Debi: Trudge

For all our east coast readers: yes, you got more snow than Chicago. Conceded. But we did just get a nice hearty snowfall here in the midwest, over a foot in 24 hours here by the lake, and for folks like our family who use footpower as our main mode of transportation, this adds several layers of work to our day -- pun intended!

Because it wasn't very cold here, this winter storm was easier to handle for us. While we had to be protected from getting wet, the temperatures in the twenties made it possible to stay outside for a while at a time -- quite necessary for shoveling. And shoveling. And shoveling again. Living in an urban area as we do, it's very easy to stand on a street and declare "good neighbor" and "bad neighbor" just by looking around. The good neighbors are the ones who shovel their sidewalks, maybe even adding a few handfuls of road salt to keep the remaining snow from becoming ice in our standard cycles of snow-light thaw-freeze. The bad neighbors don't shovel, leaving the good neighbors to pluck the elderly and infirm out of their knee-deep piles on the sidewalks.

Yesterday, we woke up to a pretty notable snowstorm happening outside our windows. That meant the winter gear we wore on the way to school had to keep us warm and dry on top and bottom -- not just snowboots and snowpants for the snow we'd trudge through, but something waterproof on top to keep our heads protected from the snow falling on us from above. Ronni, my oldest, remembered seeing a friend of ours in a ski mask and asked if we had one she could wear under her hood. Sammi, ever-stubborn, insisted her hat was plenty. I wore a ski hat and hood, and (dumbly) decided to just layer long-johns under my jeans instead of putting on snowpants. My reward for that was damp pant cuffs all day.

After I walked the kids from school, I had to run right home and get my car to meet a client in Chicago. That's a 30 minute drive in good weather, so I had no time to shovel before I left. I felt really guilty, but promised myself it would be the first thing I did when I got home. I parked my car outside our meeting place, and when I came out a few hours later, I had several inches of snow to brush off of it. When I arrived home, those inches covered our sidewalk and the path from our house to garage. Shoveling it took at least forty minutes.

I worked in the afternoon, made time for a quick run, and then raced to pick Ronni up from her after-school dance class and Sammi up from her extended-day at preschool. By the time I got home and realized that we had to be back at Ronni's school for parent-teacher conferences in an hour, AND that I'd offered to bring dinner for the teacher too, AND that I needed to shovel (again), it was clear that dinner had to be easy and fast. And portable! We brought Ronni's teacher the beans & corn in a little plastic container, with a separate container of salsa, a plastic bag with two tostados, and a package of tic-tacs once I realized how garlicky the beans had turned out.

Snowy-Day Hearty Fast Dinner!
1 can refried black beans
1 can whole black beans
2 cloves garlic
1 package hard tostados
shredded cheese
salsa
1 batch Sweet-n-Salty Corn, recipe below

Empty can of whole black beans into a pot and just cover with water. Cook until the beans are soft, then drain water and partially mash beans, leaving some whole pieces. Add can of refried black beans, and squeeze garlic cloves in your garlic press into the pot. Mix thoroughly and heat until hot.

Spread bean mixture on tostados, sprinkle cheese on top, and add a dollop of salsa. Serve with a side of Sweet & Salty Corn

Sweet & Salty Corn
1/2 bag of frozen corn
2 tbsp margarine
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp salt

Cook corn in microwave, melting margarine on top. Add cumin and salt and mix well.

Debi: Urban winter

Winter in the city is a lot different from winter in the country or even the sprawling suburbs. I grew up in a suburb of Milwaukee, a place with no sidewalks or public transportation, where even the kids who lived across the street from the elementary school took the bus. Winter meant going everywhere in something powered by gasoline.

Here in Evanston, which may as well be Chicago for its dense population and pedestrian focus, the weather takes on entirely new meaning. Ronni's school has no buses for neighborhood children, and the parking lot has room for perhaps twenty cars. The streets surrounding the school have little parking available during school hours, and everyone lives within less than a mile radius of the school itself. As a result, the vast majority of the students there get to school on foot.

This is something I love about it, but also something that requires a whole set of gear I never anticipated. Sammi is still too small to make that six block trek through the snow at anything approaching a reasonable speed, and so it is crucial that we have a way of transporting her on our journey. With clear sidewalks, a stroller works beautifully -- and becomes like a rolling luggage rack too, holding backpacks and extra shoes and lunchboxes and random necessities.

With snowy sidewalks, all bets are off.

Sidewalks are cleared by the residents of the houses that face them, and not all of those residents are imagining a stroller passing through. Handicap ramps from the sidewalk to the street at each corner often only reveal a shoveled path wide enough for the narrowest feet. Hoisting a stroller -- and its 30-plus-pounds of cargo -- over the snowbank there is not an option. When it snows, I am left without the ability to push Sammi to school in the stroller. What's a city mom to do?

1. Thank heavens for the soft carrier made by CatBirdBaby. I have about five pounds of leeway before Sammi gets too big for it, and I hope by then she'll be able to walk. When the snow is too deep for the stroller but not deep enough yet for option #2 (below), I strap Sammi to my back in this carrier, and we stomp off to school. That's her in there on a hike last summer -- imagine this but with both of us in heavy winter coats, hats, mittens, and her in snowpants and boots.
   
   
   


2. Remember that sled you pulled up the hill hundreds of times as a kid, only to throw yourself onto it on your belly and slide down again? The big plastic one with the rope tied to the front? That's Sammi's chariot when the snow is so deep that I can't bear to trudge through it with 30 pounds on my back. She has learned to grip the sides tightly as I drag her over unshoveled sidewalks, across snowy yards and even -- scraping the bottom as we go -- across one busy intersection, depending on the mercy of motorists seeing a five-foot-tall woman in snow gear pulling a very overstuffed preschooler in a red sled.
   

All this is so that I can get my kids to school on foot. I could drive, but it's six blocks. SIX! Driving is just too ridiculous for me to bear. As a result, we've invested in good boots, long underwear, a decent carrier, and no small order of cojones. Be kind to your pedestrian parents everywhere!!!