Another Snow Day

Another SNOW DAY- or a NO DAY as I am now calling them...as in NO School. NO Driving. NO Parking.  NO Nothing.

The boys have been amazing: relaxing, doing their laundry, helping with shoveling, sledding, playing Wii, playing with the neighbor kids, going over a friend's house, going to a sleep-over birthday party, watching movies, snacking. 

Bobby lost his green ipod sometime after coming home from the sleepover and discovered it 9 hours later at bedtime.  We said it was too late to toss the entire house and too dark to go outside looking and that we'd look tomorrow in the daylight. He was rightly concerned that if he dropped it between the neighbor's house and ours, by morning it would be covered by several inches of snow. True. A brief upset, some negative self talk and a few tears and off he went to bed.  Three minutes. Really. Holy Mother of Wow!   In the past this would have been a two hour ordeal of uncontrolled raging and all the ugly self talk from all the abuse ever would boil over and cloud his every breath with PTSD and memories and an ugly mood that permeates the house like the scent of skunk perfume.  Not anymore!!!!!!!!

Wow. Just Wow. I am not even waiting for the other shoe to drop. 

I am counting this as my new normal. My everyday expectation of a normal family life seems a possibility today. 

This picture was taken over the weekend and is an accurate representation of the past three days at our house. In between shoveling and naps and garlic roasted chicken and naps and tea and books and chicken soup and magazines and red wine and chocolate and naps and...well, you get the basic idea.

I may have changed my socks and pants and the magazines and books have been added to and restacked twice and are now askew.  There are crumbs and half filled mugs of tea. The fireplace is now decorated with damp gloves and hats and snow-pants hung from the nails left on the mantle from our Christmas stockings.  The damp logs from the ice storm sizzle and loudly pop and crackle and startle the new dog, Dexter, worried and awake from his naps. But other than that - the scene is the same.

Bliss.

****sigh****