Snow Days.....

I know that many people snow day fantasies of delicious family time curled up in front of a fire drinking hot chocolate and building snow men. It sometimes works out that way. And indeed last Saturday felt like that. But by the second school snow day almost no one I know was feeling that love. My friend Anna said she was so at the end of her wits that a mammogram seemed amazing—a nice quiet space decorated in pink where they talk softly to you. And if you get in a traffic jam it takes even longer. Eli has absorbed the fact that “we don’t go to school in the winter.” And I do love cuddling with my kids and I understand that the soon to be seven year olds may be outgrowing this but by the end of today I found myself saying “if one more person touches my boob I will become violent” We had a complicated kid switch going on with another first grade boy and Manuel had already by the time I got home instituted a policy of star wars reprive.. As in you may not speak about star wars for 20 minutes and if you so much as utter the name Yoda or mention clone wars the clock restarts. This afternoon’s snow day activity involved at the three first graders request antiquing. They took me to some store on the mall I’d never been too where they knew about a back room full of all kinds of bizarre ritual objects. They were particularly attracted to the peace pipes, weapons and various statue icons looking things. We stayed there for 20 minutes discussing various goddesses before we headed to the cville art gallery. Jonathan explained that while he doesn’t like to do art he really likes to look at it. And pretentious 1 2 and 3 talked around saying things like “hmm this is really interesting” “this must have taken a lot of imagination” “I think the materials here are very unique” They took a card for their favorite artist and plan to call him up next week.

Meanwhile I’ve assigned my husband the environmental scientist the task of figuring out what this is all about. He was in a meeting with a few colleagues when I beeped in on the cell phone with tirades like “what happened to global warming it was working for me. What do you mean it’s going to snow 20 inches this weekend? How can the state climatologist be out of the office today of all days”

Monday is my long teaching day so Manuel was on primary kid duty. This did allow my most lively music 101 of the year in which I made a deal with the students that if they explained Taylor Swift to me I’d explain Monteverdi to them. Thank goodness it was Monteverdi day because the snow allowed for about ten minutes of preparation. But I’d say that if after writing a book on the dude and teaching this class multiple times I can’t teach Monteverdi in my sleep I deserve to be fired. As for Taylor Swift I learned basically that she’s hot and she speaks to their deepest darkest feelings. It was I think our liveliest discussion yet. They seem unbothered by the whole out of tune thing.

The other exciting news around town is that one of my friends finished her second book. I have a theory which is that in a collective only one person can finish a book at a time as it is such an unpleasant and overwhelming endeavor. So now that one has finished that leave room for more to come. Stay tuned for more second books out of Charlottesville!