It started snowing in Seattle on Sunday, January 15. Oddly this snow came just as meteorologists forecasted it would. (If you’ve spent any time in Seattle, listening to Seattle weather forecasts, you know why I say “oddly.”) Now it is Thursday, January 19 and we are on Snow Day #5 or “Nearly to the Bottom of the Descent into Insanity” as I’m calling it and it’s STILL snowing. Don’t get me wrong, I love snow – it’s beautiful and fun and generally a magical deviation from the doldrums of ordinary, day-to-day, winter life. I especially love getting a little snow now and again in Seattle since we so rarely do. The key words here are “a little” and “now and again.” Being home-bound for nearly a week, with a five year old and a ton of work piling up at the office, ceases to be fun, magical and beautiful, and starts to become boring and insanity-inducing. At least it’s still beautiful, with the neighborhood blanketed in white and the trees covered in icy crystals. In fact, yesterday when I suggested shoveling our driveway and sidewalk, Chester looked at me incredulously and sadly asked, “But Mommy . . . don’t you want it to be beautiful?” The answer was, yes, I did want it to stay beautiful, especially considering that’s about all we’ve got at this point.
With the exception of a failed attempt at a school and work day on Tuesday, (Seattle schools opted for a late start and then decided two hours later to go with an early dismissal) we’ve been home – either in our house or neighborhood – for five days now. Five days. And you can only build so many snowmen. Overall I think we’re doing a pretty good job of keeping ourselves entertained. So, as a future reference for myself and anyone else who finds themselves snowed in for the better part of a week, I’ve prepared this list of entertainment suggestions.
1. Engage in typical snow activities
This one is a no-brainier. Of course you should immediately get out in the snow – especially when it’s still super fluffy and fresh. Go for a walk around your neighborhood; you never know what you might discover. We found this brilliant and exquisite skull sculpted out of snow!
Check out the park, have a snowball fight, build snowmen, construct an igloo, go sledding, and make snow angels.
Making snow angels works especially well when you are an adorable child.
As for sledding, it turns out we have a particularly sweet run in our neighborhood – a steep length of side street that is out of the question for cars and therefore quickly claimed by throngs of sledders. Southwest Olga Street, between 37th and Admiral, has been home to tiny toddlers on itty-bitty sleds, tubing teenagers careening off self-fashioned jumps, middle-aged dads reliving their luge glory days (whether real or imagined, I’m not sure), and people of all shapes and sizes on sleds of all shapes and sizes. Our sledding experience these past few days has been an arctic communal utopia with everyone gathering at the local Starbucks to warm up.
As fantastically fun as snow activities are, they only last for so long. For one thing, you get cold and, as I said earlier, you can only make so many snowmen, which leads me to the next suggestion.
2. Make some new friends
Hard to believe, but snow storms create a perfect environment for making new friends. Literally. Here’s how to do it: Form a small ball of snow. Roll it around in the snow to make it larger. Repeat until you have three balls in decreasingly smaller sizes. Stack them one on top of the other. Now you have the body of your newest friend! (Yeah, yeah, I know I already talked about making snowmen, but now you’re making FRIENDS. That’s totally different.) Add arms and a face, and style as you see fit. Do you want a super hip, cutting edge friend? A classic, tried and true kind of friend? A preppy friend? Maybe you are feeling rebellious and could use a punk rock friend? A funny friend? A serious friend? You get the idea – style away. Don’t hold back; just think how great your snow friends will look standing in your front yard, mocking the less awesome neighborhood snowmen. The creation of your new posse of pals is the fun part. Unfortunately they aren’t terribly dynamic once they’re complete. Truth be told, they’re kind of dull; they mostly just stand around and act cool . . . super cool.
Super cool friends
3. Exercise
By day three you are dying from gym and yoga withdrawals. You can’t get there and all the classes are probably canceled anyway. It’s too slippery and slushy to go for a run, and push-ups, wall-sits and ab crunches in your living room are about as boring as it gets. But who needs those things when you’ve got a 50+ pound kid who wants nothing more than to yell “YAH!” and “MUSH!” mercilessly as you pull him around your hilly neighborhood on the sled?
4. Play games
Play lots of games. If you get bored with the games you have, I recommend putting your kid on that sled and pulling him or her to the closest store to invest in some more. For the five-year-old set, allow me to recommend: Sorry, Cars Monopoly, Connect Four, Old Maid, Go Fish, Operation, Toy Story Yahtzee, Crazy 8s, Junior Scrabble, Battleship, Checkers and Jenga. Yeah, like I said, LOTS of games.
Lots of Games
5. Work puzzles
Work lots of puzzles. Yes, this is similar to #4, but with puzzles instead of games. Try Toy Story puzzles, Disney puzzles, dinosaur puzzles, map of the United States puzzles, rare tropical frog puzzles. Lots of puzzles.
6. Watch movies
Watch lots of movies. See numbers 3 and 4. Substitute movies and snuggling. Mr. Popper’s Penguins and Alvin and the Chipmunks 2: The Squeakquel worked well for us. Warning: Side effects involve relentless quoting of the movies which may include, but not be limited to, your child saying, “Hey, Pecky Peckerton!,” pointing at you in the Starbucks line while mouthing “Nimrod,” and even repeatedly singing Beyoncé’s “Single Ladies” in a chipmunk voice.
7. Stage an epic battle
Gather your army men, create a brilliant military strategy (or a formation that looks kind of pretty – whichever works for you) and head into battle. This is good for at least an hour of entertainment, especially if your child, like mine, is fond of creating his own games with lengthy, complex rules. Below is a historical photo of the famous Battle of the Toy Snowldiers. Can’t tell what’s going on? Neither could I. It involved rolling two army men like dice and employing some sort of complicated mathematical formula to devise what to do, depending on how they landed. All I know is we lost a lot of good men that day.
Snowpocalypse Now: Battle of the Toy Snowldiers
8. Build a fort
By now you’ve discovered that building an igloo is a lot of work, the roof is nearly impossible to engineer and it’s too cold to play in for long. So why not build a fort inside? It will take you forever to re-fold every blanket in your house and reassemble all your furniture, that is true, but you should tell that reasonable, tidy, organized voice inside your head to hush up. Twenty minutes of entertainment is well worth the forty minutes it will take you to clean up. In a stunning display of how big an impact a very small person can make, the entire first floor of my house (granted it’s not that big) became . . . well, I’m not exactly sure what it became. I’m going with fort/maze combo.
My house is not usually arranged like this.
9. Make construction paper monsters
Why? Because it takes up a good two hours, that’s why.
10. Read a book
Opt for a book you might actually enjoy or use the home confinement to compel yourself to get through something less pleasant. I have Snow Day #5 to thank for forcing me to finally finish Hemingway’s “A Farewell to Arms” – easily one of the least enjoyable books I’ve ever read. I know it’s a classic, by a literary giant (that’s why I forced myself to read it) and my criticizing it is akin to a person who can’t make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich disparaging a five-star restaurant chef, but I can’t help it. I hated it. I know Hemingway “did more to change the style of English prose than any other writer in the twentieth century.” I know he won a Nobel Prize for Literature. I know “A Farewell to Arms” is considered the “best American novel to emerge from World War I.” But despite all that, I hated it. For those of you who haven’t read it, here is my synopsis (spoiler alert): The main character is Lieutenant Henry, an American ambulance driver serving on the Italian front in World War I. He meets a British nurse named Catherine. They don’t really like each other, but then randomly decide they do. There are mountains. The mountains are big and gray and covered with snow. There are rivers that are clear and blue and filled with pebbles and boulders and rocks that are jagged and rough and smooth and wet. There are lots of soldiers marching. They march through mud. It is brown. It is frozen. Lieutenant Henry gets hurt and ends up in a hospital. Nurse Catherine is there and they fall in love. Sort of, I guess. It doesn’t really seem like they’re in love. Their dialogue goes like this:
Catherine: Oh darling, I love you so much. Don’t we have a grand life together?
Henry: Yes, it is very grand, especially at night.
Catherine: I’ll be a good wife for you won’t I? I’m a good girl.
Henry: Yes, you are.
Catherine: Oh, I’m so foolish and stupid and ridiculous. You should go away from me.
Henry: Do you want me to go away?
Catherine: No, I’m nothing without you.
Henry: Good. I don’t want to go away.
This nurse Catherine has some serious self-esteem issues. Anyway, whether or not they’re actually in love, they make love and (surprise) she gets pregnant right about the time his leg is healed and he has to return to the front. There are mountains and farm houses and marching soldiers described in excruciating detail. Soldiers are killed matter-of-factly and their friends barely notice, much less care. Lieutenant Henry goes AWOL and hops a train back to Catherine. They escape the country together via a row boat to Switzerland, where they live for several months.
Catherine: Oh darling, don’t we have a grand time together?
Henry: Very grand.
Catherine: I’m so silly and stupid. And now I’m fat and not at all appealing to you.
Henry: You are more beautiful than you have ever been.
Catherine: Oh, you sweet boy. You are so good to me. You should grow a beard.
Henry: Do you want me to grow a beard?
Catherine: Yes, I think it would be lovely. Oh, I’m so stupid, but I’ll make you a good wife, won’t I?
Henry: Yes, let’s get married now.
Catherine: Oh no, not now while I am so fat. When I am skinny again, then we will get married and I will cut my hair. You will let me, won’t you?
Henry: Yes, I think it will be exciting.
That goes on for a few months. They go on carriage rides and picnics and try to enjoy themselves as much as they can before the baby comes. They fear the baby will ruin everything. Foreshadowing abounds. Finally Catherine goes into labor. It goes on forever. The baby dies. Catherine dies. (You really don’t care.) Lieutenant Henry goes back to the hotel. The end. Seriously, that’s the book. Now you don’t have to read it. Thank you notes are appreciated, but not necessary.
So, there you have it, my top ten ideas for never-ending snow storm entertainment, and not a moment too soon because I just found out school is canceled again on Friday. Snow Day #6 (aka Official Arrival at Insanity) here we come!
No comments:
Post a Comment