Snow a-coming.

This weekend Mark and I pulled out all of the wintry gear.   

An impending visit by Mark's parents is what spurred it; we habitually toss out-of-season and recently-outgrown clothes through the door of the spare bedroom and ignore them until we have to do something about them.  But we would have had to do it anyway, because tomorrow... it comes.

The snow.  The first sticking snow, the one that the fire hydrants foreshadowed all through the spring and summer and fall.

I'm a little ahead of the curve; I needed my warm hats and scarves and wool socks already this week, even though the thermostat reads  68° F, because I am still (slowly) losing postpartum weight and that makes me cold.  My nose and fingers and toes are cold right now.  

Mark says I should take cold baths and then I would acclimate myself and the cold wouldn't bother me, but I'd rather just pull on an extra layer and pour myself another cup of coffee and grumble.

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I called H this morning to plan for tomorrow.  I want to be in denial about the possibility of changing plans on a co-school day, but the first snow of the season always makes rush hour positively horrific.   I need to face reality, and reality says there's an extremely good chance I won't be driving across town to her house tomorrow at all, let alone on time.  

 I'm supposed to bring dinner, which was going to be chicken adobo in the crockpot with rice and pineapples.  I'm not going to defrost enough chicken legs for 14 people if there's a good chance that I won't be cooking them.  I have meatballs in the freezer; if it turns out that I'm going over there in the afternoon, I'll bring those.  They defrost fast and cook fast.

As for schoolwork, the younger kids (assuming it snows) will just get a snow day.  Our high schoolers, however, need to stay on track.   Fortunately, they don't need a lecture for geometry tomorrow, and they don't need one for history either; but I have a lot of stuff to hand out.  So I'm going to head over to her house after church today -- church is about halfway there -- and drop off all the materials I was going to hand out to her ninth-grade son, and spend a few minutes explaining how to use them.  Then I'm going home to enjoy the rest of my Sunday and batten down the hatches.

 I might conduct a Latin class tomorrow over Google Chat by audio, since I'm planning to introduce personal pronouns in the third person.  I really wanted to do a slew of oral exercises and recitation for it.  If the snow isn't too heavy and the roads are clear by the afternoon, we still might make it over there on Monday for dinner and to get the kids to Scouts.  But I'm not counting on it. 

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This represents a significant advance in my ability to deal with plan changes.  Previously the threat of snow on a co-school day for which I had already made my lesson plans only drove me into deep denial.  The snow might not be that bad!  I've got snow tires on my van!  I might just leave a little bit later!  We can keep going!

Yeah, no.  Not for the first snow of the season.  I'll still be ready to head over there, just in case it turns out to be a false alarm, or the snow holds off tonight and doesn't start till afternoon tomorrow.  But I'm going to be more ready for the snow.  And I'll be glad, tomorrow, that I did, if we wake up to a thick white blanket over everything, and all I have to do is wrap a scarf around my neck and pour another cup of coffee.

Comments

[Jenny]

"I'm a little ahead of the curve; I needed my warm hats and scarves and wool socks already this week, even though the thermostat reads 68° F, because I am still (slowly) losing postpartum weight and that makes me cold. My nose and fingers and toes are cold right now."

When I was a young child and my parents were poor graduate students, they routinely kept the thermostat on 62. I froze. When I got older and they got richer, they bumped the winter thermostat up to 68 and still I froze. The most enduring memory of winter while living with my parents is shivering under a blanket. Now that I control the thermostat, we keep it on 72 and I am still cold, but I dare not push it higher. I seem to not have the ability to warm myself at temperatures other people find perfectly comfortable. The only times I am not absolutely freezing all winter long is when I am pregnant. While pregnant, our mild winters don't feel so bad. Just a short glimpse into how other people feel all the time.

We are supposed to go to a Monday Night Football game next week. Expected low that night: 22F. We probably won't have snow, but it will be freezing! I have got to find somebody to shove these tickets onto.