13 Steps to Successful Snow Removal

1. First, have five children. Buy each one a snow shovel.

2. When your children complain and ask, “When are we going to get a snowblower?” explain that you already have one: 5 kids with shovels who tell you how much this blows.

3. Every snow day, wake them early even though there’s no school, so they can help shovel.

4. When friendly neighbors come by with their snow blowers or plows and offer to help you out, thank them and send them away. Explain that you are attempting to teach your children the value of manual labor.

5. Dream of the day you no longer have to lead by example.

6. Be okay with the eldest child moving out– right up until the first time it snows and you realize your work force has decreased by 20%.

7. Break two shovels with use during a heavy snow season and attempt to replace them. Discover that the only shovels available at the hardware stores in the middle of winter are cheap plastic ones that are manufactured in places that never see snow, such as Sri Lanka.

8. Receive, one season, the snow that breaks you. The one you give up on, with the ice layer on top. The one where you can’t even make your kids help out it’s so heavy and brutal. The one where the mailman will no longer deliver your mail anymore because your driveway is too treacherous. Where your dogs slide right out of their collars like Max in The Grinch and go shooting down the hill into the street. The snow that every day the sun messes with a little more, tricking you into believing it’s helping when in actuality it is only creating still more tenacious ice rivers everywhere you need to step.

9. Go online to check the weather and see 40 days and 40 nights of snow coming. Order real shovels off of Amazon.

10. Have the delivery of said shovels delayed by the weather.

11. Reschedule a weather-cancelled outing with a relative and discover he has an extra snowblower. He always was your favorite relative. Not only is this more unlikely and better than extra bacon, but he’s willing to loan it to you until his other one breaks. Forgo sleep to retrieve it. Offer him up to three of your children in exchange for the snowblower. Extoll their shoveling virtues.

12. Come to the understanding that, unlike a pre-season purchase of a snowblower, a mid-season gifting of a snowblower does not possess any snow-preventing voodoo.

13. Bring your children to the understanding that possessing a snowblower does not actually get them out of shoveling detail; it only lightens their load.

Did you have to shovel snow when you were a kid?

Beware the Ice Weasels.

Yesterday we didn’t set our alarms because the district called a snow day by 7pm the night before. We woke up at 9am, a blissful lie-in. As we watched the remaining defining landmarks around our neighborhood continue to lose shape and disappear under the snow, CC looked up from his computer and confessed.

CC: Umm, your flowers aren’t going to make it here tomorrow. Because of the weather.

Me: Flowers?

CC: Yeah, for Valentine’s Day. None of the trucks delivering fresh flowers are getting through. They all have notices up.

Me: Oh. You won’t be receiving your gift, either. It’s kind of a project that involves me leaving the house. That isn’t happening except for the digging out to go to work part tonight.

I’ve long held the view that Valentine’s Day is the largest BS, commercially-fabricated holiday, surpassing even “X-mas”. However, I am a huge fan of chocolate, and flowers. And finally, later in my life, I am a fan of love. So in honor of Valentine’s Day, here are a few thoughts about love.

FROM MY WEDDING INVITATION:

“Love is a snowmobile racing across the tundra and then suddenly it flips over, pinning you underneath. At night, the ice weasels come.”-Matt Groening

FROM MY FRIEND TRACI, WHOM YOU CAN FOLLOW ON PUNCHNEL’S, ON MOM LOVE:

I told my son that I loved him so much it almost hurt. He said, “I love you more, so it does hurt.” If he keeps suggesting that he can outlove his mother, I’ll show him hurt.

FROM MY FRIEND AMY, WHOM YOU CAN FOLLOW ON 50 DATES IN 50 STATES, ON DOG LOVE:

At work, I usually take a moment when things get intense or low or too quiet to ask: Have I told you today how much I love my dog? To which they answer, I don’t think you have yet, today. And then I say: I love my dog so much, it’s stupid.

IN RESPONSE TO MY QUESTION, “WHAT MAKES A HAPPY MARRIAGE?”

My mom, happily married to my stepdad for 18 years: “Let your spouse be him/herself. Keep your sense of humor. Encourage each other’s interests. Learn the skill of listening and patience.”

My stepmom, happily married to my dad for 30 years: “A sense of humor and lots of prayer… not always in that order.”

Me to #5: What do you think is the key to a happy marriage?

#5: umm…I don’t know?

Me: Why?

#5: Umm… I’m eleven?

Me: Okay, what do you love more than anything in the whole world?

#5: Ummm…. I don’t know.

Me: Dad? Jack? Video games? Bacon?

#5: I don’t know. Can I go now?

I love chocolate so much, I don't care if it has 5 different kid spits on it. — I love chocolate so much, I don’t care if it has 5 different kid spits on it.

Happy Valentine’s Day. What do you think about love?

Nobody Ever Accused Me of Being Donna Reed

Early into my new gig as an accidental stepmom, I determined that part of my job description could not include frequent, thorough cleaning of the kids’ rooms. This wasn’t some high and mighty ideal, as if I were somehow above this mundane task. It was more of a recognition and acceptance that I was an abysmal housekeeper before I got kids.

For my 8th birthday, my parents gave me a poster to hang on my bedroom door. It was an elaborate cartoonish drawing of a disturbingly messy room with a caption that read: My Room: Love it or Leave it! They thought it was hilarious.

Right around this time, which was shortly after my mother stopped cleaning my room, my father took up photography. He did a series of shots with the poster placed in strategic locations around my room. Art imitating life and all. I was not at home at the time and only discovered he had done this after the prints were developed.

[For anyone under 30, I’ll explain: you used to have to take rolls of film out of your camera and drop them off at the local photo store. As long as it wasn’t attacked by either terrorists or a time-traveling DeLorean, you’d get your pictures, on paper, back in anywhere from 2-10 days.]

I highly suspect that beer was involved in my father’s art project and have no doubt that he highly amused himself while doing it. Had we the internet back then, he probably would have blogged it.

So I’m a slob. It never really bothered me until there were suddenly seven of us in a too-small rental house and I couldn’t find a single thing I owned because any object I let go of was immediately covered by six possessions that other people placed on top of it for the simple fact that there wasn’t a place to put their stuff either. If the object had the misfortune to be something shiny, it was ferreted away by #5 to his secret collection. Car keys were a particular favorite of his.

The truth is that out of all of us, my husband was the only one with a clue about how to run a household of this size. I tend to keep my mouth shut about that– in my neighborhood, it’s apparently sport to complain about your husband and how he can’t load a dishwasher. I’m afraid that if the women around here really know everything CC does in this house, they’ll take him and leave me alone with the kids.

I could write a whole other post on how my kids came to have a resentment against sheets. Oh, that’s right– I did. Over on Family Circle’s Momster blog: Parenting Confessions: Unmade Beds Don’t Bother Me. That’s why God gave us doors that close, my friends.

Are you a slob, or a neat freak?