My Garage is a Giant Crisper

First and foremost: Congratulations to Jonathan on his one-year publishing anniversary! (Okay, it was last week, but three kids later, my standards for Remembering Things on Time have dropped.) Exciting news, What to Expect will be coming out in paperback, er, sometime soon? JVL has been doing a ton of traveling, even a year later, to talk about the book. We now joke that every time he leaves town, something catastrophic happens on the home front. He was in CA all week a few weeks back, and the girls got terribly ill (the South American vomit, not to be confused with Montezuma's Revenge). Right after the new year, he was in NC when Emma got her first true sickness and wound up on her first antibiotic. So Sunday night, he's getting ready to leave for CA for four days. We got the kids down, and he sweetly ran to the market to stock up on everything I'd need for the week, because taking all three of them to the grocery store is somewhere in the rings of hell for me. He pulled out, and then several ambulances and a fire truck pulled in. The younger daughter of our neighbor was having a fever-induced seizure and had to be rushed to the hospital. I ran over to find her mom racing out the door, her dad panicking and the older girl (5) sobbing in her underwear in the living room (she had been getting ready for bed). I scooped her up and brought her home with me, got her calm, and cuddled her til she fell asleep on the couch, which is where she was when JVL came home, laden with yogurt, milk, fruit and veggies, and frozen waffles. She stayed ti her dad came home from the hospital (everything is okay) and we went to bed. The next morning, we opened the fridge to make breakfast and discovered that it had mysteriously died overnight. There was only one thing to do (besides swear). If there were a cleaning reality show, Hannah and I could partner up and win BIG.

Admittedly, these are first-world problems. But still: Damn you, Jack Donaghy! We hauled out the coolers and JVL ran to the gas station for ice. We salvaged what we could. GE was unhelpful; their tech didn't come until Tuesday afternoon — poor JVL was safely in sunny CA by then. : ) I put a bunch of stuff outside, where it froze and unfroze and froze again, so most of it had to get tossed. When the repairman came — and I use that term loosely — he told me we needed a new compressor (whatever), which would run me about $700, but that they didn't carry them on the truck, so he'd order it and it would be in…next Tuesday. As in, seven days from then. As in, five days from now. But that I should just go to Walmart and get a mini fridge; they're "only" about $150. It is possible I said some unpleasant things to the door after he left. Then, I asked my neighbor if I could commandeer his beer fridge for a few days in the name of keeping my kids' antibiotics cool but not frozen. Not much he could say but yes. So the milk and medicine are in there, and the garage floor is strewn with bagels, cheese, yogurt, cucumbers, butter, syrup…am I classy or what? Is it wrong that we are eating cereal bars three times a day? Is it possible to develop scurvy in a week? 

So last night, with the snowstorm bearing down, JVL learned his flight had bee

n cancelled and he probably can't get home until Saturday. We all wore jammies inside out and woke up to a foot of snow! 

Trying to shovel out was a comedy of errors; I had to wait until Emma's nap, which is about 45 minutes long, but it took us about 25 just to get in our snow gear, once we found Cody's pants, which were mysteriously stashed under the dining room table. I remembered that I don't actually own snow pants. (Truth be told, I "remember" this at least once a year, right after it snows, and vow to go get some, and then it melts, and…) So I put on Jonathan's snow pants, which was as amusing as you would picture. After about 2 minutes, Cora started whining that she was cold and her pants were snowy. I pretended not to hear. I had gotten one tire clear when I heard Emma (on the monitor) start to wail. I got her up and put her in her Randy (from A Christmas Story) outfit and put her in the swing, which she was confused and not so happy about, and shoveled madly. I felt every day of my 34 years and 364 days. Our 12-year-old neighbor kid came out, lanky and strong and, well, young, and I shouted, "Want to make 20 bucks?" He brightened. It was worth it. 

Lessons? I would have made a poor pioneer. I would not make it a day on Survivor. GE products are not worth the price. It is so much better to have a big, strong, wonderful partner, whose pants fit so beautifully, around when it snows. I love and miss my Valentine. 

I will make do with the mini-Valentines. 

 Making Valentines.

Happy snow day!