snow day
It's been quite a week. The final day of it started about about 7 am this morning as my favourite 12 year old bellowed up the stairs to us as we were creaking out of bed:
"ITS A SNOW DAY". Sometimes this still conjures images of cozy times spent by the fire reading books and drinking cocoa, gazing on adoringly at the cherubs playing happily with lego blocks and puzzles. Sadly, the reality is a little different. One daughter stomps through the house whining that the dance she had planned to attend tonight might be cancelled. Another scours the kitchen for any food that might have mood-altering additives or high levels of transfat. One pre-schooler boy is obsessed with the words "fart" and "poop" today and will insist on shouting them to the hilltops with glee, almost as if he knows about all those parenting books we've read that tell us the one thing we must absolutely, positively NOT do is pay any attention to his obsession with scat, lest we just reinforce it. One peripatetic pre-schooler daughter is screaming back and forth through the house at high speed, often with both feet off the ground at the same time, aimed more or less horizontally at whatever the target of the moment might be. Her mother and I stare in wonder at her, marvelling that she's never had a serious injury or even a broken bone.
Then mother leaves.
She's not in the "teaching profession" as she graciously referred to it this morning (which is not what it was last night when we reviewed what some of our kids' semi-competent teachers were doing for our kids math skills. She's a healer, so she gets to go out and heal. I stay here with my broken, racking lungs, wishing for some healing myself, trying not to yell at the kids, suspending all rules. Want to surf the net? Go for it, kids. Grind that computer mouse to dust on the Bob the Builder website. Want to watch some video? Sure thing. I've got a whole season of Sopranos guaranteed to freeze your bum to the chair with horror for the whole weekend.
And through all of this, I sit ensconced in the big easy chair, trying to hold virtual office hours via chat room with students whose class was cancelled this morning. Except that chat rooms are more associated with socializing, cyberdating, goofy things. So when one student turns up and discovers that it's just her and me in the room, she flees quickly. Another struggles to find a question, and then tries to make small talk about the weather, which feels awkward. We both lapse into silence. Which, for me, is pretty easy to manage because while I'm pumping up my mind so it's ready to answer complicated questions about metabotropic neurotransmitter receptors and second messenger pathways, I'm ALSO trying to score some Elton John tickets to please my wife. Elton John. In Kitchener. Two Canadian dates: here and SUDBURY.
I've got the tickets. My chat room is empty. My kids are playing with Shrek. My lungs still hurt (even though my wife, the healer, tells me that lungs can't actually hurt....). The snow is still falling.
"ITS A SNOW DAY". Sometimes this still conjures images of cozy times spent by the fire reading books and drinking cocoa, gazing on adoringly at the cherubs playing happily with lego blocks and puzzles. Sadly, the reality is a little different. One daughter stomps through the house whining that the dance she had planned to attend tonight might be cancelled. Another scours the kitchen for any food that might have mood-altering additives or high levels of transfat. One pre-schooler boy is obsessed with the words "fart" and "poop" today and will insist on shouting them to the hilltops with glee, almost as if he knows about all those parenting books we've read that tell us the one thing we must absolutely, positively NOT do is pay any attention to his obsession with scat, lest we just reinforce it. One peripatetic pre-schooler daughter is screaming back and forth through the house at high speed, often with both feet off the ground at the same time, aimed more or less horizontally at whatever the target of the moment might be. Her mother and I stare in wonder at her, marvelling that she's never had a serious injury or even a broken bone.
Then mother leaves.
She's not in the "teaching profession" as she graciously referred to it this morning (which is not what it was last night when we reviewed what some of our kids' semi-competent teachers were doing for our kids math skills. She's a healer, so she gets to go out and heal. I stay here with my broken, racking lungs, wishing for some healing myself, trying not to yell at the kids, suspending all rules. Want to surf the net? Go for it, kids. Grind that computer mouse to dust on the Bob the Builder website. Want to watch some video? Sure thing. I've got a whole season of Sopranos guaranteed to freeze your bum to the chair with horror for the whole weekend.
And through all of this, I sit ensconced in the big easy chair, trying to hold virtual office hours via chat room with students whose class was cancelled this morning. Except that chat rooms are more associated with socializing, cyberdating, goofy things. So when one student turns up and discovers that it's just her and me in the room, she flees quickly. Another struggles to find a question, and then tries to make small talk about the weather, which feels awkward. We both lapse into silence. Which, for me, is pretty easy to manage because while I'm pumping up my mind so it's ready to answer complicated questions about metabotropic neurotransmitter receptors and second messenger pathways, I'm ALSO trying to score some Elton John tickets to please my wife. Elton John. In Kitchener. Two Canadian dates: here and SUDBURY.
I've got the tickets. My chat room is empty. My kids are playing with Shrek. My lungs still hurt (even though my wife, the healer, tells me that lungs can't actually hurt....). The snow is still falling.
posted by Colin at 10:51 AM
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