Nipping At My Nose.....

This morning I woke up at 7;15, shivering. Knowing that I had to get up as Caleb had school today and  must be taken to school at 8, leaving me a short forty-five minute window to get both of us dressed, faces washed, teeth brushed; and hopefully some sort of nutrition into the child who is not a morning person and has no interest in food before he is fully awake.
As I am not a  morning person either, it's a challenge for both of us. So, I flew out of bed, fortunately onto a carpeted floor, and got dressed so fast that it took just one huge shiver to get it done.
Then, after leaving the bathroom, I gingerly approached Caleb's room. I knew that he was awake, as I could see the large headed tent of blanket sitting up, I also knew that given the opportunity he'd sit like that for a good hour, and we didn't have an hour this morning. So, it took a lot of coaxing and some downright bribery before the tent even opened enough for us to make eye contact.
Ahh, thought I, the beginning of another wonderful day!
I got his squirming little (45 pound) body dressed in warm clothing, and as he wiggled his temperature went up, until he eventually informed me that he didn't need two shirts because it was 'hod outside' today! Uh huh, I just kept moving.
After once again foolishly chasing Caleb round the entire first floor of our not so small house, and begging him to eat the oatmeal that I was chasing him with, I finally gave up and put the spoon I'd been holding in mid air during the chase into my own mouth. Sticking a breakfast bar into one of my pockets with the intention of leaving it at school in case he also refused the 'breakfast snack' that they offered, I approached his shoes, cheering myself on with 'Almost there!'.
Right.
Following our general and generally quite impassioned and loud debate about exact;y which shoes he'd be wearing, we did what we always do, and he sat on the second step and put on his sneakers. The same shoes that he wears to school every single day. The same shoes over which we have the same debate when we return from school, and he doesn't want to take them OFF.
I live in a crazy world!
At this point, I'd had it. No more nonsense of any kind was going to be tolerated, I bum rushed him through the putting on of the jacket ritual, and got the kid into the car.
I got in and started it, realizing that I'd neglected to open the garage door at the last second, I said a quick prayer of thanks, hit the open button on the remote and pulled out of the garage. As I was pulling out, from the backseat came a 'WOW! Gammy, lookit!'!
So, I looked, and realized that we were driving into a wonderland of frozen dew.
He was actually stunned into a very brief silence!
As I pulled the car out, we entered this glistening frosty world, the sun shining brightly on the soon to be melted crispy white stuff; and the diamond factor was higher than I believe I've seen it in years.
To qualify, we lived in California for more than a decade and on the water for the first three years after moving to Maine. Living on the water, generally means not much in the way of green property, but hey, we'd been living in CA, so just the no fence factor was good enough for us!
Last April we moved further north, still on the coast, we live now on a 12 acre parcel of land that is primarily woodland, and with no bay IN our backyard there is plenty of green stuff AND a sort of falling down barn, all stuff that good old Jack can declare open season on, when it's the season.
Growing up in Connecticut, I can remember my Mom waking us up in the morning for school, always a morning person (when we were kids), she would float down the hallway singing, 'Wake up, wake up you sleepyheads, get up get up get outta bed!'. Shortly followed by her next number, 'You Are My Sunshine', followed by the opening of our doors, one by one and her good natured bellowing, "GET UP YOU ARE LATE and I am NOT putting a coat over these pajamas this morning!" (When we were small and missed the bus, she would put Dad's raincoat on over her pj's and, hair in 33 year old ponytail, sing us to school in the Ford Fairlane Station Wagon......we always knew that Christmas was coming because before she'd start doing her rendition of Santa Claus is Coming to Town, she'd always sing the Jack Frost song. How I HATED that song! It meant getting dressed under the covers, shivering my way to the bathroom to brush and wash, even worse, it meant night time showers, which of course meant finding a new way to wear my long, curly hair up before there were hair products other than hair spray, and before messy ponytails and pencil buns were in, long before!
Well, this morning I gained new respect, as often happens these days, for my dear Mother whom I miss more than words can express. How on earth she got up and got herself together enough to pull that morning routine off 5 days a week (on weekends we were lucky if we could pry her head off the pillow before noon!), for the entire school year and for at least 6 weeks in the summer, if any of us had summer school, which someone always did!
A few years later when, as a surly high school kid who had to get up before the sun, on the most freezing cold mornings, to be driven to the train station by my father (who drove and cursed like a loonatic for the entire 15 mile trip; which generally only lasted for about 10 minutes!) so that I could have the car that day, I treated her with great disdain, as in "Will you get OUT of my FACE please?"
So, as I was scrambling to get Caleb into his booster seat and my own self into the car this morning while being assaulted by that pack of memories, I started to think of old Jack Frost, Santa Claus, ice, snow, driving in ice and snow, and how I was going to tamp down the rising panic long enough not to melt down while driving Caleb to school!Then came the barrage of questions, most of which I didn't understand as when Caleb's mind is working faster than his mouth can, his words sometimes sound like gibberish, and because I had just realized that for some reason I'd made it down the driveway in neutral, ripping the gears loudly, and was just a little bit freaked out!I know, I thought, I'll SING! My singing sounds like Lucille Ball on a BAD day, and Caleb is most intolerant of it, A shame really because who else is going to teach him this stuff besides me?

What a morning!!

Wondering how many lines I'd succeed in getting out before he yelled 'STOP!' at me, as he does, I began to sing 'Jack Frost', in my best bad voice. After one line and Caleb's VERY loud prounouncement, he surprised me by asking me who 'that guy' was anyway?
I thought for a minute, trying to find the simplest terms with which to explain this fabled character, and said: "Well, his name is Jack Frost and he's a little blue guy who comes out at night early in the winter, and late in the winter too, and he dances around by the light of the moon blowing icy air out of his mouth and laughing a mean laugh because he knows that grownups don't like to have to scrape their car windows, or drive on slippery roads."
I thought that was pretty good, until, as is also usual, he challenged me with 'Well, how does he rip your nose if it's morning?', not understanding what the time of day had to do with getting any part of your body, except perhaps your metabolism, ripped;  all I could say was not RIP honey, NIP. At which point he battered me with rapid fire questions that I couldn't understand, until he ended the barrage with the words 'Santa Clauze', his latest obsession, and 'transformers' his ongoing obsession.
Our conversations are difficult to explain as they generally make no sense at all to anyone who isn't with us while we're having them.
What he was telling me was that the Transformer's were going to kill this Jack Frost guy, because Santa Claus wasn't going to be impressed with Jack Frost's behavior and there wouldn't be any presents for HIM anyway! Okay, made sense to me, I knew that I was in big trouble this time, and it was all because I'd told him that Jack Frost came at night and blew ice out of his mouth with a mean laugh and made the grown ups mad! Yeah, good for me, I'd managed to turn a fairy tale into a killing spree that incorporated of all things, Santa!
Another win for Gammy!
Oh what a wonderful morning!