The power of pajamas and other interesting things I've learned

I skittered over ice and snow to the kindergarten sidewalk waiting area and hung out for K-. When she got out of school, she reported that Mrs. H- told all the children to wear their jammies inside out so that they would get a snow day the next day. K- seemed jazzed about inside out jammie wearing. She asked if it was okay and I told her it was perfectly fine.

Then it came time to put them on. I thought K- was all about them until she saw them on her bed.

"NO! Mom!"

"Did I misunderstand?!"

"I'll wear them tomorrow night that way."

"Well baby, you don't have school on Saturday."

"I know! I don't want to miss school!"

You've got to appreciate a child who dearly LOVES school. Remember when she had been diagnosed with pneumonia, she told me to "step on it" so that she could get back to school? She didn't want to miss science! No, she wasn't contagious and yes, she did return lickety-split.

We turned the jammies right side out and even set the clothes out for tomorrow to try to undo the classmate jammies that might be turned the other way. :S And I was looking forward to a snow day. We have craft kits. I bought supplies to make homemade valentines. They'll have to wait for another time. (We really need to tend to our thank you notes anyhow.)

Things I've learned today:

Thing 1:
So, while standing in the great outdoors awaiting K-'s release, I was talking to one of the parents that we go to church with. He was talking about the snow and the upcoming storm. I told him that we love it, we have snowshoes and bring it on. He said that he worked outside. I asked what he did. I forgot, he works for one of the regional airports. He drives the refueling truck. We were talking about a flight I took to Philly. I was telling him about the de-icing experience I had. "It was like they were spraying green jello all over the plane."

"That is the most expensive stuff. It is $13.00 per gallon."

"How many gallons would it take to de-ice the average sized airplane?"

"400 gallons, which is one of the reasons airline tickets are so expensive."

My trusty solar calculator just told me that is $5200.00. Yikes.

Thing 2:
Land's End is wonderful about returns. K- was given a couple of knit dresses as a Christmas gift. She wore one of them this past Sunday. I noticed that she had a string. I told her not to pull it. (She's not a puller. I've taught her well.) It kept getting longer and longer. Her cuff is now half unstitched. My MIL asked if I could just stitch it. Absolutely, but since all of their paperwork says "Guaranteed. Period." I'll take them up on it.

They apologized profusely and the new dress (either the pattern that my MIL chose or a second choice) will be in our possession by mid-week.

Hassle-free. Hooray!

Thing 3:
LL Bean is great about returns. I've done them with them in the past. A thing to know is that if you choose their Easy Return (or whatever it is called) which is the option of them forwarding the merchandise while your other merchandise is potentially in transit, you are agreeing to whatever the price happens to be that day. Say for instance, you purchased your item on the Daily Markdown like I did, since it is no longer a Daily Markdown, you would have to pay the difference in price. Argh. I told her that I would go ahead and just send it out and have them send the merchandise when they receive mine. Seems fair enough.

Thing 4:
So I called UPS to schedule a pick-up. LL Bean gives pre-printed UPS tags with each order, so all you have to do is to peel the label and stick it to your box. Off and away it goes. Since I use their credit card, I don't have to pay for return shipping.

I made the computer lady angry, so she flipped me to some real-live customer service rep. I talked to her about scheduling a pick-up and I found out that there is a charge for that.

"Even though they are up and down my street everyday?"

"Yes, but you can drop your box at one of our drop boxes if it fits, you could take it to one of our stores or pass it on to a driver on his route."

"You want me to stalk a driver?"

"You can pass the box on to him and he can accept it for you."

So there I am, on the drive to the grocery, I'm looking up and down the streets for the big brown truck. No dice.

On the way back, I took another route and looked for the big brown truck. No dice.

I picked K- up from school and on our way to our play date, we took the long way through the neighborhoods looking for the big brown truck.

Why is there no UPS guy when you need him?!

So, shame on you UPS! You charge enough and it isn't like I was asking you to drive miles and miles out of your way. You are up and down my tiny street on a daily basis, so it isn't like we aren't even on your route. Ugh!

Thing 5:
Target has some excellent crafting supplies in their dollar bins for making homemade valentines. Yes, I could buy a pre-fab box o' cards for cheaper, but we like to make them.

Thing 6:
As a result of budget cuts, our city stopped publishing the nice, big city yearly calendar. I've never had to purchase a calendar because the city always provided one, listing special trash pick-up days and whatnot. That sent me on a hunt for a calendar.

Should I add that I was determined regardless to the snowstorm that had started while we were out on our play date?

I went to the local Hallmark. They had a beautiful Lang Songbird 2010 calendar, but it was $15.99. It wasn't marked down yet. Ugh.

I went next door to the local grocery. They had nothing. I, however, had a very hungry and whiny kid in tow.

We stopped at the CVS pharmacy at the corner of the same plaza and they had just sold their last calendars. Ick.

So, part of the way back required the use of 4WD and as we turned the corner, I saw the Dollar General. Against K-'s better choice of going home, I stopped in. A mommy on a mission while in the midst of navigating with a 6 year old through a snowstorm, I came in the door and asked about calendars.

They had tons of them. They even had a beautiful one with different flower blossoms. I grabbed my dollar calendar up, a few $1.00 bags of peanut free Sixlets (K- has a peanut allergic child in her class) and some cheesey crackery packs and away we went. Both of us were happy. :)!

Thing 7:
When we arrived home, Hubs was preparing his dinner and to my surprise, the BBQ re-run NYDay Pork that I had in the crock-pot was on his plate. "I assume that this is the leftover pork from New Years, right?" "Yes."

Y'all, he ate it. He even told me that he was surprised at how good it was, since it had been frozen.

You see, my husband's digestive issues has kept him on a fairly limited diet. He's been doing some Sylvester Stallone workout that has busted a few myths he has followed for many years. One has been about food. Apparently, Sylvester Stallone told him to vary his diet. He listened to him, but for the record, I've been telling him that for years. Oh, well. At least he'll be eating what I make a little more often.

Thus far, school isn't canceled. I think that we run on a reverse call through the school district, so they call about flu shot clinics and I suspect that they'll phone about a snow day.

Smiles in my day:
- Having a play date with my friend and her boys. We celebrated 4 birthdays and Christmas. All the children loved their loot (Cordz activity set, Eeboo I Never Forget a Face, Noodleboro Listening Game, Pixar Digidraw and some levitating ball thing.) I knew if I kept with educational and family oriented fun, they may be able to move along with them. Sadly, they'll be moving out of state in a few months. :( The good news is that the gifts made the moving cut. Hooray!
- Heather buying K- two Barbies that have leotards painted onto their bodies so if her boys come over, not every single one of K-'s Barbies will be nude.
- Brownies. 'Nuff said.
- K- telling me that the one little boy informed her that her "boots are boy boots." I told her that there are some boots that are boy boots, some boots that are girl boots and some boots that are boy or girl boots. I told her that hers are the boy or girl boots. I told her that she could tell him that she wears girl tights and girl skirts and dresses, so the boots don't really matter. I wouldn't have raced out and bought her new "girly" boots, but we would have put some stickers on them or something. She's fine with it, though. They are tall and keep her feet dry. That's all we need.
- Getting back into the habit of hanging the laundry on the lines, regardless to the fact that the clothing is being guarded by the yard deer that are still hanging upside down from the posts that my lines are run from. (Hubs hangs them to dry before boxing them for storage.)
- I've almost gotten the dry erase marker stain off K-'s school shirt. Apparently, someone accidentally ran into her with their dry erase marker today. It's pretty light and passable, but I'm giving it another run with Shout and Dawn just for just.
- Clean sheets. I do the sheets every other week and I just love snuggling in between the fresh smell and warmth of the flannel. I only have one set, so I don't hang them to dry.
- My friend, Nora, came through gall bladder and appendix removal surgery wonderfully. They are in Milwaukee, so I wasn't able to hang out in the waiting area like I did when her husband had his appendix out.

My side of the bed appears to be nice and toasty. Have a great weekend. We'll wave to you from the snow banks!

Edited to add:
Mark it on the calendar folks, my daughter actually cried tears of unhappiness when she found out that they had a snow day today. They were to celebrate a classmate's birthday and she is so sad! :( I told her that we'll do jammie day. She told me that the snow day is because "all of those kids inside outing their jammies." Well, at least she loves school.

Hubs yelled out from the kitchen. When I arrived, he was holding our bulk sized box of Cascade, the bottom having let loose and a whole mountain of spot free shine was sitting in the middle of my floor. So now, our dishes will be cleaned with spot free goodness with just a touch of outdoorness for fun. I suppose it can't be any different than dealing with the gunk of dirty dishes. Don't worry, they are on my list of people to e-mail today. Obviously, the bottom of the box wasn't strong enough. Oh, and we've been riding on that box since July and it is half gone. If half gone is going to make the glue unadhere, who knows how many other people have been dealing with the same problem?

K- is a whiny pie this morning so as I type, she's in time-out. Heaven help me and my nerves. It's just not appropriate to yell at me, no matter how bummed you are that you don't have school.

The Windows Live One Care caught suspicious software this morning, so it has been scanning and cleaning my computer for this past hour. It has caught one other one in the past so let's hope that it is cleaning all of the funk out of the box that I type on. :fingers crossed:

It scanned for an hour and a half total and claims that it is clean. (I keep flashing over to Nemo, when he was put in the dental fish tank for the first time and the shrimp cleans him. I suppose whatever visual takes me where I need to go.)

We've got gingerbread cookies on a roll. When I stopped in at the grocery yesterday, the Pillsbury gingerbread cookie rolls were marked down to 99 cents. I figured that we would be home and knew the way to soften my sad child's heart would be to let her make cookies. "Mom, we need more cookie dough!"

Just like Super Nanny, "I'm on my way!"

Afternoon update:
It appears as though the weather folks, both local and the National Weather Service, predicted Armageddon and it never arrived. I seriously think that the kids could have gone to school today. We had some light flurries. The roads may have been gunky this AM, but they were very passable. Believe me, we kept waiting and waiting for it to arrive. "Lake effect snow to develop over the lake and to affect areas west of Cleveland not typically affected by lake effect snow." Mmm, hmmm.