Life with Liz: We just need a good snowstorm

Winter is usually my second favorite season after fall, and I usually feel refreshed and invigorated by the cold weather and a good clean snowstorm.

I had been looking forward to a magical winter in the woods, waking up in the morning, feeling like the snow globe was shaken, away from the black and dirty snow of town. This winter has been a bust so far.

As a result, I feel out of sorts.

I’m in the mood to spring clean with the windows open one weekend and hunkered down as a weekend of activities are canceled due to an impending snowstorm the next. With that being said, I don’t have many coherent thoughts right now, so the following is just a compilation of winter musings.

When did it become so uncool to wear a coat to school?

I should preface this one by saying I am the last person on the planet to wear a coat. I stopped enjoying wearing coats when I was pregnant and already felt as large as a whale. Putting another layer on top of that and then stuffing myself into a car or an elevator or just about anywhere was just too much misery. At that point, I adopted my winter wear of a vest and a scarf. So I realize that me calling out kids for not wearing coats may be slightly hypocritical.

However, as I watch kid after kid filter into the school every morning, clearly freezing, sporting only a hoodie or other sportswear, I question their sanity. If I had to go more than 50 feet between my car and any entrance, I would be putting on a parka. Even though I don’t wear one regularly, I have one or two in the closet for emergencies.

I’ve heard several arguments from my own kids, mainly about the bulk of a winter jacket taking up too much room in their locker or being one more thing to drag with them after school, when it may be warmer. At least they haven’t tried to pull the “well no one else wears them” defense, because that won’t hold any water with me.

I get it, there have been many technological advances in fabrics, and things like fleece can make something that looks kind of flimsy pretty warm, but from the looks on these kids’ faces, that is not the case. At any rate, I guess this is one of those things that I’m just not going to “get.”

How many months is it until the answer to “what’s for dinner?” doesn’t make my kids’ eyes roll? We’ve entered what the kids have started referring to as the “mush months.” Because of the crazy winter schedule, most of what we eat comes out of a slow cooker, or is a reheated casserole dish, and after getting cooked for hours on end, it usually ends up as … mush. I try to change things up, but it seems like we are in the same five things for dinner rut that we get into every year around this time.

Googling new and exciting ideas doesn’t yield much, other than the same ingredients in a different order, or with a slightly different spice. I try to change things up: lasagna one week, spaghetti the next, and maybe a pasta and sausage bake the week after, but really it boils down to the same few staples on rotation.

I’ve tried to get the kids to contribute, but when left to their own devices, A eats tacos nonstop, G just wants a hunk of meat, preferably with no sauce, and E will eat mac and cheese until she turns into a macaroni. Since these meals are devoid of vegetables, except for the taco garnish, they’re a no-go for the whole family. I try to cater to their whims with their lunches but make the one meal a day that we spend together something that incorporates all the food groups.

Right now, the most creative I can get is serving breakfast for dinner. It’s not much, but it’s either that or pot roast served with whatever Siri suggests as a twist.

Is canceling activities three days in advance the new norm for winter sports seasons? Last week, I started getting cancellations for Sunday on Thursday. Now, believe me, I get it. Safety first, and I absolutely don’t want anyone to be on the road if they don’t feel comfortable driving. But weather forecasting is notoriously wrong. In the past few years, I recall several storms that were touted as the 100-year storm and ended up being complete busts. While you’d think we’d be better at forecasting, one thing we are definitely better at is communicating quickly.

Thinking back to the old days when it could take up to an hour for a phone chain to reach everyone, or your town or event to come up on the TV screen, I get why we needed to cancel everything in advance, but these days, you can immediately communicate to everyone through Facebook or an app. I know that there are things like plowing services that must be arranged or canceled. Maybe staff needs to be arranged for on the weekends. I don’t know what all goes into some of these decisions. But I do know that we can’t have too many of them or we will end up not finishing our winter sports seasons until June.

We’ve been lucky as far as school cancellations go this year, and I do hope that continues. It was nice to have the MLK holiday off and spend the day with the kids. I’m hoping that it stays the course for Presidents Day and Easter, as having planned breaks is a lot easier on the schedule than the last-minute snow day panic. All I’m saying is can we wait until a little closer to the actual event before we start shutting everything down?

The kids have been teasing me that since I started wearing my “old lady” socks, I’m getting grumpier about everything. Maybe they’re right? Or maybe they should just wear their coats, eat their dinner, and go to school and practices as planned?

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