yet.

I knew I was in trouble today when it was cold and rainy and the highlight of my afternoon was having peanut butter cookies in the oven when her schoolbus pulled up. Geez, how June Cleaver can I be???? Oh, the professionals are shaking their heads at me and saying, "Just leave her, it's too late, she's gone," and the homemakers, the soccer moms, the casserole-baking, coupon-clipping, binky-washing moms are saying, "Just hang in there, sister."

I started this blog because - wait, I have to let the dog in, I forgot he was out in the rain - I started this blog because I enjoy writing and sometimes my friends get a charge out of the quirky humor I sometimes throw out there. (Holy COW this dog smells bad.) Anyway (holding my breath right now) I'm not always introspective. I love making up new words to old songs, I love those left-field jokes, and I REALLY, REALLY love the funny and crazy things that my kids and my husband come up with in everyday life. You can't make up this kind of fun. There are days I just stare after them, like, "Who was that masked kid? Was that MY child?" or "What planet did YOU just fly in from?" My kids are just now getting old enough to inform me sweetly that, genetically speaking, they flew in from Planet Stephanie, so I need to stop with the weird looks.

You know what? I don't care whether it snows or not. I've got a pretty cool family around me, and there's lots of interesting things outside the house that I can start doing. I've got three hours a day, four days a week, that belong to me, little old me. What can I do with that? What CAN'T I do with that?

Well, dadgum. Look at that. It's started to snow.