My Working Mom Perspective: Hot, Cold and Snow Days

 

Yet again another early dismissal, it was too HOT for the kids at school. “Don’t they have air conditioning” my mother questioned. I replied a reluctant, “Yes they do, but I guess other schools don’t.”

 

I left work every day at one o’clock during that week of steamy weather, so hot that it would fry an egg on the playground blacktop {it’s true a weatherman even tried it.} I schlepped E to the office with me {I’m lucky like that} and made him sit and do homework or draw. He was bored and I was annoyed, because I couldn’t get any work done with him in my office. I was also annoyed that I had to stay late that week to make up the time I took off to go get him.

 

Fast forward to the Polar Vortex, and it’s the same situation only this time it’s so cold it will freeze an egg on the playground blacktop. I’m tired of the phone ringing and if I ever meet our Superintendent of schools I might just kick him in the shin. Actually better yet I’ll have him babysit my son and all the other children of working and single-working moms who have had to struggle to find childcare, pay for childcare or jeopardize their jobs to accommodate for Mother Nature’s wrath.

 

Don’t get me wrong I love a good snow day like anyone else. We cuddle up, play games, drink cocoa, watch movies and enjoy time together. But…there comes a breaking point and that happened when I realized my vacation time at work was gone. Poof! Vanished in the blink of a half a dozen “snow” days and regularly scheduled “no school” days.

 

I’ve discussed these “panic” school cancellations with friends over dinner.

 

“Do you remember walking to school when it was cold?”

 

“Yes! I think there was time it was 80 below and I still had to walk. Oh, and it was uphill both directions and all I had was windbreaker.”

 

Ok, maybe that last part is an exaggeration and maybe we are just getting old, but seriously…I felt like we had school no matter what. I remember riding home on the bus in blizzard-like conditions. When I was in middle school I remember walking to school without a hat, because I didn’t want to mess up my AquaNet do, and my ear getting a smidge bit of frostbite. But my ear is still here and I survived. Sometimes I feel we are in a society of overly sensitive administrators who are so scared they will be “in trouble” that they overact. We live in Iowa, it’s going to be really freaking hot and it’s going to be really freaking cold deal with it.

 

While I understand this year is an anomaly, it’s been so very hard on the working parents in my office and other businesses around the country. There has to be an easier way … I’ve pondered the idea of creating a babysitter phone tree. The biggest issue is many of our babysitters are college students and they never did cancel college classes. {Ironic since half of campus has to walk EVERYWHERE, but I digress} I do have a high school student on retainer. However, when I heard E had pretended she was a Tauntaun and rode her around the house, I doubt she will return.

 

The biggest solution would be if businesses were more accommodating to these parts of parenthood. Allowing more flex-time or the ability to work from home on days when really no one should be out and about.

 

 

This is obviously a bigger battle than can be fought within the confines of my tiny little writing space, but I just want all you parents who have sacrificed your family vacations in the name of “snow” days to know that you are not alone.

 

I’m now going to hide in my turtleneck until summer, when it’s warmer and I get my vacation days back.