There's Been A Hoot-Owl Howlin' By My Window Now

cab·in fe·ver ('ka-ben 'fE-v&r), n, a condition in parenting which causes an increase in the child's energy level and a proportional decrease in the parent's patience. In extreme cases, the parent is given to horrifying thoughts, though rarely acting upon. These may include, but are not limited to: euphoria brought on by hopes that one will have to go to work (this requires professional treatment); search-engine lookups on the amount of time you can lock your child out in 12-degree cold without noticeable frostbite; cursing Laura Ingalls Wilder for not indexing her books while you look for guidance on what the hell to do with little girls who have cabin fever; taunting little girls as you trample them in game after game of Life, checkers, Mille Bornes, Payday, Trouble, and Parcheesi.

I'm still about 10 years old when it comes to snow days. I love any unscheduled day off work (well, scheduled, too) and all the attendant things like hot chocolate, fires, naps, bundling up and, these days, knitting. Did I mention not being at work? But then there's Killer to contend with. She's actually above-average in categories like attention span and ease of entertainment, but even on warm spring days in May (usually very early on a Saturday morning) she wants you to do whatever it is with her. Can you fathom the audacity?

When I woke up Thursday morning I just knew it was going to be a long one. I tried to mentally sketch out what to expect so I could be prepared. I thought I had a handle on it. I realized I'd have to entertain her all day. I realized she would start begging to go outside the second she got up; that she would underdress; that she had no winter gear like boots; that it would take 20 minutes to get her ready to go out; that she would actually be out about 5 minutes; that our wood floor would soon become a warped puddle of melted snow; and that no matter how many packages of Swiss Miss I opened, she would eat the marshmallows, and like Goldilocks, deem the chocolate too hot and skip off to do something else.

Early that morning, I wouldn't let her go out in the sleet. She had to wait until the snow started. So, we had some pumpkin bread and looked at catalogs while I drank my coffee and she ate the marshmallows out of her Swiss Miss. Then we started a game of Mille Bornes and she was being really good and hadn't even asked to go out. Then the death knell toned. The neighbor girl, Jasmine, rang the doorbell promptly at 9:00. I now had two of them to deal with.

A note about the neighbor girl. She and her sister are close in age to each of ours and they have a working single mom and a deadbeat dad. So the older is essentially raising the younger. The thing is Jasmine and Killer fight like they were sisters. Constantly. No matter how many times we split them up, they say they like each other and they are best friends, but from the moment they look at each other they begin an unceasing tirade of snipes and territorial scrapes. Jasmine has been coming over increasingly anyway (poor thing is looking for a family, I think) and with her mom at work, I realized she was going to be here all day. Hell had frozen over and I was in it.

I'll spare you the details, but it was 12 hours of misery. For one thing, Jasmine's mom 'went over to a friend's house' until 10:00pm and we couldn't send her back home because the 13-year-old caretaker had walked over to her boyfriend's house to watch a movie. Finally, it all collapsed around 9:00pm when Killer crossed the threshhold and went into one of her blind rages. She does this when she gets too tired and stressed and she makes these primal guttural howls and her face gets blood red and she wanders the halls pushing people out of her way. She literally 'isn't herself' and all we can do is put her in her room and close her door. It's over in about 10 minutes. I had to make Jasmine go in the other room and put Killer to bed.

Friday I was disgustingly glad to be going to work, but we were closed again. So when the doorbell rang again that morning. I told YHWH, "Let's go to the mall." So we let Jamsine stay an hour and left Killer with C.F. Kats and we walked to the mall. We had a great time together and we actually got a majority of our shopping done. At first there was no one there, but by time we left it was positively packed. We did get one call from Killer while we were out. She could barely talk because she was sobbing deeply that the snow was melting and it made her terribly sad and Sissy was making fun of her for it. I told her to watch Frosty the Snowman and tell me the moral when I got home. I was having too much fun being FREE!!