Save Me From Snow Days

We have had quite a few snow days this year. And while, of course, we are used to having a snow day here or there over the winter (we do live in Buffalo after all), it seems like we have had a few more than is normal. (And by normal, I mean normal to a Buffalo winter.)

I always start out the first snow day of the season embracing the free day at home with the kids. It will by idyllic! There will be hot cocoa with marshmallows, sledding and board games in our pjs! We will bake cookies and do crafts! I conveniently forget that nine times out of ten the snow day falls on a working day which means that I must juggle my lawyer persona with my mom persona. (It is a very rare day indeed that the dad must juggle his working persona with his dad persona. In my case, Chris usually greets the snow day with a cautious "So, what's your plan for the day?")

The meeting of the mom persona with the lawyer persona causes nothing but stress. Instead of basking in sledding runs while hot chocolate bubbles on the stove, I screech at my kids when they demand a snack and I am trying to get this one last important email sent to a client. Instead of board games in our pjs, I barter a movie with unlimited sugared candied snacks for the kiddies while I take a conference call in my pjs holed up in the laundry room. (Here's the thing about the laundry room. No one seems to ever look in there. It may mean they would have to, I don't know, do some laundry?)

My stress level rockets when I try to balance two almost impossible tasks: working and motherhood. I can't do either of them well when I try to do them in tandem. I short them both and end the day feeling like no one get the best parts of me.

Save me from the impossibility of juggling snow days. Or at least freedom from believing a woman really can do it all. Because if there is one thing you learn as a mother is that you can't do it all. You just can't. Something has to give. I guess that is why I made the emails wait this morning while I played Operation and Bop It. But, I have a conference call this afternoon that is bound to find the kids watching bad tv with a bag of marshmallows to split between them while I am hiding behind baskets of dirty laundry talking to a client. We do what we have to do. We do the best we can. Snow days and all.