We are having a rough time.

Wow, is winter break a terrible idea! Way to come up with terrible ideas, school system! Let’s take the bleakest, coldest, most hopeless week of the year, when it’s almost impossible to motivate yourself to do anything unless you absolutely have to, and give the kids some time off so they can sit inside with their parents and everyone has endless, unscheduled hours in which to argue! Let’s make sure it’s right when Alice and Eden’s book is due!

Okay, it’s possible the school system never factored my book-writing into their schedule. I mean, I guess. I do suspect they’re secretly out to get me, but whatever.

Note to future self: PLAN A VACATION FOR WINTER BREAK. Do not stay home! Do not forget about winter break, because it’s such an insane idea that you seem to scrub it from your memory each year, and when you finally do remember don’t decide to “just hang out;” do not envision hot cocoa and quiet playtime and cozy hours completing jigsaw puzzles! For lo, it shall not happen; the child will be in a midwinter funk and will only want to watch television and lie on the ground with his pants off (and then complain that he’s too cold); you will all be depressed and gritchy, and will fight and nitpick and whine. You will don the same pilly gray sweater and torn sagging jeans that it feels like you’ve been wearing since the day you were born, and you will look for a quiet corner in which to retreat, but the only place is your arctic bedroom, which is full of detritus and other reminders that you need to clean and launder and etc., but you don’t have the time for those things, so instead you will burrow under some blankets and write a blog post and snivel.

Next year, a vacation. Even if we have to sell a couple of kidneys to get it.

Comments

[barb.]

Your winter break sounds a lot like our winter break, minus the book deadline and plus one additional whiny small food monster. And lo! Life is bleak. Next Monday cannot come soon enough.

[Megsie]

I think you might be on to something! Where are you going? Are you making reservations right now? In my house that is the only way things get done.

[Bethysmalls]

((((HUGGING YOU ALL))))

[Emily]

Yep, sounds a lot like our winter break. We definitely need to plan a vacation or at least a decent "staycation" next time. Otherwise this mom will be deemed certifiably insane due to the constant fighting of two older girls and the incessant whining of two younger children (and a husband).

[mp]

You people get winter breaks?! Gah. I'd be jealous if it didn't sound so torturous.

[Rachel]

Sometimes I can't help but think that there are few things worse than trying to survive the month of February. I can't imagine trying to do it with everyone cooped up in the same place with nothing to look forward to. Gah!

[Aimee]

Same here. UGH. SO glad it's over.

[Green]

A little tip: you need to start planning in the summer for the following February. Whether you go to New England to ski or Orlando for D-World. I grew up in NY and my mom said it was the toughest time to find hotels and airfare and she had to start planning way early.

[hi kooky]

hugs, indeed

[Sweetconnie64]

My advice is to book a cruise right now for next year's winter break. You don't have to pay for the whole thing at once, just a make a deposit. It won't cost you a kidney, and you'll have something to look forward to all year.

[Sadie at heyMamas]

I mean could it snow anymore in New York....non-stop snowing in midtown right now since early morning!! Hang in there.

Sadie at heyMamas

[tara]

Here they call it Ski Week, so invented because the rich kids head up to their cabins in tahoe. We are not those kids. I also delude myself year after year: "Oh, we'll go to the park! Make cookies! Watch movies! Have picnics! Do craft projects!" And then the first day hits and I'm already out of ativan and it's freaking winter and the craft projects are an expensive bust and the I'm like you, oh my god, how could I have forgotten how bad this is.

[Valerie]

I hear you, woman. This is every weekend for us in winter. It's hibernation time (I'm no snow bunny, blech), but we all get itchy and bitchy and miserable. I crave Spring...

[Em]

The first sentence of this post are the very truest words I have ever read (that I can remember, but I have also been cooped up inside with children so my short term memory is not to be relied upon. Still, very true words.).

[Tina]

I feel this way EVERY year! I swear, next year, we will be ringing in the new year on a beach somewhere....

[cad]

winter break is over and happened in our school system... BUT a bonus TWO WEEKS of break have been slapped, unplanned, into the year as a result of incredible snowfall. Trapped. No plowed roads. Few places are open even if we could leave the subdivision. Nice. Hear you loud and clear, slippy-lady.

[Shannon Gordon]

Winter break sucks for everyone except those who routinely take their children to bermuda! We are on day 2 of our winter break and we coasted into with a raging flu that started thursday night and is still lingering today (Tuesday) I have never posted here before but I totally hear where you are coming from! I am counting the minutes until spring arrives.

[Sarah]

i second the motion to put a deposit down now on something for next year, like a vacation home rental in key west. or tuscany. whatever. hang in there, little tomato!

if you do not read Dr. Isis' blog, you must: http://scienceblogs.com/isisthescientist/

[Kirsty]

Just be grateful you're not here in France (yeah, the south, but it's bone-crunchingly cold (and has been for weeks) and RAINING to boot so, meh south of France)... I work from home, and have a mountain of stuff to do by 26 Feb, my husband's unemployed and in a total funk and guess what? Our two daughters get a TWO WEEK winter break... Tension is building, snarking is occurring, days till 1st March are being counted...

[Lynn]

We hear you in Ohio! BIG snowstorm! School is called off! Many, many days of me and 4 kids in our small house that is shrinking by the minute(my lucky husband works down the street to no matter what, he goes to work.) Crying toddler, hyper 4 yo boy, older girls who want to watch TV. Yech and blech.

[Spedrson]

We don't have a Winter Break here on the calendar. However - the boy has had 8 straight days off due to snow!!!! Unplanned winter breaks are the WORST. Now they may have to take days away from Spring Break to make up for the unplanned winter break!

[Megan]

I'm sorry for your struggles this week. DEPRESSION SUCKS.

[Maegan]

I used to live in (GLORIOUS!) Florida...there was no winter break. There was "fair day" which is when everyone gets a day or two off school b/c we lived in a rural community and kids had to take their animals & stuff to the fair...or help their parents take produce. That was it.

Now I live in New York...and seriously, 2 days in...this is the WORST idea in the history of socialized, formal education. Except for the sawdust on the puke trick...Ugh!

[Sarah Travaglio]

...plus an 18th month old son with his 7th ear infection of the season. top that! :-) j/k

[heyjoe]

Dearest Alice,

I notice that I'm still not on your blogroll. At first I thought this was simply an oversight, but a three year oversight? I'm beginning to have suspicions.

Suspiciously,Joe