Tough stuff

The temperatures have plunged into the single digits. I walk around my house in long underwear, shirt and skirt, sweater, and the heat cranked up to the high 70's. My husband is sweating. I'm despairing of ever being warm again. It's our winter ritual.

I am avoiding going out as much as possible, but Chicago is a tough city. It takes a lot to get them to shut anything down. The kid's school has opened during blizzards and sub-zero temps. In San Antonio, we joke, the sighting of two snowflakes, they don't even have to stick to the ground, shuts the entire city down for the day. It always seemed perfectly reasonable to me.

Shabbat was brutal, with a high of 4 degrees. The kids and I didn't budge. My husband braved the elements, but we stubbornly stayed put. I would have been happy to stay indoors, hibernating the best I could, but life goes on in Chicago. Even during the wickedest of cold nights.

Saturday night was one such example. My Kindergartner had a special program at her school with arts projects and a small performance. We bundled up and braced ourselves. I made my husband warm up the car for us.

It was nice to socialize and even nicer to see my sweetie in action, but it was below zero. I'm still not convinced it's a good idea to take anyone, let alone a child, in that kind of weather. If God had meant for us to live in these temps, he would have given us fur like Siberian huskies, no?

The next morning I had to go out again, this time for piano lessons followed by swimming lessons. Thankfully, neither held the drama of last week's classes; no eight year old boy melting down at the side of the pool. Still, I would have rather stayed in bed, under my down comforter and hand-knit blanket.

One side affect of our winter seclusion has been the growing mess in our apartment. The kids, stuck indoors all day, have thoroughly trashed the place. I finally had enough, and swore that by the end of the day, every single toy would be removed from my daughters' room.

True to my word, I reshuffled around my living room furniture, cramming the sofa, table and chair onto one half of the room, and made the other half the girls' play area. I spent hours clearing through toy chests, boxes and drawers, reorganizing, throwing away the garbage, and reuniting sets of toys. This, naturally, led to a complete reorganization of their clothing drawers, too. Once all of the toys were comfortably nestled in their new living room area, I started pulling out old, outgrown, stained, or torn clothes, filling up a large garbage bag as the clean, unfolded laundry piled up on the couch.

By the time the children were snuggled soundly in their freshly made up beds, I shuddered. My attempts at gaining a modicum of control over my chaotic, hectic life, only opened up a Pandora's box. The girl's room is finally clean, they have their play area in my living room, but now I have to go through all of the board games and puzzles and toys that have migrated from their original storage places, and I have to repeat the whole process in my son's room and his desk.

Oy, his desk. You don't want to know. Suffice it to say, the boy is allergic to throwing away anything. His backpack is a cemetery for old, crumpled paper airplanes. Dozens, if not hundreds, have found their final resting place there.

As have crumpled pages with calligraphy. I know it sounds odd, but my son, the left-handed kid with the worst chicken scratch excuse for handwriting this side of a the American Medical Association, has decided that handwriting is his absolute, A-number one, favorite class in school. I can't explain it. This is the same boy who I make rewrite his homework countless times until it is barely legible. Yet, handwriting class has tripped his fancy. I've seen his notebook, too. They're learning cursive, and it's more than legible. His cursive script is quite, dare I say it? Lovely.

As a result, Grandma and Papa bought him a beginners calligraphy set. He has been plowing through it at recess, collecting scraps of various fonts, letters, and lines, teaching himself to write like a Medieval monk.

Yet, he still can't print worth a farthing.

As cold as it is, the snow isn't yet piling up outside. But indoors, the messes of small children are, and I have attacked the piles of papers, stickers, doll clothing, and stuff with vigor. The more I clean, the more hidden stashes of junk I find. It's a small apartment! Where's all this rubbish coming from?

I finally vacuum up the last shred of something from my girls' room, and hustle my son into his bed. I finish up the last load of laundry, relieved that at least the kids will all be in school tomorrow so I can plow through the detritus of my son's desk, when I get a phone call.

"Did you hear? School's been cancelled! The heaters aren't keeping the whole building warmed up enough."

Hmph. I sneer. What wimps.