I was talking to my bestie Jen the other day about winter.
OK, it started with her calling me out a little.
Remember my post about snow days?
It was a nice post.
And it was a truthful post.
At the time when I wrote it.
See, I wrote it at the very beginning of winter.
When I was still in love with having my children around me while it is snowing outside and we are stuck in our home drinking hot cocoa, eating brownies and playing with each other’s hair.
It is over a month later and I am here to tell you something: I am not that mom anymore.
Winter is sucking every bit of air out of the room in which I am writing this.
As I type these words, it is snowing.
Yet again.
For the ninth time in a 168-hour period.
That is one week, by the way.
In that 168-hour period, we have also experienced sleet, ice, plunging temperatures and snow thunder.
No wait.
THAT WAS MY NEIGHBOR SNOW BLOWING HIS DRIVEWAY AT ONE IN THE FRIGGIN’ MORNING.
Yes, friends. Winter is winning.
I hear it in the grumble of every person I come in contact with when I happen to venture outside.
Which is rare if I have anything to do with it.
If I see one more “FUN THINGS TO DO WITH YOUR KIDS DURING WINTER” article, I am gonna go outside in my underwear and scream at the top of my lungs.
But I can’t go outside in my underwear.
Ron Magers told me I can’t or I will need to go to the Emergency Room where Ravi Baichwal is standing by to tell me that not only can you get frostbite from being outside for just five minutes but also that the H1N1 flu is baaaaack.
At record number proportions.
I can’t even read my Facebook or Instagram pages anymore without shivering.
About how you are so sick you can’t even lift your head.
Or how your youngest spent the entire night in the bathroom expunging every piece of food they have eaten in the past 48 hours.
At any given moment after reading something on social media, I can actually feel like I might be coming down with strep, flu, food poisoning or whooping cough.
And I live 200 miles from most of you.
Yes, winter is winning.
My car looks like it was in a massive explosion.
Because if I try to wash my car, it will literally crack.
In half.
My winter coat is falling apart at the seams.
But I can’t go buy a new one because all of the winter coats in my size are gone.
Because of snow, sleet, polar vortex and thunder snow.
My kids are throwing popcorn at my face while I do the huhnwanna huhnwanna trance thing every single time they cancel school because it is THE COLDEST IT HAS EVER BEEN IN CHICAGO.
I have written Tom Skilling nasty emails.
About how he is totally killin’ my fall buzz.
And makin’ me look like a fraud after that snow day post I wrote.
I am sorry.
I am.
For making you feel like a bad parent because you couldn’t take One. More. Day stuck in the house with your kids.
Bonus day, “schmonus” day.
