The Day That Lasted For 48 Hours
Or
Where Is That Childrens Chewable Valium????

Today started out fine enough. My progeny allowed me to sleep just past 8 am. A rare and sweet occurance that I treasure as I'm usually up at 6 am. Everyday. 6 am everyday. Let's all say that together now - 6 AM EVERYDAY. Okay, I think you get the idea.

Sleeping in to such a late hour left me with a false sense of security and confidence for a calm and peaceful day. Heh, foolish me. Having both of my offspring home all day is never calm nor peaceful. Usually it's not so bad, but it's also not usually raining at 8 am with the temperatures at a delightful 38 and the promise it plummeting with a 'wintery mix' (winter mix in this case means cold rain then sleet and finally soggy snow and freezing temperatures, i.e. hell for those who the night before were planning to take aforementioned offspring outside to burn off energy and save sanity). The Little People continued to perpetuate my delusion of a 'calm and peaceful day' by requesting and eating a breakfast of scrambled eggs and juice. This is an ultimate rarity as scrambled eggs are usually met with twisted up little faces and whines of "ewwwww! I don't like scrambled eggs! Can't we have cereal?"

After eating their breakfast and playing with Barbie and her bitch Ken while mommy checked e-mail... no wait, scratch that, while mommy cleaned viruses off her computer (more on that later), the Little People investigated the tapping noise on the window. The tap, tap, tapping noise was none other than the start of sleet. Sudden excitement insued as they mistook the tiny balls of ice accumulating in the planters for snow. The door was opened a few times for their curiousity to be satisfied. Back to Barbies.

Then it happened, I entered the first level of hell. Near 10 am the sleet changed to SNOW. Big fluffy flakes. Somehow the Little People knew it was snowing without even seeing. I starting hearing squeals of "It's snowing!" and requests to go out and play. This worked briefly to my advantage to get them to pick up the thousands of tiny Barbie accessories littering my living room floor - "Well you have to pick up your stuff before we can go out and play." Then it all went to shit. It was now time to round up winter clothing. For some reason all of the nice winter accessories like hats, scarves and gloves were not where they were supposed to be. So the quest for the missing gloves began.

Glove quest.

Now I personally have bought no less than 8 pairs of gloves (well 7 and one set of mittens). Last month I bought two pair in preparation for the cold weather. This morning, one hot pink glove and one red glove. I told the progeny that they had to find gloves - them not me. This also worked briefly to my advantage as I told them that I was fairly certain that at least ONE glove was in the dress up bins, hence they would have to CLEAN the toy area to find gloves. By noon it was nap time and after many reminders that no one could go play until two sets of gloves were found and many threats were issued through clenched teeth (mine) a black glove was found, a black mitten was found and a light pink glove was found. 5 hand coverings, that works. Off to naps.

Coat? What coat?

After short naps (DAMN!) Hell resumed, this time I was on a much deeper level having taken the express elevator as directed by my offspring. The tiny terrorists wanted to go out even more now. I asked a simple question "where is your coat Super Girl?" "I dunno." Grrrr... After 2 hours of me telling her to LOOK FOR IT, it was determined her coat is NOT in the house. Not happy now. Very NOT happy. But it's workable. I start dressing the kids for playing outside in the now 28 degree temperatures (19 with the wind chill) and ask yet another seemingly simple question "Where is your hat Cabbage Patch?" "I dunno." Damn it.

I saw the freaking hat just yesterday. I don't know what they did with it. I told them that if Cabbage Patch did NOT have a hat, then no one would go out to play in the snow. It took them a half an hour to actually go up stairs and find the damn hat. at 4:30 pm with hats, mismatched gloves, warm clothing and scarves, we ventured out into the weather to play. We returned at 5 pm to have hot chocolate and peanutbutter crackers. I hate snow almost as much as I hate snow days.