Friday, January 20, 2012

What to do with five snow days in a row: A documentary and guide

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 BeyoncĂ©’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!

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Everyone Poohs

We’ve been watching a lot of Winnie the Pooh at our house lately. Santa brought the new movie to Chester for Christmas and it is delightful. It makes Chester giggle uncontrollably, which makes me happier than I ever imagined I could be. All week, I’ve been humming and silently singing, “Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, tubby little buddy all stuffed with fluff, he’s Winnie the Pooh, Winnie the Pooh, willy nilly silly ol’ bear.” You’d think it would be annoying to have the Winnie the Pooh song on a constant loop in your head, but amazingly it’s not. I can’t be in a bad mood or get too upset about anything with the line “willy nilly silly ol’ bear” running through my mind, and believe me when I tell you that has come in quite handy this week.

It occurred to me a few mornings ago that Winnie the Pooh is sort of the original Toy Story. When the first Toy Story movie came out and rocketed Pixar into mega-super-domination of the animation world, I remember thinking what a great and unique idea it was to base a story on the toys in a child’s room coming to life. I certainly mean no disrespect for Pixar or the Toy Story franchise (I’m a huge fan), but I guess the concept wasn’t really all that new. Chester was watching Winnie the Pooh as I was getting breakfast ready and I was enjoying overhearing the part where Balloon (the red balloon that lives in Christopher Robin’s room) wins the prize for finding a new tail for Eeyore. Rabbit presents the award with a monologue about what a loyal, wonderful friend the winner is. He gets Pooh’s hopes up before excitedly announcing that Balloon wins the pot of honey – much to Pooh’s chagrin. The stuffed animals treat Balloon as an equal member of their Hundred Acre Wood community and why shouldn’t they? He is, like all of them, a beloved toy in Christopher Robin’s room.

I loved Winnie the Pooh as a child and cherished my own stuffed animal versions of the characters that my mom sewed herself. My old Kanga and Roo currently watch over Chester’s room from prime real estate on his dresser and my favorite, Eeyore greets me (gloomily, of course) every day from atop the armoire in my closet. I find it fascinating that the Pooh characters are still so relevant these many years later (A. A. Milne’s first book of short stories about Pooh Bear was released in 1926) and resonate as much (if slightly differently) with me as an adult as they did when I was a kid.

My beloved stuffed Eeyore.


A. A. Milne’s characters masterfully depict common human character traits. I’m certainly not the first person (nor the most articulate) to notice and write about that. The humble little bear and his friends have been used by many authors and academics to illustrate complex philosophical ideas. Benjamin Hoff explains Taoism in The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet. Frederick Crews retold Pooh stories in obscure academic jargon in Postmodern Pooh and The Pooh Perplex, and John T. Williams uses Milne’s characters to illustrate the works of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, Plato and Nietzsche.  

I’m a big believer that, as human beings, our weaknesses can also be our strengths and vice versa. I remind myself of this whenever Chester is being stubborn and argumentative and a general pain in my ass. I take a deep breath and think to myself “This kid will never be anybody’s doormat. He’s going to be persistent and tenacious and will always stand up for what he believes in.” The Hundred Acre Wood characters are so meaningful to generations of people of all ages partly because they beautifully illustrate the somewhat strange but true dynamic that our strengths and weaknesses can be, and often are, one and the same.

Winnie the Pooh is a loyal friend with a pure heart. Unfortunately, he often underestimates himself. Despite being “a bear of very little brain,” he is frequently quite astute and makes great efforts to utilize his limited smarts. Christopher Robin summarizes Pooh well when he eloquently and lovingly reminds him, "You're braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”

Eeyore is gray in color with an outlook to match. He is intelligent, but his melancholy mood and cynical wit keep him complaining constantly. He is somewhat of a loner in the forest, often getting left behind, assuming no one wants him around or simply preferring some peace and quiet. Despite his gloomy nature, Eeyore values his friends and, while he certainly never expects kindness or takes favors for granted, he truly appreciates the goodness extended to him.

Piglet is small in stature and timid. He tends to mistake fear for lack of courage. "It is hard to be brave when you're only a Very Small Animal," he says. Piglet’s strengths are kindness, compassion and generosity.

Rabbit is the bossy one of the bunch. He is high strung and strives to create order, as evidenced by his dedication to perfecting his garden, as well as his tendency to make lists, create agendas and generally order the rest of the characters around. Rabbit is clever and knows how to get things done.

Tigger is exuberant; perhaps overly so. He loves nothing more than to bounce – sometimes he bounces his friends in greeting, sometimes on accident, but he always wreaks havoc. He is boastful and overestimates his abilities. Despite his annoying traits, Tigger is so fun-loving and sweet, he is hard not to love. As he is fond of saying, “The wonderful thing about Tiggers is I’m the only one!”

Owl is brainy and immerses himself in intellectual pursuits such as knowing and spelling long words. He can be impatient with the less intelligent characters and often bores them with long-winded stories. While Owl is genuinely smart, he isn’t necessarily as knowledgeable as he leads the others to believe. He occasionally bluffs his way through lack of expertise to maintain his reputation of being wise.

Kanga is the only female of the forest’s core characters and gets along well with everyone. She is nurturing, practical, level-headed and motherly.

Roo is the youngest forest resident. He has the cheerful, optimistic outlook of a child, with an untarnished belief in himself and the world around him. He is bright and brave, but can be a bit of a show-off in his efforts to win praise from his mother and friends.

Milne’s characters have been so beloved, for so long because we all see a little of each of them, in varying degrees, in ourselves. In fact, a quick internet search turned up all sorts of sites that offer descriptions of the characters’ personalities and at least half a dozen “Which Winnie the Pooh character are you?” quizzes. I took a few of the quizzes and interestingly, but not so surprisingly to me, came up with a different character each time. My guess is that it would be difficult for most people to choose only ONE character that represents them. The beauty of Winnie the Pooh is that we can identify with all of them.

A dear friend and colleague of mine had a great product idea based on this concept: Pooh Totems. Totems are usually an animal or other natural figure that spiritually characterizes a person or group of people. In this case, the animals would be Pooh characters and people could construct their own, unique “totem pole” of the characters that represent them best. The objects themselves could take a variety of forms. The characters could be plastic – like pop beads for kids or rendered from precious metals and made into some sort of jewelry concept. They could be key chains or paperweights or any number of things, and they would be appealing to all ages, because honestly, who (besides someone really evil) doesn’t love Winnie the Pooh?  

So, for example, my Pooh Totem is Eeyore-Pooh-Rabbit. I’m cynical on the surface, but ultimately believe in the goodness of people and the world. I’m intensely loyal to and have unwavering confidence in my family and friends, but almost always underestimate my own abilities. I’m nothing if not organized. I could easily give Rabbit a run for his money in the creation of lists department, and while I undoubtedly drive a lot of people crazy in the process, I absolutely get things done.

It’s fun and even somewhat addictive to contemplate what the Pooh Totems of friends and family would be. I’m pegging my husband’s Pooh Totem as Pooh-Roo-Piglet (the compassionate part of Piglet, not the small in stature part), with a touch of Eeyore. My five-year-old son is Tigger-Rabbit-Roo (mostly Tigger at this age!)

I’ve even amused myself in particularly boring meetings or kept myself calm in contentious ones by mapping the Pooh Totems of my colleagues. As annoying as that naysayer is, it’s somehow easier to tolerate when I imagine them as a Piglet who finds it hard to be brave. Who hasn’t come across know-it-all Owl types who use meetings and projects as vehicles to create a perception that they are a whole lot smarter than they actually are? And there always seems to be a Tigger – that person who operates with such a lack of finesse and utter disregard for policy, hierarchy and general professionalism that they leave a trail (or a conference room, as the case may be) full of people who literally feel like they’ve been bounced upon. When I want to strangle these people, I try to see them as good-natured Tiggers who are simply unable to contain their enthusiasm.
                                                                                                 
See how fun and useful Pooh Totems are! Give it a try . . . which Pooh are you?



 
Christopher Robin's "Winnie-the-Pooh Character Guide". Winnie-the-Pooh FAQ. http://www.lavasurfer.com/pooh-faq.html. (January 6, 2012).