Motherly conversations I have had to start so far this year (or, What I've been up to since I last posted)

1. Yes, you really do need to wash your face.
2. Every day.
3. With soap.
4. I told you there would be cavities if you didn't brush your teeth (with toothpaste) twice a day.
5. Not everyone is a nice person.
6. Some girls are bitches, even when they're 10 years old.
7. It is not necessary for everyone in your class to be best friends - sometimes it's sufficient to be polite and able to work together when it's required.
8. You Must Not Touch Certain Parts of Your Body (in Public).*
9. Other people may not touch Certain Parts of Your Body at all.
10. Some boys like to show off Certain Parts of Their Bodies.
11. How to embarrass those boys by looking really disdainful and muttering, "Really?  That's it?"
12. Do you really want to be friends with a girl who treats you like that?
13. Seriously?
14. What exactly were you thinking when you ... (decided to build a zip line in the basement with things you had been specifically told not to touch; decided to duct-tape a kid you barely knew to a pole in the basement; decided to cover the toilet in soapy water so you could blow really big bubbles on the toilet lid)?
15. Yes, you really do need to wash your hair.
16. With shampoo.
17. And comb it afterward.
18. Wet towels do not belong on the floor.
19. Or your bed.
20. Or your hamper, unless you're doing laundry, like, NOW.
21. Having homework every night is not cruel and unusual punishment; it's the new normal.
22. Checking to make sure you actually answered every question on the test will help you not get C's on stuff you really do know.
23. Five reasons why I will NOT drive you back to school to pick up the book/paper/assignment/whatever you need to do your homework tonight.
24. Seriously?  You forgot to ask about your password AGAIN? 
25. If you tell me for months that you can't do something because your password "doesn't work," you'd better have actually tried it.
26. See?  (Learning that song; trying a new food; making a presentation; talking to a friend about something difficult) wasn't actually that hard, was it?
27. Perhaps next time, waiting until something actually goes wrong before you freak out would make things more pleasant for everyone.  I'm just saying...
28. When you call a friend's house, it's important to tell whoever answers the phone who you are, because otherwise it's creepy.
29. Yes, I meant it when I said I would take away for the evening "anything with a plug or a battery" if you didn't get your butt in gear this morning.
30. Things you may not do on the new (white) couch.
31. Why, when I'm out on a walk and you're home alone for 20 minutes, you're not allowed to answer the door and buy candy from strangers, even if those strangers are kids and it's a fundraiser for their school.
32. How to dial 911 on my phone in case the chainsawing Dad and I are doing goes horribly, horribly wrong.
33. If you spell emoji out loud during a regular conversation, you sound like a dork (and I want to smack you).  No one thinks "XD" said aloud means "I'm laughing," except you.
34. How to handle grandma when she's having one of those days.
35. Grandma's friend has cancer - let's make her a card!
36. My friend has cancer - let's make her a card!
37. Grandma's other friend has cancer, but you never met her, so you don't need to make her a card!
38. Dad's friend has cancer - but it's too late to make her a card!
39. Yes, it's normal to get out of breath when you run.  Deal with it.
40. You have 75 pairs of scissors,  Figure out how to open it yourself.

* Thank you, Bill Cosby, for cementing that phrase into the permanent language of my family.

So, how's your day so far?

6am - wake up, check to see if school is closed. Everything in our county is closed, but Liza's charter school in the next county doesn't have a close notice yet. Get dressed and clear driveway while Jason gets ready for work. Curse Avon's snowplow drivers, who now have decided to plow 6' from the curb instead of 4' like last time.

6:20 - check school closings. Nope.

6:45 - leisurely breakfast, because normally I'm not even out of bed yet. Check school closings. Nope.

7:00 - look at school closing listings, email, facebook - nope. Damn. Tell te kid to get dressed and brush her teeth.

7:30 - leave house to drive my kid the 15 miles to school. Usually this takes 20-30 minutes, depending on traffic lights

8:00 - pass exit that's five miles from my house. Realize that I probably made a bad decision and should have kept Liza home today.

8:05 - wipers freeze over, so I spend the rest of the drive peering through the 3" gap at the bottom of my windshield. See, that part of the driver ed simulator film came in handy after all!

(Not that you can tell, but the sign said it would take an hour to drive 10 miles to I-71)

8:15 - off the highway, but finding only major thoroughfares have been plowed or salted at all. Can't take first two turnoffs to the school because they are blocked by cars that got stuck.

8:25 - "it's ok, mom, I'm pretty sure they won't give out tardy slips today." Yeah, because THAT'S my main concern as I slide around a corner at a 30-degree slant. Grumble to myself about schools that cancel for cold when the roads are perfectly clear, then don't cancel on days when nobody has plowed the 6" of snow from the surrounding streets. 

8:35 - finally drop the kid off at school. Wipers are a little better, so I don't stop to whack the ice from them. In retrospect, this was a mistake.

8:50 - finally make it back to the highway, which is....almost completely unplowed in this direction. Seriously? Or maybe it just looks that way to me - hard to tell through the 3" stripe of clear windshield at my disposal.

9:10 - driving through slop in what I can only hope is the road and not the median, I see a car pulled off to the left side of the road. The guy in front of me - who is driving 15 mph in the only lane that is even remotely cleared - STOPS IN THE TRAFFIC LANE NEXT TO THE CAR AND GETS OUT TO SEE IF THE PERSON IS OK. Doesn't pull over to the side of the road, just stops in the middle of fucking I-90 in a blizzard and gets out of his car, to see if someone is ok in a car that hadn't hit anything and is still running. I contemplate just running him over, because really, what jury would convict me? I manage to stop 6" from the asshole's bumper and pray the guy behind me has ABS, too.

9:15 - Jason texts to see if I made it home yet. I laugh quietly, and try not to notice when it turns to wailing. I may never be able to sit up straight again. Wait, I can sort of see through the top 3" of the windshield now! Happy day! I carefully unfold myself from the contortions  I had to perform to see out the bottom.

9:20 - I abandon the highway in search of a place to pull over and de-ice my wipers. Hard to search when you can't see jack. I point the car in the general direction of where the Burger King driveway should be, and pray.

9:21 - 14 pounds of ice removed from wipers, I get back on the road. It is mostly plowed-ish. Compared to the highway, I am ready to drive forever on this stuff. Whee!!

9:30 - oh, look, Avon's stunningly efficient plows have cleared to 6' from the curb here, too, which leaves an open lane that isn't wide enough for two cars to pass ... On a semi-major road. I get why that might happen in the bowels of our unfinished development, but Case Road? Fuckwits.

9:33 - apparently the snow emergency ban on street parking doesn't apply to contractors. My (mostly unplowed) street now has trucks parked down both sides, because THAT will really help the plow drivers. Idiots.

9:35 - I pull into my driveway, which has 6" more snow than it did when I left. Realize we really need a snow fence...or at least some grass.

2:00pm - I get to make the trip again to pick her up. Yay.