Winter Wonderland

I just received notification on my phone that school was cancelled tomorrow, so naturally all this snow should start melting away any minute*.

This kind of preemptive warning or cautious decision making would have been nice 24 hours ago, when, without any warning whatsoever, it started to blizzard in Roseburg.

Now, usually I’m not one of those doom-and-gloomers when it comes to a little snow, but the meteorologists really screwed the pooch on this one.** And look, full disclosure: I have a somewhat shaky relationship with meteorologists as it—my first unrequited love was for the oh-so-suave Ken Cook of Atlanta’s Fox 5 Action News (Google him, I'll wait), and that coupled with the fact that the only kind-of-meteorologist I ever knew in real like was a complete douche, well, let’s just say I have deep-seeded trust issues with the whole breed.

But come on, people. My hang-ups with weather people aside, we can all agree that they f’ed this one up. I mean, it started snowing at 3 PM yesterday (***) and even at 6 PM the forecast was calling for upper 50s and a chance of rain.

Had I any inkling I’d be snowed in without power for God-only-knows-how-long with all four of my precious children and their father, I’d have stocked up on all the storm essentials our mixed backgrounds require: a loaf of bread and milk (shout out to all my Southern storm preppers), kale and kombucha (because apparently that’s a thing in Oregon) and booze (my sanity demands it).

But, no. It’s going on day 2 of snowpocolypse and it’s basically the Hunger Games over here****. I’m like the scrappy District 12 folk with my badass survival skills sending me out to the woodshed like Ma freaking Ingalls every 90 minutes and the kids are residents of the Capital, demanding only the finest food and entertainment. Thankfully, once we have the daily “there-is-no-electricity-I-can’t-make-pancakes” conversation, we can boil up some water on one of my husband’s 4,692 jet boil/camp stove things and whip ‘em up some super tasty freeze-dried foods.*****

My usual parenting hack at this point would be to send the kids outside and lock the doors behind them so that they’re unable to come in until dark, but we’ve had trees falling like dominions around here so the kids would just be confined to the back porch, but that’s where the 2-stroke generator my mother-in-law’s brothers gave us for a wedding present a decade ago is loudly chugging the hard-siphoned gas my husband painstakingly pumped out of the boat’s fuel tank in order to, not keep our children warm, but to keep the 2 fridges and freezers up and running so that hard-earned deer/elk/salmon/Costco bags of frozen green beans don’t thaw out into the world’s most expensive pile of moldy food….what I’m saying is, the kids can’t go outside.

So, instead, we’ve been devising fun games to play like Artist Pallet—where all four kids lay on their pallets in the living room floor while two kids judge the other two on their drawing skills. The parallels between the format of the game and that of a certain popular British baking show should cause me shame over the amount of cooking shows they’ve been exposed to in their young lives but part of the judgement is having to come up with something nice to say about each drawing (because that’s what Paul and Mary would do) so at least they’re not being jerks. Unlike when the Legos come out, which is a no holds barred, all-out brawl over one particular piece (never mind there are literally 1,499 other pieces for them to use). The appearance of this room which has been occupied by 6 humans for 2 days straight is greatly enhanced by the lack of power and the dimness of firelight, but watch out: under the deceptively soft glow lies the sharp, jagged landmines 1,000s of spilled pieces of those very same Legos.******

*Spoiler alert: It didn’t

** My oldest has been talking recently about how she wants to be a meteorologist when she grows up. The evidence would suggest she is already as qualified as the jokers that missed this snow. #dreamscometrue

***3 PM four score and 7 years ago at this point

****Going on day 200

*****Never thought I’d be thankful for my husband’s tendency to hoard all things camping and hunting related, but here we are.

******2,000 days straight.