insult + injury = unhappy girlchild

The good thing about all this snow, in my view: nothing. I grew up in Chicago, and there is not one jot, not one iota of snow-love in me. I cannot romanticize the stuff, not even at Christmas.

The good thing about all this snow according to the Girlchild: three cancelled school days.

Sunday night when it was established that there would be no school on Monday but the roads were still passable (if you have four wheel drive and antilock brakes and aren’t afraid of the occasional tree in the road), the Mathematician drove the Girlchild to a sleepover, the really good kind where there are just four friends. This was in town so they could tramp through the snow to the grocery store where they bought all kinds of teenager-feed, and then trooped back to cook and eat and watch television. Monday night (last night) she came home, and not unhappily which had less to do with seeing us, her doting parents, than the fact that today her new computer was supposed to be delivered.

Except today the temperature dropped and the slushy roads turned to ice. The kind of ice you don’t mess with, especially if you live on a windy county road like ours. You may remember this map from the story of the the bat, the knee, the bicycle helmet, the Mathematician and Dick, the doctor. Now in the winter there’s less worry about bats, but ice is no fun either. These last two days people have been skidding off road and down into ravines, over and into cliffs, and when none of that is available, into ditches. Some of them fatally.

So we’re stuck here in the county, while in town the Girlchild’s friends have got another sleepover going because again tomorrow: school cancelled. And the insult on top of that injury? DHL is not delivering her computer today. They don’t like the idea of skidding off the road into the bay either.

Now what we have on our hands is a very unhappy, very vocally furious seventeen year old who declared she was going to walk into town. Seven plus icy miles in the snow drifts and dark is nothing if her friends are waiting for her. She scoffs at the lack of boots. She sneers at the idea of broken bones. None of that is relevant when her best friends are all together in one place without her. Overnight. With junk food, and movies.

Sometimes you just gotta say no, and then ride out the consequences. What I’m really worried about is the power going out, because then she wouldn’t even be able to talk to her friends online, and I fear she would simply… implode. And that would be a shame. A very messy, very loud shame.

So wish us warm temperatures and melting ice and power lines that stay where they are supposed to be. Because truth to tell: after three days of on again-off again power and imploding teenager, my nerves are shot.