S'now big deal - Weston, MA

Snowplow hill at dead end of our street.

So we've reached that part of the winter where in general we're all just done with the white stuff. I am probably the last of the lovers of snow and even I have had my crabby moments. Like when I shovel out the walk for 12-year old labrador Haifa to get out and the town plow comes behind me (literally!!) and chucks a whole mountain of icy snow up behind me again. I might have cried. There were no witnesses. 

Other things I'm done with: black ice. I slid through a stop sign in my All-Wheel Drive monster truck like no one's business. Fortunately no one was coming and I played off with my kids that fish-tailing is fun. It's not. 

Otherwise, I am still amused. It's such a crazy dang winter here and we are so unprepared for it that it's comical. The other thing that is comical is the media coverage. We went from arctic blasts to polar vortexes to the completely unpoetic "ocean enhanced jackpot." According to a friend in New York, we have a "polar plunge" in temperatures later this week. I can hardly wait for the next superlative. I just read that Boston has now broken the 30-day snow record...in 16 days. We're #1! Let's have a victory parade in duck boats!

Image credit: CBS Local, Boston

I have enjoyed my southern and western friends thumbing their noses at me about the temperatures. I used to be a southerner (Miami and Brazil), and here is root of the root as my friend ee cummings would say -- I would not trade. Nope. Not for the warm temperatures of February. I don't want to live in Houston, San Antonio, Miami, Dallas and anywhere else from where I have gotten cute notes. I want to live right here.

I want to live here because I had the best snow day ever. Oh, okay, best since I was maybe 13 years old. When we lived pressed up to the radio to hear if school had been cancelled. And ironically, it started on a lonely note. When the call came in last night close to 5 pm, I was here at the house, and my kids were tired and cranky from a busy Sunday.  I admit I finished off the white wine (it was technically 5 pm at this point, and only one glass left, promise) and said to myself, screw this. After checking with Friebor (remember my friend-neighbor bestie) about my sanity, I sent out a note to the neighborhood moms saying send the kids over for the Embrace Winter Olympics at my house at 1 pm today. And then texted the 17-year old babysitter for help. I envisioned games of knocking cans over with snowballs (what is that weird Olympic sport of rifles over the shoulder cross-country skiing? Kind of like that only no guns and no skis. Okay, not like that) and 100 yard races through four feet of snow. Find the tennis ball before Finley the wonder dog does.

And then I went to bed. The snow started during the night. Six inches were down by the time I got up at 6 am. I went out to shovel for the first time at 7 am, and then I thought, what am I doing? I just want to curl up on the sofa and read. But the kids don't. The kids need to run around.  

As I stood there at the end of the walk thinking all this, another neighbor came by. With the huge pick-up truck he drives that I envy. King cab, cool looking racks and stuff (yeah, I don't know what you use those for) and an engine that rumbles the asphalt. I would look cool in that. The environment would not thank me but I would look cool. 

Anyway, this neighbor rolled down the window and we chatted and laughed about the freaky weather. He had grown up on our street in the house right across from ours--he now lived one house down with his family. And he told me that this was the worst winter he had ever experienced--at least since his daughter (now 14) was a wee one. And he offered to front-loader out the snow from our driveway, lend us a roof rake (clearly insane, he mentioned that roof raking is "fun") or whatever help we needed. This offer came after last week when another neighbor took pity on me digging out and snowblew the front mountain where the Weston bulldozer had made me cry another day.  Neighbors are awesome. I love neighbors. I should write a blog about neighbors. They take care of our betta fish, watch the house when we travel, snowblow, lawn mow, feed me and my kids and make me sane. Most days.

Joe the snowplow guy who was having a wicked good "stahm"

Then, as I went back inside to make cookie dough for the roll cookies I was planning to make with all the kids for Valentine's, the snow plow guy came (hooray!). I have a love-hate relationship with the snow plow guy. I love him when he shows up before 11 pm. I hate him when he doesn't. He doesn't seem to care either way. Can't really tell because I can't understand his Bah-ston accent.

After watching him pile up the snow to 15 feet in front of the third garage (when is this going to melt? July?), I made the cookie dough. Then stared at the kitchen sink faucet which broke two weeks ago. And as I am giving it the evil eye, Friebor texts and says she has sent her husband over to fix it for me! And let me tell you it was a devil to fix--it took almost two hours.  And did the neighbor say "wtf am I doing here in the middle of a storm fixing this crazy lady's kitchen faucet?" No. Did I mention I love my neighbors?

Suddenly it was time for all the neighbor kids to come over and I wasn't ready.  I hadn't planned the games, and I hadn't made the cookie icing. But it didn't matter. The kids leaped on the mountain of snow in the driveway, sledding and rolling, then playing snow hockey. And the dogs played and the kids played with them and they all looked for tennis balls lost in the snow. And ran through four feet of snow.

Then one by one the kids trooped in and we made cookies. Flaky funny fat cookies with sugary frosting. And the adults talked and laughed. One of the middle schoolers helped roll the hard dough. Friebor made the frosting. All the cookies were eaten. Every single one. At one point we had 10 kids crowded around the table slopping and dipping each cookie. Coal, the puppy lab, ate all the sugar on the floor. So clean-up was more than easy.  Haifa, the senior lab, sniffed all the snow clothes left in a huge pile on a beach towel and lay down on top. It was chaos and it was impromptu awesome. That's my media soundbite: today was impromptu awesome. 

The kids then played in the basement and finally went out in the snow once more.  Then the babysitter (the same one who teaches my kids tennis and is the goalie to Lalo's million shots in the backyard--when we can see the backyard, the ball or the goal) decided she was going to shovel out the walk. She was at the end of my driveway when the town plow came and created a huge mountain (the ones that make me cry) and because she is 17, cute and blonde,  the public works plow stopped, backed up, and cleaned out the driveway--she waved joyfully at him. We know because all the moms gathered in the window to watch and marvel.

Finally all the kids wandered home two hours after the impromptu awesome Embrace Winter games began. Every one a winner. And I opened the mailbox and found a postcard from Nico from Antarctica--there are fairy penguins there I learned. 

So sorry all those who wish that I were suffering. Snow days are fantastic--gathering neighbors and kids for simple fun. Cookie fun. Snow fun. Fun with dogs. Fun. 

It's snow big deal. 

Embracing winter - Carrabassett Valley, Maine

My two kids sandwiching one of their friends

So it's my first winter in New England in 24 years. That's insane. But true. We've enjoyed sledding and skating and making snow angels, right here in our own backyard. Then our friend-neighbors--can I go with "Friebors" or does that imply Star Wars characters? --invited us up to ski with them at Sugarloaf Mountain in Maine. We jumped on the chance, even though Sugarloaf lies roughly four hours north of us and there are plenty of other mountains closer. After all, we had a four-day weekend to play with--one day of Martin Luther King Jr holiday and one of teacher planning.  I also invited along a friend from Wellesley days who now lives in Freeport with her kids. I have a handy reference of the cast of characters at the bottom of this blog.

We had typically New England weather. When we went up on Friday afternoon, there were "snow squalls". As an aside, I just love New England weather euphemisms. What I know as "hail", they call "ice pellets." And you know how I feel about "nor-easters" as that was in a prior blog. At one point, on the worst day of skiing, I asked the guest services person what the conditions were like and she said they were "tricky to difficult." That is a euphemism for there are only 3 lifts open and 11 trails and they are all covered with sheer ice or slush or both. Or you could also call it "spring skiing." However, I digress.

Snow squalls are little whirling dervishes of snow gusts that attempt to blind the drivers so that they will visit snow banks which is part of the tourism feature of any winter highway. We had no issues, although we were warned twice by signs on the Maine Turnpike (after the sign, which I literally anticipate every single time I am in Maine--"Maine, the way life should be." That's just cute.) We heard from our friends and other skiers that the conditions on the mountain that day were roughly equivalent to a tornado-led whiteout. 

Sugarloaf Mountain. Awesome, but only about half open.

We were staying in a condo I found in VRBO.com. I love these condo rentals in general--we've had nothing but good luck with them. Our 3-bedroom condo was not ski in-ski out but it was close to midlift so we walked five minutes in our ski boots, snapped on our skis, and descended another minute to the Snubber (possibly the ugliest-named ski lift I have ever met) to ride up to the base lodge area. Love it.

Now on the first day we had to rent equipment and get the kids all set up in ski school. First the kids. In a word, the ski school at Sugarloaf Mountain is fantastic. Truly. Okay, that was two words. Friendly, helpful, and they feed the kids some kind of mountain crack that cures a boy scared of skiing and chair lifts and makes him love every minute. Even when we had The Incident. But that's for later.  The classes went from 9:30 to 3 pm, and included lunch. The kids loved it. 

Then BH and I trompled up to rentals. After filling out monstrous amounts of paperwork about how we will not sue anyone or attempt to climb trees while wearing skis or whatever else I initialed, we had our equipment. And here is my plea to all you MITs out there. Please, please, please invent a better snow boot. That is one technology that has not changed in the 25 intervening years of my last real skiing. Dang, they're uncomfortable. And not pretty. There must be a better way. And yes, I know that they are how they are so I don't shatter my ankle in 15 places...still....

In another aside, I have to mention one big change from 20 years ago. Helmets: somewhere in the intervening 15 years since I have last really skied, everyone, or close to everyone wears helmets. There doesn't seem to be that whole Hell's Angels macho thing that you don't need to wear one, whatever. I think I only saw one person without a helmet during the whole four-day weekend. I credit the media on showing that crap happens like running into a tree--even to Michael Schumacher. So, good on us all. Plus they're warm. Love my helmet. It's purple.

And then we were out the door. Here is the truth of the truth and the snow of the snow (sorry ee cummings, I am butchering you), it is in fact just like riding a bicycle. Within five minutes, I had remembered everything including what happens when you cross your ski tips, or catch an edge. Within 20 minutes, I had crashed while trying to snow my friend's daughter (turns out that ice is not good for snowing). Within an hour I was loving it again. And a good thing too because Saturday was minus nine degrees. That's Fahrenheit. That's coooooooooooolllllldddddd.  And here I am getting to my point.

On our second lift ride up on the Whiffletree quad (I kept calling it Whifflepuff: I'm re-reading the Harry Potter books and it just sounds right), we sat next to a well-bundled up skier from Maine. And after hearing we had moved from Brazil, he said to us "The secret to surviving winter in New England is to embrace it."  When it's snowy and cold and horrible, snap on the skis and get out there. When the driveway freezes and your snowplower guy doesn't show up, skate on it. Embrace it. And that is what we are trying to do: embrace it. And wear face masks, two layers of long underwear, put those hot spot thingies in our boots and gloves and freeze. And embrace it. 

This blog would go on for pages and pages about how much we embraced it and had fun even after the superquad broke and we had a half-hour line at Whifflepuff on Sunday. And then it rained all night Sunday to Monday, killing off most of the snow and exposing the ice fields. At one point there were eight of us skiing together on an intermediate slope--even our experts skier was with us, and we had So. Much. Fun. 

Pretty much the weather we got (minus the 80 degrees) in four days. Oh plus minus-9.

The only not-fun is what I called The Incident. On the last day of skiing, which was Ice Monday, the kids were with us. The eight year old beginner skiers. And we decided to take them up a longer beginner run, which in retrospect was a major error on my part. Lalo was going to make it down no problem because he was skiing behind his hero (see cast of characters). Nico was going to look at the long downhill and freak out. And he did. He couldn't turn on the ice (in his defense, I could barely turn on the ice). We tried to make it down with him snow-plowing (apparently it is now called Pizza-ing) between my skis but the ice made us cross skis and crash. It took us nearly 40 minutes to get down a 7 minute slope. 

At the end, he was trying to make it down one bit by himself, and started going too fast, could not pizza, crossed his skis, fell and kept sliding fast towards the tree line. So I crushed him. Yep, it is an unknown ski move where the momma bear freaks out, skis over and tackles the child with her own body to stop the slide. I can only imagine what this looked like to the rest of the skiers out there. Nico then unsquished himself, shook himself off and said "mom, I think I'll walk from here." He walked down in his ski boots, then snapped his skis back on when he got to the bunny slopes and took off. No permanent damage. We skied for two more hours...but on the bunny slopes.

The weekend was filled with skiing, good food, fireplaces, kids and friends, laughter, the DeflateGate AFC championship game watched at our friend's condo, and a lot of freakin' cold weather. I embrace you, winter. What's next?


Cast of characters:

Me and the BH (Brazilian husband): intermediate and beginner skiers, respectively. Well, BH is higher than beginner--he can get down just about any hill but really only picked up skiing as an adult. I would not push him down a black diamond though unless I was pretty sure his life insurance is up to date.

The twins, age 8: skied once in Illinois (400 feet of vertical drop, I think it was officially measured).Did awesome.

The Freibors: Alyson is a Minnesota-Wyoming girl and a high intermediate or low expert. Her Slovak husband is craque. That is Brazilian for holy cow. He wore a bright red jumpsuit on the hill which looked orange to me with my red goggles. His wife called him Big Red, I called him traffic cone. Not to his face. He could push me down a black diamond too.

The Freibors kids: Luke, age 13, Lalo's hero. Pictured above. Lalo would follow him down a black diamond probably. Alex, age 10, the snowboarder. Sam, age 6, the card-carrying ski school bomber. He did at least 50 more miles than the rest of us by skiing down the lower slopes and being hauled up on the Moose Caboose snowmobile. And Ava, age 2, who was in child care and skiing. And will be better than me by next year.

The Wendys: my friend from Wellesley who is around the same level as I am (oh, all right, she's bettter) and who I love to ski with given our skiing together 27 years ago (!!!) at Wellesley and having numerous adventures, one of which was skidding out on the highway in her Chevy Sprint and winding up in a huge snowbank. No harm, no foul. And her kids who I am not sure I'm allowed to name so I won't, a 14-year old girl who is better than I, and an 11 year old boy who also fit in the intermediate level.

What Could Possibly Go Right - Weston, MA

So yesterday I posted about what went wrong on our return to the US: TSA checks, temporarily-lost cars, broken arms, that kind of trivial stuff. But I forgot to talk about what went right. And many things did:

All nine of our bags made it through customs and to the final destination in Boston. Nothing was broken. Everything is here. Yes, two of the bags are literally exploded on my bedroom floor but since I don't have any place to put anything (the dressers are not yet here and I am opposed to hangers in general), that's just the way it's going to be.

My brother and sister-in-law surprised us even before the baggage claim. They were holding a huge sign welcoming us to the United States and had two perfect kid-sized Boston Red Sox hats for the boys. I haven't lived in the same town as my brother since 1995 (and technically we are still not in the same town since he is downtown and I'm in the 'burbs) but he took time off of work (as did my sister in law) to make our arrival special. He even helped us find our lost car in the parking lot. Love.

Three of my new neighbors came over to introduce themselves--one brought cookies, and one loaned us a soccer ball since we had forgotten our ball inflater in Brazil. We are sitting on several useless deflated balls. Lalo is no fan of deflated balls. One of my neighbors is clearly insane since she volunteered to stay with the twins if I needed to run out and do some errands (clearly she doesn't know that I would never ever return--just kidding, BH!) I now know more of my neighbors in Weston than I did during six years in São Paulo. Love.

My parents. My wonderful parents. My parents live near Chicago but they drove cross-country a couple of weeks ago to get us set up here. We arrived to a giant soccer goal and art supplies for both kids, food in the fridge, cold beer and wine, extra sheets and towels and a whole lot of love.They have been helping with the kids too as we run around with various errands. They even rented a car to help with the vast quantities of luggage and braved rush hour Boston traffic for us. Mom has weeded the flower beds and gifted us plants which I will try really really hard not to kill (but know that their days are numbered). Love.

And when things did go wrong and my son Nico broke his arm, the forces of good came together. The pediatrician got him in quickly, various people offered doctor recommendations and other support, my sister in law came in to the hospital with a fluffy toy and a card, later taking his six-year old cousin's out of camp early so she could visit the hospital too. My brother again stopped by, taking time off work. My parents sat for hours with us in the uncomfortable hospital room. My mom stayed with Nico at the beginning of a rough second night so the rest of us could have some time out. Lest you think I have forgotten, the much maligned BH won massive numbers of points from his overnight stay, his taking-care of the whole insurance mess, and for dealing with a very upset mama bear. 

As we were leaving for the hospital, a beautiful vase of flowers was delivered from a São Paulo friend. A homecoming gift. More love, and from afar. And the response of friends through email and facebook about the injury to Nico has been overwhelming. His two godmothers sent him a remote control tarantula--yes, he loves spiders and he can control it with just one hand. Perfect. Love.

I don't have a single friend yet in Weston but I have one incredible support team.

And that is what has gone right.