Unexpected Snow Day Adventures

7-8 inches of new snow + high winds + dropping temps = going on our second snow day in a row.  It's served as a nice little break from our regularly scheduled life, but sometimes our children need to be reminded that they are not allowed to go all flying squirrel in the house.  Outside?  Sure.  Whatever.

They've spent large portions of both days outside, and while I sometimes feel a pang that I am not that mom that spends hours outside making snowlumps and snow forts with them, I get over it real quick and get back to my usual routine of setting the trash/ compost bowl/ whatever right outside the door and hollering, "Somebody come take care of this, please!" in their general direction.  Then I hurriedly shrink back in because it is warm in here and cold out there, and that's pretty much all my brain needs to know to make its decision.

Sometimes I stay at the door long enough to take a picture through the glass.  That's just good parenting.

I assuage any residual guilt with the knowledge that I spent an hour shoveling this morning, then I make hot chocolate for everyone and give myself a sanctimonious little pat on the back.

Today I'm doing an experiment in cookie dough, because Adelaide was making peanut butter cookies yesterday afternoon, but within about a minute of turning on the oven, I smelled a very strong scent of gas, so I turned the oven off and called Derek.  He said to get the heck out of the house and call the energy company, who would send a tech out to inspect everything.  So I called the energy company, and they said to get the heck out of the house, they would send a tech out to inspect everything.  The guy on the phone also said exciting things like, "Do not turn any lights on or off.  Do not open any windows.  If you are on a landline, do not hang up the phone, leave it off its cradle.  We do not want to risk creating any sparks.  Get out now."

I instructed Adelaide to get bundled up as best she could with the winter gear right by the front door, then I went upstairs to rouse both the boys from their naps (see flying squirrel reference above; they had worn themselves out by midafternoon) and hurried them down the stairs.

A few delightful pieces of information:  If Atticus is in the house, he is wearing shorts.  We keep our house at 67 degrees in the winter during the day, and 60 starting at 8:30 every evening, but he still wears shorts.  Yesterday, while Adelaide was making the cookie dough, I was doing laundry, specifically boy laundry, which includes every pair of pants Atticus owns and his snow pants because I like his teacher and don't want her to faint from the scent coming off of them every day at school.  Because of all this, when we got out of the house, Atticus was wearing snow pants that hit about mid-shin over his shorts, along with snow boots and two jackets, because oh, yeah, I was washing all their coats, too.  Ditto the multiple, layered jacket look on Caedmon.  We looked homeless, but I figured it was no big deal, we were just going to go hang out at our small town library for a while 'til either the technician figured out the source of the problem or our house exploded in a giant fireball.

We arrived at the library.  There was a hand-lettered sign informing us it had closed early, I'm guessing due to the weather.  Super.

So we went to Wal-Mart, because at least there we'd fit in, right?  I've heard about that People of Wal-Mart website, and while I doubt it applies to everyone on there, keep in mind that some of those customers may look like that because they've been turned out of their house and had to dress in whatever was immediately by the front door.  It's possible.

So we went to Wal-Mart, got the kids' valentines for school, got a call telling us to come back, there would be no slow suffocation tonight.  All the hallelujahs.

The technician was really nice, but informed me that yes, something is up with our oven, and that we are not allowed to turn it on until we get it looked at.  As of today, we have an appliance repair guy coming out in a week to look at it, because that's the soonest he can get here.  Hence the cookie dough in a crock pot.  I mean, I couldn't let Adelaide's beautiful dough go to waste, could I?

I'm not real sure how it's going to turn out; we could be treating ourselves to peanut butter mush tonight.  Or it could be our new favorite dessert!  Aren't adventures fun?

SO FANCY

Over the past year, our dryer has gone from sending us polite messages that perhaps it might be time to start training an eager up-and-coming dryer, to passive-aggressively demanding its honorary retirement timepiece, to hurling blatant death threats at us each time we enter the laundry room because how dare we keep it from its well-deserved move down to Florida where it can play golf and bocce ball and whatever other fun stuff retired dryers do.  I think I saw it in a Cialis commercial the other day, which is not weird at all because a dryer sitting in a tub full of water holding hands with another appliance in a separate bathtub while on the beach makes about as much sense as humans doing so.

Our stackable, hand-me-down washer and dryer

It started with screeching.  Polite, pardon me, oil can! through pursed lips kind of screeching.

The screeching got louder.  It became grating.  It vibrated our tympanic membranes in a most painful fashion.

Derek and I read blogs and watched youtube videos and surfed the waves of the internet searching for a DIY solution to our problem.  And by "DIY" I do not mean "Do It Yourself," of course; I mean "Do It Derek'sself," so I suppose Derek was looking for DIY, and I was looking for DID.  But I digress.

Maybe if he had been able to wrestle the stubborn metal outer shell off of it, Derek would have been able to fix whatever problem was ailing our aging dryer, but that sucker was not coming off for anything.  He wrestled and banged and made impressive loud sounds, all for naught.  The dryer continued to screech, and we continued to live with it, until the clanging began.

A few weeks ago the dryer decided that screeching was not getting through to us.  It read a Joel Osteen book, put on its big girl panties, and decided it needed to Live Its Best Life Now and Make Every Day a Friday or some equally incomprehensible piece of bafflement and started throwing rocks around its insides anytime we had the audacity to try and dry clothing in it.

I swear it knew when it was me specifically entering the laundry room, because if the dryer was already running (as it so often is around here), it would hurl some particularly sharp piece of metal against its side, right toward my face.  It wore its bitterness at its indentured servitude on its sleeve.  Door.  Whatever.

And that is why, one day last week, when so many stores were running sales in honor of our veterans (I could tell it wasn't to make money because they put an American flag on the sales flyer.  Got me again, Nebraska Furniture Mart!), Derek and Caedmon and I trotted our little selves all around Des Moines to find a washer and dryer that was 1) within our budget, 2) energy efficient, and 3) preferably not homicidal.


[Cue angelic music]

I know, right?

You'll have to forgive me a moment here while I gush; there is absolutely no way I can be cool about this.  I knew that ship had sailed when Caedmon stared open-mouthed at the washer when the installation guys were testing it before leaving (never mind that I may or may not have randomly exclaimed "FANCY!" half a dozen times while they were here- I hope they realized I was in awe at our new appliances, and do not in fact have Tourette's, nor am I obsessed with Reba McEntire).  It's not just me, though; last night I walked into the laundry room to find Derek, Adelaide, Atticus, and Caedmon all sitting there, just staring at the washer as it did its revolutionary (ooh, puns) work of washing our dirty clothing.  

You guys.  That washer?  It uses thirty fewer gallons of water PER LOAD than our last washer did.  Our family does an average of ten loads a week; for those of you who get hostile when math is mentioned I will go ahead and tell you that that's a savings of around 300 GALLONS OF WATER EACH WEEK.  I have washed and dried five loads of laundry so far today and have already decided I can live with whatever dark magic that dryer employs because I can dry more clothing in less time than our last dryer with zero rancorous overtures.

Caedmon watching Fancy this morning.

Big thanks to Derek for taking off work early and Derek's dad for driving down to help finish installing the dryer when the actual installation guys were unable to do so.  Something about the wrong kind of outlet in the wall or something, I basically nodded and said "Okay," "Right," and "FANCY!" when the guy was trying to tell me what was wrong and blah blah blah.  This was not frustrating at all for Derek when he tried to find out from me what the problem was.  I am such a catch.

I got Fancy all to myself this morning for the first time, loaded down with a small mountain range of nasty sheets and clothing and towels and yogurt-soaked place mats.

She didn't let me down.