snow day (kicked in the head)

By the time I woke up this morning, four or five inches of snow had already deposited itself all over the landscape. My wife tells me that they are expecting another inch an hour through noon, so I should run to the store before it gets any worse. I also need to go buy a shovel since the my little guy snapped the other one in half the other day. Apparently, E was trying to build a mountain in the yard, so he wouldn’t have to walk three whole blocks to the sledding hill.
The weather was pretty bad, I think I drove to the store at the height of the storm—visibility was about an eighth of a mile and the snow plows hadn’t come through yet. Added to the mess was the fact that my wipers and tires are all shot, so I was fishtailing every which way, so I no idea where I was going. I had to guess at where to turn—couldn’t really see the streets or driveways all that well, but everything still seemed to work out.
Z-man and I stopped off at the Asian food mart to grab some goodies and there was only one other car in the parking lot, which was pretty treacherous to begin with. I bought my usual—Vietnamese rice noodle soup-which tastes exactly like Thai rice noodle soup-and fixings (meatballs, holy basil) for perhaps the second or third greatest meal ever invented. The best is and will always be a traditional Lao offering of sticky rice, laab (a ground meat dish mixed with various spices), papaya salad and fried chicken.
We feasted after we zigzagged home through the unplowed streets, laughing at one of the neighbors who missed his driveway completely and ditched his minivan. Little E even ate with us—surprising since he’s usually a mac and cheese kind of guy. The boys and I went and cleared the driveway and the patio behind the house after our repast. Actually, it was just me and Z--E was busy rolling around in the snow and playing with his Tonka trucks.
Z and I recruited Bess to come out and play football with us once we were done, an idea that seemed really good at the time, but proved to be anything but after further reflection. For one thing, the snow was so deep that it was over the tops of my boots and it kept funneling in and soaking my socks. The other thing is Z ended up stepping on my face, he had beat me to the corner and managed to slip out of my arms as I was trying to wrap him up. I was falling and flailing after his legs when his foot shot down, searching for terra firma, but instead it found the bottom half of my face.
It felt like someone punched my right in the mouth, which makes sense I guess. The funny thing is that it didn’t feel like a kick to the head, which it was in a way, but painful all the same. Good old smash mouth football in six inches of snow. The bonus part was that I got to keep all of my teeth; my parents spent way too much money for me to be coughing up teeth over a little backyard football game.
We had even more family fun when I tried leaving for work, both lips fat from their recent meeting with the sole of Z’s Asics and a bruise forming on the chin. I shot out into the street from our freshly cleared driveway only to get stuck as soon as I had reversed. I would give the car some gas and lurch forward, only to get stuck a few feet further up. I kept this up for about 10 minutes, managing to get a half a block down the street.
I ran back to the house, cigarette dangling from my mouth, and had Z, Bess and my wife throw on their winter gear to help push the car. I don’t know if the front-wheel drive or the weight of the Saturn was the culprit, but we basically pushed that thing for three blocks. My Olds Cutlass would have lumbered through all that snow without much trouble, but my plastic excuse of a car could barely make it five feet at a time.
The main streets weren’t that bad compared to my street, but driving was still no picnic. I passed three accidents on Michigan Ave. and it seemed like most of the driveways going into stores or gas stations were still clotted with snow flung from the plows. City streets were worse than the suburbs, but that’s pretty much expected by now, and everyone was going below the speed limit, a rarity in these parts.
I’m not sure how much snow actually fell, my guess would be seven to eight inches, guessing by the high top fade made of snow atop one of my coworker’s cars. He’s one of those people who only clear off the windows and hood, leaving a pile on top of the passenger area and the trunk. I always thought that looked kind of funny, and it’s a bear if you’re driving behind a car like that when the snow decides to take a suicide jump at your windshield just for kicks.
All in all, not a bad snow day for the kids, I suppose. My daughter and I even played guitar for a minute, I was showing her the chords to the Ramones’ “I Just Want To Have Something To Do” and “I Believe In Miracles.” I tuned my top E string down to D, so we-she-I can hit the power chords easier. One finger on one fret, three strings is all you need. I could use a better amplifier or even a better guitar to truly hear the notes, but we’re still working on that. It’s only taken me-us-we eleven months to get that far, but I think its going well, that geetar crunch makes most of the other stuff seem not so important.
I hope my kids will look back at some of these experiences and get a chuckle out of it. How many times do you get to push a car three blocks through the snow, or get to splurge on a Thai/Vietnamese meal, or step on your father’s face playing football, or figure out a guitar riff? For all my whining and complaining, I like my life, really enjoy the moments with the kids. I hope they do too, I’m sure they’d let me know if they didn’t, or at least hope that they would let me know. It’s better than a kick in the head, I suppose, but even that doesn’t have to be a bad thing either.