Ice and Vegetables

We've been deep in the winter for some time now. The last couple of days we have had some bursts of sunlight peeking through the clouds to remind us that Spring is coming, at some point.



Last week was a particularly interesting winter excursion. Crystal decided to take a "mental health" morning and catch up on some things at home, including sleep, last Sunday. I took the three oldest children to church. The temperature had peaked at just above freezing for the first time is several weeks and it was raining. This rain was falling on rather deep ice that had accumulated the previous weeks.



Anyway, off we went to church. We walked across the parking lot and Faith commented that "it's like walking on a slurpy". Indeed it was, with sloshy, watery snow ankle deep. No problem for Luke and me, but the girls had their Mary-Janes on (I think that's what they're called). "Slurpy" puddles have the same force of magnetic attraction for children as rain puddles, just much colder. Upon entering the church, I saw that all three kids were saturated to their mid-calves. No worries, I figured they would be dry by the time we got home and there would be no need to mention this to mom.



My plan had worked, and approximately 2 1/2 hours later, we were headed out of church. Needless to say, we had to cross the "slurpy" parking lot to get to the van, and again, they were saturated. (I would probably end up having to explain this after all). Unfortunately, now the three kids were cold, tired and hungry. Any one of those variables occurs on a pretty regular basis nowadays - very manageable. Two of those variables results in an elevated level of stress, comparable to an "orange" on the Homeland Security Terror Threat Scale. The problem was I hit a three for three, definitely not a good percentage and I knew I was in trouble. If I could just get home, I knew we would be alright.



Naturally, that is where the problem arose. On the road to our house there is a slight grade or incline. Normally, this is not a problem at all (unless you are on you way home from a 2 mile bicycle ride by yourself with three children under 5 years old and your wife said it might not be a good idea to go before you left and you insisted that everyone would be fine and.....that's a different story.) Anyway, ice and rain make for a pretty interesting combination when it comes to driving, especially up grades.



Our van did its best impression of the "Little Engine That Could", except, of course, it couldn't! We would go barreling up the incline only to progressively slow, careen, fishtail, spin and ultimately stop. It wouldn't have been so bad except it didn't end there. Eventually gravity kicked in and our van would slide backward down the slope. I attempted this pass five times, and every time we ended up sliding back down the incline, sometimes more interestingly than others. On two occasions, we did spinning 180 degree maneuvers while sliding down.



All the while, the children were getting more agitated as they could tell gravity, ice and rain were having more of an effect on our van than it should. "This never happens when mom drives". In addition, the trifecta of hunger, cold, and fatigue was in full force at this point. Grace, in particular, is sensitive to these variables. Her blood sugar is inversely proportional to her "drama factor". She cried, "I'm never going to see mom again!"



After the fifth attempt at scaling the ice, I decided to make lemonade from the lemons, more like lemon slushies. I called Crystal and told her we couldn't make it home and that I would take the kids out to lunch. In fact, we made an afternoon of it. Once Grace was fed, and the "drama factor" subsided, I took the three kids to a VeggieTale pirate movie at our local movie theater.



I sat between Luke and Faith. We had seen this movie once already. I was sitting in the theater seat when my condition kicked in. Now, many people may have heard of narcolepsy, or the uncontrollable occurrence of randomly falling asleep. I have acquired a condition, in large part due to having an infant at home that is not sleeping through the night, I refer to as "darkolepsy". This condition results in the inability to stay awake with any exposure to darkness or subdued light. (Crystal has an even more serious condition I call "ortholepsy", where she falls asleep with any recumbent posture. This has resulted is her seeing the beginning of innumerable movies at home on the couch and never knowing how they end.)



Faith took it upon herself to "treat" my condition by tapping my shoulder every few seconds to prepare me for "the good part that's coming up". I don't know exactly when she realized the futility of her efforts and stopped, but the combination of the darkness, the cushioned seat, the harmonious munching of popcorn by three kids resulted in me succumbing to my condition. I awoke sometime during the closing credits with Luke yelling in my ear, "Let's wah dat again!"



We headed home again, hopeful for better results climbing our incline. Sure enough, a road crew had come during our 3 hour diversion and salted the road and we had smooth sailing home this time. We ended up having a great day. The kids got to see a movie, I caught a nap, and Grace got to see her mother again after all!