heyMamas

More Snow

 {Picture of our mini-trampoline in the backyard almost covered completely by snow.}

It seems that we will be getting another snowstorm tonight into tomorrow into tomorrow night, that is supposed to dump anywhere from twelve to two feet more of snow on us!  This winter has been so insanely annoying for a commuting working parent but so beyond magical for a little person.

My girls played outside in the snow today with their friends, six days after the last snowfall.  SIX days and there is still mounds and mounds of snow sitting right outside our house piled so high and porches so riddled with ice that a deathly back-breaking fall is only seconds a way, that we can't even imagine life without it. 

But in a few short months, the snow will be a distant memory giving way to longer days and more sun-shining warm weather.

Or at least I think the sun will come out again.... 

Sometime.

In the future.

Snow Days

We had our third snow day on Long Island yesterday, and it has been incredibly exciting for my girls.  My only wish would be less working when I am snowed in and more playing, although I did manage to get in more hugs and kisses than I normally get when I am at work.

The girls went sledding in the later part of the afternoon, but insisted on doing this the ENTIRE morning....

 

After about an hour of wrestling, I yelled at them to get out of their pj's, brush their teeth AND their hair and make their beds. 

"Have a little pride in your appearance," I must have said at least ten times although I cringed at myself after for having said that since they are only ten and seven, but I couldn't help it.  Lounging around in pj's all day makes me crazy!!  The lounging part is great, I just feel like it doesn't hurt to look pretty and have fresh breath. 

An entire day of them drifting from one thing to another sort of reminded me of college kids home on a break from school.  Ya know, after having been away at school and slaving over your books and your partying, and then you go home to your parents house for the holidays and sleep all day and go out all night. 

They stopped the wrestling long enough to go change into some real clothes, but as soon as they were done they came right back downstairs and started doing some kind of cheer-leading pyramid building thing, which is sort of hard to do with only two people....

A for effort though.

 

It Could Always Be Worse

My sister always tells me whenever either of us throws ourselves a pity party {which does not happen often as we are extremely well grounded and thankful for our lives}, "it could always be worse" or as my boss likes to say "I mean, c'mon we are not in Afghanistan here."

So Monday morning as I rolled over to turn off my cell phone alarm that I have come to despise so much, I wondered how it is that I manage to get up and get into work so early, five days a week. 

How do people do it, day after day?  Leave their families, the comfort of their home to haul ass to work? To possibly take shit from their boss, deal with annoying co-workers (not you Karen, promise), deal with a miserable commute, and the list could just keep going...... 

And a Monday morning is that much harder, and a cold, wintery New York City Monday morning is even worse. So I sat and pondered how exactly it is that I get up out of my bed, my California King sized bed that I swear is the most comfortable bed I have ever laid on.  Although the flip side of my love for the bed, is Drew's hatred of the bed, he feels like he sinks right into the middle of it. 

Last year when we moved into our new house, our movers thought it was a good idea to fold the mattress in half for the eight or so hours it took to make it from one house to the other.  But as much as he loathes it and threatens to replace it, I love it and can't get enough of it. 

Back to my pity party.  So Monday morning, I got up at 5:45am as I do everyday, got ready, left my house and arrived at the train station only to find everyone standing OUTSIDE the train car when they should be sitting comfortably INSIDE the train car.

We stood outside in the cold for thirty-five minutes ON THE COLDEST DAY OF THE YEAR TO DATE {the dial in our car said six degrees}, while I watched the Long Island Rail Road workers, unhitch seven train cars from the rest of the train, drive them away and then drive some new ones back THIRTY minutes later. 

Then there was the whole re-hitching the cars process and hmm, this is fun BUT I WEAR DRESSES TO WORK!!  I thought I was going to die. So after they re-hitch the cars and we finally board the train, I arrived at work forty minutes late.

I decided after that ridiculous ordeal I should at least treat myself to the subway instead of walking the ten blocks and one avenue to my office.  Surprise, surprise.... one of the lines to the machines that sells Metrocards was broken and there were twenty-five people waiting to use the only other operating machine. 

So no dice in the pampering subway ride.  Need I remind you how desperate someone has to be to call a NYC subway ride, pampering.  I had a chill in my bones that lasted through lunch time.

Lunch time.

Lunch, now that's a whole other dysfunctional topic in my life because for someone who gets to work at 7:30am, I seem to eat my lunch closer to the time that one should be having their late afternoon snack.  When I make the stupid decision to eat lunch that late in the day, I get an unbelievably painful headache that then takes sixteen tylenol to get rid of. 

I can almost feel my liver dying a little more with each passing pill.  

So 5pm comes, it's time to go home and I walk to Penn Station only to find that my express train has been cancelled and they are combining trains with another and making it a local.  That equates to about ten stops to my house and everyone is crammed into cars that they don't belong in due to the severe overcrowding, and we have to wait at each stop for people that are in the wrong cars to make it to the right cars so they can be let off the train. 

YUP...

So I wrote this post while I was crammed in the middle of an aisle with my ass in someones face during which I start to ponder AGAIN, for the second time that day, why it is that I choose to live where I live? 

And in my ear I can hear my sister's words, it could always be worse.... 

And then it got worse, right there and then on that train. 

My phone lost it's internet connection.

My phone lost it's internet connection.  Yeah, that's right.

My calls failed, I could send any emails, get any emails, and couldn't send any text messages!!  Thank goodness I had my work blackberry or I would have been walking home. 

That night Drew tried everything he could to figure out what could have happened to my phone to make it act this way. 

He re-booted it, to no avail.  He reprogrammed it, nope, nada, nothing.  Dead.

Nothing we did could fix this thing. 

The next morning, I went to an AT&T Store and promptly found out that some clown at the local mall had added himself to my account as an authorized user, used our upgrades, bought himself three brand new iphones and in the process hijacked all of our cell phone numbers so that they no longer worked for us, but worked for him, just as I was on that train ride home.

At least I am not in Afghanistan.... 

Sensitivity or More Accurately A Total Lack Of...

Lily learned about sensitivity in her classroom last week. 

So the concept of sensitivity was thrown around quite a bit in our household due to this sensitivity super lesson....do you see what I mean?  I said sensitivity twice in that last sentence alone. 

Uh, there it is again.  Sensitivity.

Anyway, sorry if I am being insensitive and going on and on...

One of the stories Lily told us about was a day at school when she and her friend had brought in the lunch crate that holds all of the lunch boxes.  After they brought in the crate, they were quickly called out by another member of their group for not being "sensitivity."

"You always take the lunch crate in?"  the little girl said to Lily and her friend in a very accusatory tone.

They answered back, "well, we can help it if we got to it first."

"Well, you always get to do it and that's just not fair!" they continued on.

 

Just for the record people, they have only taken the lunch crate back into the class twice so far this year, or so they tell me, once in the beginning and then the other day.  The other little girl has taken it in once.

 

So yes, in percentages it seems grossly unfair I suppose.

FIFTY PERCENT MORE.

They have had fifty percent more action with the lunch crate than their little friend and to a second grader that is a very big UNFAIR deal.

Life is so unfair.

There is no sensitivity in that percentage.

 

"Sorry" Lily answered back again when the little girl told her she wasn't being sensitivity.

Because I found this story so compelling along with the misuse of the word sensitivity over and over again so charming, I asked Lily if I could tape it so that I could always remember it. 

I think she knew EXACTLY what I was planning on doing with this so-called recording for memory sake, so she said, "NO!!  I want to tell you a story without you writing it down for once!!"

{I don't know how the heck she thinks this blog gets written, I mean seriously.}

And BAM, total lack of sensitivity on my part right there.  Right there!

Guilty as charged.

Had I not been listening to her this whole entire time, she wondered????

AND THEN Drew secretly took my cell phone and started taping the rest of her story, but the record button made this loud beeping noise and the jig was up. 

Cover SO blown.

 

Lily made her way over to the couch, curled up into a ball, and cried for twenty minutes about how we didn't listen to her wishes and "ohmygod we were so not sensitivity."

Mama's Bits: Over Already?

{This is my category called Mama's Bits where I discuss a piece or person that is highly relevant at the moment in pop culture in an effort to catalog for my girls, who and what was popular during their childhood.}

 

It's been a long time since I posted something in Mama's Bits.  It hasn't been because I don't read my favorite gossip blogs everyday, but more like what I have been reading has been total crap.

Until a few weeks ago when I ran past this cover on a magazine rack  in Penn Station on my way home from work.  Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds, a couple!!!  I was so excited.  They would be so amazing together! 

I love them both so much individually that not loving them together would be a complete impossibility. 

 
Both just newly divorced from total idiots, I thought it was a done deal, good to go, the fat lady singing.....only to find out tonight as I googled them to get a picture, that they ARE NO LONGER DATING!

The article that I read said that Sandra called it quits because she wanted to focus on her son and I admire her for that, I really do, but can't she have some fun on the side?  Isn't she entitled to a little levity after what she went through with that dirt bag husband of hers?

I have read that she is a super private person so maybe this no-more-dating-declaration is nothing more than a ruse to get the magazines and photag's off their backs.

 

Only time will tell I guess, but seriously how cute do they look together?