Surviving the blizzard with a half-bottle of ketchup

We have survived Blizzard 2017 or Stella-pocalypse or whatever they're calling it. I thought for sure we were jinxing ourselves out of a snowstorm when everything started getting shut down on Monday afternoon, but Mother Nature decided to agree with the weather forecasters for once, and we had a glorious snow day.

The stars were not aligned for us to have a cozy, relaxing day of rest, however.

March Madness isn't limited to basketball. March is also championship month for swimmers. So, I've been on the road with the swim team for the past few weekends, and will be for the rest of the weekends in March. This means that none of the regular household chores have been kept up with, like the cleaning, the grocery shopping, and the laundry.

Part of me really wanted a snow day as an excuse to stay home and catch up on some of that, but the other part of me knew that if it was bad enough to stay home from work, the grocery shopping wasn't going to get done either. That meant being holed up with a bunch of "starving" children who I was going to try to coerce into doing housework. The odds of that turning out well were absolutely nonexistent.

So, on my way home from the swim meet on Sunday night, I made a pit stop at the grocery store and tried to stock up on blizzard supplies. I grabbed the makings for a hearty breakfast and a big pot of homemade chicken potpie. I also grabbed the fixings for a plate of nachos, because I was hoping that at some point, we would get to relax and catch up on some family movie time.

I also, proactively, I thought, remembered to get lunch supplies for when they eventually did head back to school.

About halfway through my grocery shopping trip, I got a text from A. It just so happens that he needed a "non-store bought" superhero costume for school Monday morning. He did tell me about it Friday night, at which time, I informed him that I would be gone all weekend, and he knew where the craft supplies and the dress-up clothes were, and he could have at it.

I have to say, this is probably the first time ever that A has waited until the last minute for a project like this. Normally, his brain is bursting with so many ideas, that he can't wait to get started. But, as our luck would have it, the one time he did wait until the last minute was just about the worst possible timing. So, the text he sent me was the list of supplies that he absolutely needed to finish his costume.

At that point, I realized I had two choices: one, I could not buy anything on his list, and then have to deal with a bad attitude from him and more wasted time as he re-evaluated and replanned, or two, I could stop at Walmart and see what I could find. It was already after 9 p.m., so I wasn't optimistic, but Walmart seemed like the better option. I quickly checked out at the grocery store. In my haste and panic, I also forgot some of the staple items that I haven't kept up with since I haven't done a major grocery shopping trip in a few weeks.

So, the little bit of time I had on Sunday night to try to catch up with some laundry and household chores was diverted into helping "Grammar Lord" finish his superhero costume. The assignment was to create a superhero to help them defeat the bad guy "PSSAs."

As I was gluing myself together with the hot glue gun, all I could think was that now I understand why everyone hates these things.

Monday evening, as I left swim practice, knowing full well that school and work were already canceled, I decided to brave one more run to the grocery store, "just in case."

I texted the Wonderful Husband to ask what we needed. His response was "diet soda and breakfast stuff." Actually, his response was a lot longer than that, but my phone battery died in the middle of the list, and since I had already gotten the breakfast stuff, I grabbed a few bottles of diet soda and a few baking supplies, as I thought a batch or two of cookies would be a nice treat for the kids when they came in from shoveling.

Home I went, blissfully ignorant that the WH had sent an urgent text that we were also almost out of ketchup.

The next morning, as the snow piled up, we all sat down to a delicious breakfast of home fries, eggs, bacon, and sausage, topped off with warm blueberry muffins. In a matter of minutes, the kids started circling the remaining half bottle of ketchup like a pack of hyenas. We took the only course of action we could and started everyone on ketchup rations. It was not an auspicious start to the day.

I decided that we needed big projects to keep everyone engaged, so I put the kids to work cleaning out the craft/school supply station. There were alternately squeals of joy as long lost projects were happened on and "missing" artifacts were recovered.

Then there were squabbles as to who saw what first and of course, someone meandered off to start coloring "because they felt like it."

When at last, the fighting finally got on my nerves, I bundled them up and sent them out to help the WH shovel.

We cycled through this for most of the day, and by the time we were on each other's last nerve, the potpie was ready to eat and we finally settled down to watch "Doctor Strange." It wasn't the most memorable snow day ever, but at least it was a productive one.

Liz Pinkey is a contributing writer to the Times News. Her column appears weekly in our Saturday feature section.