Of Puke and Snow and Hallelujahs

Trombone has thrown up three times in his life. One of those times was sometime last night so this morning when I opened his bedroom door, expecting my usual delightful toddler smell, I was greeted instead with a great whiff of day-old frat house.

Luckily he didn’t get any on himself. Which meant he didn’t get any on me when I picked him up. But oh, that smell stayed with me all day.

Being mostly fine, though a bit woozy from not having any food in his stomach, we soldiered on to MamaNonna and PapaNonno’s house and I carried on to a regular work day with my regular challenges. (You can tell it’s a good day because I didn’t refer to my challenges as “fucking lunatics who don’t deserve their ridiculous salaries.”) I looked out the window periodically to see if it was snowing yet because I love it when it snows, even if I have to drive, even if it’s evening and trafficky, even if it’s hell on the non-snow-tires, I love the first snow in the evening because it’s quiet and pretty and no one can go very fast at first, everyone is forced to eke along and look out their windows a lot while the snow swirls in the headlights and streetlights and against the Christmas lights and oh! I love the snow.

Instead, the afternoon grew darker and darker till at 3:40 pm it felt like 6 and when I asked my boss if I had missed another time change he just laughed at me. “It’s going to get darker until December 21st, my dear,” he said and I was reminded of my father, who counts down the days to darkness and then counts up the days to light.

When I left the office it was not snowing, no, it was pissing icicles, dumping freezing buckets with a slight breeze to get right under your collar and up your sleeves. My two blocks to the bus stop were unpleasant but when I missed the bus by a hair and had to wait another 10 minutes for the next and the next was a short, full bus with one of the most painful conversations evAR going on behind me (Geek teenage boy: I LOOOOOVE fantasy novels. LOOOOOOVE them. Dragons and wizards and spells and stuff? LOOOOOVE. Teenage girl: Huh. I don’t think I’ve ever read a fantasy book all the way through. They’re like, too weird. Boy: Oh.) that was some super unpleasant.

Then there was the three block walk to my parents’ place to get Trombone. Oh! Was there snow in Burnaby? No, there was not. There was slightly slushier pissing icicles and a slightly sharper wind. Fucking awesome, my feet are wet and my nose is missing.

The drive home took 45 minutes instead of 25. Trombone fell asleep and I drove slowly and wondered about people who speed when slush is falling from the sky. When we got home, Trombone woke up and ate some cereal and the catt puked on the floor to celebrate his dinner and I suddenly, uncontrollably yelled nasty things at the catt, the lowest form of life in the house and therefore the most frequent recipient of my wrath, with a gusto that has not been seen since my last brush with karaoke Guns N Roses.

Then in the bath, Trombone splashed his toys gently and looked up at me with his big, blue, shadowy eyes. Such a tired boy, such a long, long day for all of us. I sang, “Trombone row the boat ashore…hallelujah…” and he smiled and said, clear as a snowflake, “a-lay-yuuu-yah!” So it’s all right, after all.