Warning: If you are from northern or arctic regions, do not read this post unless you just want to collapse into fits of laughter.
If you are from the south, welcome.
If you are a parent of young children from the greater Houston area, HOW ARE YOU SURVIVING???
This is the coldest Houston has been in 22 years. TWENTY-TWO. Half my life. And most of that I didn’t live here. (Granted, I was living in places like Kansas and Tennessee and Arkansas which are far colder, but let’s not get bogged down in facts.)
This is certainly the coldest it’s been since I’ve had kids.
Let me explain the problem. As you will recall, we had just started school in the fall when Hurricane Harvey hit. In addition to the horrors it brought on so many of my neighbors, it utterly disrupted all Houstonians back-to-school patterns. We were out of school almost a couple of weeks. Honestly, everything has been a little wonky since then.
So, new year. New patterns. Back to healthy eating and exercising and our schedule. Fresh start! Hoorah!
Ahem.
The kids were out for MLK Day, but I worked. So my dad and stepmom, who had come into town for the weekend, watched them before leaving very early Tuesday (just barely in advance of our fine city shutting down). While still 55 degrees on Monday night, all area schools closed for Tuesday. Leaving us double working parents stuck at home. But stuck at home with kids who couldn’t get out because it was sleeting most of the daylight hours. Ice, ice, and more ice. Hence, our Icepocalypse! It stayed in the 20s and more and more roads closed.
Even before dark yesterday, all schools announced ANOTHER day of closures. Maybe you can survive working at home with a single kid watching movies or playing games, but you cannot survive working at home with TRIPLETS WHO FIGHT ALL THE LIVE LONG DAY. How are you supposed to work with the circus in your kitchen?!?!
Plus, cold weather is an asthma trigger for the baby so he’d already been cooped up over the weekend when it was cold. He had utterly melted down by Wednesday morning.
Oh, and I’m on a no sugars, including alcohol, six week challenge. Talk about poor timing.
Routine shot. Positive parenting not going quite so well either… There are 89 road closures today. EIGHTY NINE. You can’t leave. I just want to walk around a grocery store or buy them a hamburger so I don’t have to feed them again.
You see, we don’t have parkas and snow boots for weather in the teens because it only gets in the teens EVERY TWENTY TWO YEARS! I put the kids in multiple pullovers and gloves and sent them on a morning walk with my hubby hoping for only minimal crash outs on the ice. Our fair city does not know how to cope with all the ice. Even if they get it off the interstates, everything else is ice. Our welcome mat – sheet of ice. Our driveway – sheet of ice. The sidewalks – ice, ice, and more ice.
I did read with the kids. Check. We’re going to work on math facts this morning. Check check. But I’m also taking work calls, reviewing documents, and responding to emails. So they sort of need to fend for themselves. And fending for themselves ends up looking like something out of the Game of Thrones. (I haven’t seen it personally, but from what I understand, it looks a lot like my house during an Icepocalypse!) Literally, little bit just walked in here while I was typing and said, “I don’t know what to do, what should I do, no one will play with me?”
Aaaaaaaagggggggggghhhhhhhhhh!
How can you begin a new year with a new routine and positive eating habits with kids out of school and a just freezer full of corndogs and mangos? I need a meal plan, man. But what I got is baked beans and some hummus.
Okay, good luck you parenting Houstonians. They’ll go back tomorrow, thank the heavens. And, of course, it will be 70 degrees on Friday!
