All This Snow and No One to Play With

The girls returned to school this week, Jack went back to work, I went back to the library. Order has been restored in our lazy lives. Given the general assumption that mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again, I'm always a bit off in my want to keep them home just a few days more. "Mom, it's got to happen, we've got to go back to school, we've got to learn.", said my painfully logical seven year old, the one who burrows under her pillow and begs for more sleep when we come in at 6:30 to wake her.

At every possible opportunity I voiced my displeasure with CPS and their decision to continue classes through December 23rd, giving us very little time for holiday merriment before Christmas. School was over, it was Christmas Eve. We wedged in a trip to see the windows at Field's (generally disliked, "there was no story Mom, it was like a commercial" from the logical child), we saw Santa, we decorated the tree, we made a gingerbread house, but there was no carol singing, no Kris Kindl Market, no falalala and precious little hohoho, but plenty of homework. Not my idea of a silver bell kind of build up to the big day and I was not pleased.

As it turns out, having the extra week in January was nice. Very little pressure to do anything, and, given that Chicago has recently become a warm weather get away, a little like taking a vacation right at home. It was 58 degrees last week; we went to the park, we walked, we ran errands, we went ice skating, and we enjoyed the true wonder of being on our own schedule, if just for a few days.

The holidays are over, the new year has begun, and, as I sit here in my dining room awaiting the arrival of 8 to 10 inches of snow, I realize that I have found my way home again, back to Chicago and the order that dictates our daily lives, back to some other's schedule.

It's hard to love snow when all your playmates are in school.

Six months until summer break.