1001 Snow Days

On the second of 1001 snow days, I tried to convince my children to watch TV or do something to keep out of my hair, but they are everywhere like Hashem (Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly everywhere! Up up! Down down! Right, left, and all around) (Have you ever noticed how Hashem is depicted, in this Jewish-nursery-school favorite, as a terrifying panopticon?).

Again, I want to be this kind of mom:

(You might think she’s a little kooky, but seriously, try her out on your kids. You’ll wish she was their mom. You’ll wish she was your mom. My kids danced their little tushies off watching this video until skulls collided–at which point, they bawled their little eggies out).

In any case, I’m more like this kind of mom:

(I also look and dress just like Betty Draper, by the bye)

I have managed to unpack about 2 dozen boxes, which is not terrible considering my constraints, but unfortunately it means there is a pile of boxes that is about my height ready to topple over onto Baby MoFo. In my search for a place for these boxes, I remember the string that dangled in my face the day before. What would the attic be filled with? Insulation? Mice? A West-Indies born spurned wife with wild hair and thick lips who likes to start fires? Fair-haired children committing incest and being poisoned, starved, drugged, and neglected because their recently-widowed mother, the half-niece (and secretly half-sister) of her dead husband is trying to get her father to leave her his money?

So this is how I discover Noëlle’s fairyland, pulling down the cord, climbing up the creaky ladder, and wandering into the dusty attic that Noëlle had transformed. The walls on either side are painted pinks and turquoises, violets and periwinkles; the window, on the other hand, is like the centerpiece of a fruit basket, surrounded by citrusy lemon and bright persimmon. On the blue-hued walls, a castle appears. Bands of metal form the golden outline of turrets and towers; and the castle walls are bejeweled, and as intricately decorated as a Turkish tile. Moroccan lanterns light the way, and ruby muslin gathers and hangs from the rafters. In one corner sit two dressers in royal purple and shades of gold, and in the other, a fierce, scowling, ceramic tiger with only one foot intact.

Oh, little house in this princely town of endless cultivated gardens and vast country estates, I knocked you for your damp basement (the kind House, MD would send his crew to investigate), your drafty walls, and your pinkish bathroom–

But THIS–

This is one pretty neat attic.

For a future snow day, with a nice scrubdown, this free and very local fairytale village will beat a day at Sesame Place ($56/person), CoCo Key Water Resort (about $32), the Lego store (infinity dollars) or even a local place that offers kids’ cooking classes and charges $30 to teach a kid to cook oatmeal.