Snow Day

It’s currently 35 degrees in my little corner of Southeast Texas.  The greater-Houston area has all but shut down as we brace ourselves for ice-meggedon, or whatever the heck meteorologists call it these days.

Growing up in the Texas Panhandle, we simply referred to it as ‘winter’.

I don’t want to come down too harshly on the place I now call home, for I understand that if you’ve never experienced cold, icy weather you really don’t know how to behave…or drive…or dress….I liken it to obnoxious, disrespectful children.  Sure, your initial response is to take them to task, but you soon realize it’s not their fault – they simply don’t know any better.  Then you can smile smugly and place full blame (and the gossip that’s surely to follow) on the real source of the problem – their parents.

But I digress.

As a child, the anticipation of snow and the inevitable ‘snow day’ brought about such excitement and hope to my young world.  Snow days, of course, meant no school, and no school meant a day in which to focus on what really mattered:  books, Barbies, and at 2pm, the day’s episode of Guiding Light.

The night before a potential snow day, I’d pray harder and faster than I’d ever prayed before.  The Baptists taught me to ‘ask and it is given’, and I took it to heart.  They also taught me intolerance and harsh judgment, which goes to show that sometimes it’s all just one big crap shoot.

But again, I digress.

Early in the morning of a possible snow day, my mother would tune into our local radio station, KDHN –Your Little Home for Big Country Music.  We’d wait…and wait…praying that the farm reports would soon end, and that God and the school superintendant had reached an agreement that we could all get on board with.

 

Sometimes they did, and sometimes they didn’t.  The Rolling Stones taught me that ‘you can’t always get what you want.’  This lesson somehow always pleased a great number of Baptists, even though they preached against rock and roll.

Once again, digressing.

As an adult, a snow day means (at least for me) a day of limited ‘work from home’ activities, cleaning house, laundry, and any other task I can find to keep me busy.  I like being busy, and I like getting dressed even though I know I’m not leaving the house (honestly, what is our society’s fascination with staying in pajamas all day?)

A dear friend born and raised in New York City scoffs at Houston’s anxiety that comes along with below-freezing temperatures.  In spirit, I’m with him, but I’m not without empathy.  If you’ve never experienced it, you don’t know what to do, which was evident this morning when I spotted my neighbor wearing a winter coat and shorts.  The whole city is downright confused.

 

I look upon these days not with the excitement I had as a child, but with an understanding that perhaps the universe is telling us all to slow down a little bit.  The world will keep turning if we don’t have to show up anywhere.  We’ll all be okay if we force ourselves indoors every once in a while

By 9am my ‘work from home’ had been completed.  The house is clean, and the last load of laundry turns quietly in the drier.

I have books to read, Barbie clothes to make for the two fabulous nieces, and although it’s no longer on the air, I can still find episodes of Guiding Light on YouTube.

Perhaps I haven’t lost that child-like excitement I once had.

 

 

 

 

Summer School

Something about this time of year always has me feeling a bit nostalgic. As a kid, I loved summer vacation, and it always proved to be just that: a vacation. It meant time away from school (a good thing), trips out of town (a necessary thing, particularly for my overworked father), and an opportunity to improve myself (even back then, I was a self-help nerd).

Although I made fairly good grades (provided I enjoyed the course), school was not necessarily ‘my thing’ (ironic that I devoted twelve years of my adult life as a school teacher, don’t you think?). Don’t get me wrong – I believe a great deal of merit exists in most of these academic and athletic camps that have become quite popular these days, but I fear too many of our children are overscheduled right now when they should be relaxing and recharging for the upcoming school year. My youngest client, a girl of eight, comes to me three afternoons a week absolutely exhausted. She attends two summer camps daily, and when she leaves me, she heads to her piano lesson. It’s too much!

Sometimes just living life, even a kid’s life, can provide concrete learning that will ultimately shape our adult selves. Allow me to share a few of my own childhood discoveries that I still fall back upon today:

-Motor skills can be improved upon when one’s teen-aged aunt forces you to cut pictures of Shaun Cassidy out of Tiger Beat magazine. It wasn’t always easy – sometimes his face was in the shape of a heart.

-The ability to coordinate outfits and dress for any occasion is quite important and can lead to a great career (at least in my world). I am forever indebted to Barbie for that one. She slept in a Kleenex box, but she always looked fabulous – that’s a great example of understanding your priorities and ‘making do’ (to quote my mother) with what you’ve got.

-Sharing equals caring. Always the gentleman, Han Solo (in the form of an action figure) consistently offered his blaster to Kate Jackson when she and the other plastic Angels fought crimes in the Miller family living room. That’s also a good example of chivalry, which I’ve always found to be an incredibly attractive trait.

-I learned quite early in life the importance of good grooming thanks to Dr. Pepper Lip Smackers and a boy who encouraged me to get in touch with my feminine side (he’d already found his, and I truly loved him for it) by applying Vaseline to my eyelashes in order to make them shine.

-I can’t solve an algebraic equation or play an instrument well, but I do know the finer points of overthrowing one’s father as the head of the family business, faking one’s death, and overcoming amnesia thanks to countless summer hours spent watching Guiding Light (man, do I miss that show!)

-Lessons in compromise and strategic planning tactics occur when you share a room with your sister, particularly when negotiating which walls Duran Duran posters should grace, and which walls Rick Springfield posters should grace.

-Reading comprehension skills are greatly improved upon when one devotes hours to Seventeen magazine. A girl can hone her critical thinking skills by taking each quiz in the magazine, and discover, too, what type of boy she will marry, the colors that look best on her, and which hairsprays are the best at keeping her bangs resembling those of a mutant rooster.

-My music lessons came from listening to Amarillo’s All Hit Z-93. I would grow up and become the ‘Mid-Day Girl’ for that station a decade later. That’s one of those Law of Attraction spiritual-type lessons, too: what you think about, you bring about.

And I thought an awful lot about having fun, enjoying myself, improving myself, acting silly, and diving into weirdly creative activities each summer. I still do…

Beth Newman
Image Consultant, Life Coach, Author
Newman Image
www.newmanimage.info
Look, feel, and LIVE your absolute best!