Martini Anyone?

I love my children. That's a given, right?

Okay, with that said, please understand that as much as I adore them, snow days are their own special brand of torture for me.

The day before the bowels of hell are supposed to open up, my kids are usually peppered with rumours about the pending weather. All of the sudden, they turn into mini meteorologists who discuss barometric pressure and precip odds with their peers with more authority than the guy on the evening news:

"There is a seventy percent chance of snow overnight. Depends on the temp. If that warming trend from the south hits us, it will only rain. We need to pray that the cold front sweeping down from Canada follows the jet stream and pushes the warmer weather to the valley."

If she were conversing about any other topic, Olivia, with her five year old lisp would sound like Elmer Fudd and his wascally wabbit. When she talks about the possibility of an inclement weather day off of school, she is freaking Walter Cronkite incarnate.

Anyway, when Dallas and I went to the gym this morning, there was just a sprinkling of rain. By the time we got out, the tinkle had turned to sleet. I went through my morning routine firmly believing that the weather predictions were wrong and then I made the short-sighted mistake of waking up my PEACEFULLY SLEEPING children before turning on the television. I was kind of like the child who hides behind his hands and figures that if he can't see you, you can't see him. My thought process was that if I didn't turn on the TV, I wouldn't see that the schools were closed so therefore, THEY WERE OPEN. I could drop the kids at the carpool like normal and head off to my hundred square feet of office bliss, where people form complete sentences and don't ask me to cut the crusts off their toast.

So, now I sit in my home office with SpongeBob blaring in the next room and Guitar Hero loud enough to make eyes bleed pounding upstairs. Olivia had chocolate chip cookies and a PB&J for breakfast. I'm not sure that Dylan ate. I think he gave up pretty quickly after asking for a glass of water and being told to go cup his hands under the damn bathroom faucet. I'm having to mute my end of conference calls to mask the periodic arguments between my children. I have contemplated slipping a narcotic into their milk. Why does every toy on the planet pee, squeal, honk, beep, buzz, ring, ding, bark and wail?

My sanity is slowly leaking out of my ears.

Snow days, not business meetings, are why the martini lunch was invented.