Photo:
JiaYing Grygiel
Sleep in, go sledding, sip hot chocolate — repeat.
This was on day five of being snowbound, and it was just fine by me. Everything I need is right here. I’m grateful we haven’t lost power this time around, fingers crossed. I’m grateful for our ample supply of food (but no bananas left). I’m grateful for our $12.48 boots from the Fred Meyer clearance rack keeping our feet dry and warm.
Usually our days are frantic cycles of go, go, go! Scrambling to drop-offs and pick-ups, feeding the ravenous kids, cramming in homework and then a quickly gobbled dinner before passing out.
But all of our extra-curriculars got cancelled. No piano, no math enrichment, no soccer, no back-to-back weekend events. Suddenly, our very full calendar fell wide open. The kids have no homework — just a bunch of unscheduled days. Time to have fun!
A storm like this only comes around every so often. I tell my boys that when I was a kid, I waited at the bus stop in a minus-24-degree blizzard because school got cancelled only when the wind chill hit minus-25. (True story!)
Now, they can tell their kids about having to stay home for five days that one time back in 2019 and running out of hot chocolate! Oh, the horror...
Our parent community
Hate ’em or love ’em, Facebook groups are key to connecting this parent community. Through one parent group, I lent out my hoard of snow bibs. (I grew up in New York, I’m prepared.) From our Buy Nothing group, I picked up a larger-size coat and mittens for my growing kid.
There’s a theme running through the parent chatter: We’re all in this together.
I get that working parents are climbing the walls and that the main streets are clear and dry. We live on a hilly side street, and no plow is ever going to push through. In typical Seattle fashion, we’re waiting for the snow to melt. Yesterday, I watched a car attempt to drive up our street, only to back down the hill in reverse. I don’t even want to imagine our school bus trying to crawl through this mess.
But slush is slowing seeping down the sewers, and we’ll be back to our usual grind all too soon. It’ll be good to get back to some semblance of normalcy and go on a serious Trader Joe’s re-stocking run. Mother Nature was trying to tell us something these past few days, I think: Take the time to slow down and enjoy being stuck with your kids — when you have the chance.
