Snow Day
Today was supposed to be Dress Like an Animal Day at school.
Better yet, the newsletter specially said that full-out costumes were actually allowed and not just animal print clothing. Basically, it was like free extra Halloween which is one of the best holidays there are when you are a kid, after Christmas. A Christmas-Halloween mash up was quite probably everything my youngest child had ever dreamed of. His big brother was not quite as excited about it because he had a field trip and had to wear normal human clothing, but it was a good field trip and he was pretty stoked about it in spite of having to wear a polo and khakis.
My eight-year-old and I rummaged through our costume box. He rejected turkey, goat, and monkey, and instead went for Cheetah. Our cheetah costume is one of those Lycra full-body suits that cling to kneecaps, elbows, and everything else that sticks out in-between. I had purchased it two-years ago and it was two-sizes too big back then and draped nicely. Now it fit like the designers intended, which was not a look that I was comfortable sending to third grade. I explained that he would have to wear shorts over the top of it. He was not thrilled. However, it was bedtime and five minutes after bedtime is my favorite time of the day, so I was not going to drag the discussion out further. We decided that he could sleep in the costume and we’d talk about it in the morning.
So other than potentially having to wear shorts over the cheetah skin-suit, today was supposed to be a pretty outstanding day at school, possibly the most outstanding day imaginable, except for tomorrow which is both the school Christmas party and also Pajama Day.
However, it’s December in Ohio, and that means anything can happen. My ex-husband was sure school would be cancelled due to cold or weather or something. I looked at the weather reports, and saw only 2-4 inches, 18 degrees, oh, and that Feel Like temperature thing was -8. But so what? I saw no reason for alarm. I lived in both Anchorage, Alaska, and Upstate New York as a child. Snow days didn’t happen that often in spite of severe cold ,and for sure we requried more than a few measly inches of snow to cancel school.
My children have all sorts of bizarre rituals involving spoons and wearing pajamas backwards that are supposed to sway the weather gods in their favor. Now that my 6th grader is older, though, he’s abandoned these rituals in favor of a website called snowdaycalculator.com. In the last 24 hours, he had checked more often than Santa checks his list. It predicted a 75% chance of a snow day given our particular school and our particular weather. And it was right.
Do you know what’s even better than going to school in a cheetah costume the last week before Christmas break? Waking up in a cheetah costume and finding out it’s a snow day.
