The "More" Child

I was in Boston over the weekend, and just because I missed the Great DC Freakout Snow of 2009 didn’t mean that I wasn’t here in spirit.  C. and I hopped a very early flight north on Friday and when we landed I already was in–as my family lovingly likes to call it– “killer poodle mode” over the fact that my dear child had brought as her sole footwear a pair of suede moccasins without socks. The daytime temperature high was in the low 20s.  What had she been thinking?? From that point on I was a woman on a mission.  The child must have boots.

Determined (at least I was determined), we headed to the mall in Newton.  Actually, I should make that “delusional,” because how could I think that at this point in the season, under time constraint, we would find boots for a 15-year-old with VERY particular taste who hates shopping malls and UGGs?

Meanwhile, word was filtering through that something very big weatherwise was brewing back in Maryland and headed our way.

We were staying with family in Newton, but planned to spend significant time in Cambridge with the new friends we had made over the summer at the SENG conference.  Because you can take the girl out of DC, but can’t take the DC out of the girl, I spent Friday afternoon obsessively checking the Washington Post and WTOP websites on my iPhone.  On the way to our friends for the last evening of Hanukkah I made a pit stop at The Tannery in Harvard Square, thinking C. had to be able to find something there, right?

Wrong. She was looking for something closely approximating a real British riding boot, and like the princess and the pea, nothing was was quite right.   “Too high.”  “Too low.” “Too black.”  “Too brown.”  “Too biker.” “Too rugged.”  “Too pirate.”

“What about these?” I asked, pointing to a pair of low, slouchy black suede boots?

“You’ve got to be kidding.”

“But I had a pair just like these,” I protested.  “In 1982. In Germany.  I wore them with my gray leather pants and batwing sweater.” [Insert eye roll.]

I added the Weather Channel app, so that I could receive the ominous National Weather Service forecasts in all their glory.  And by morning I had a plan.  (For us DC people, it’s all about the control, having a plan.)  We would drive to Cambridge with all our stuff and leave it at our friends’.  I would drop C. and her friend (as the mom described them, “two needles in two haystacks who have found each other”) in Harvard Square en route to the airport to return the rental car early.  (Let him take her boot shopping.  Brilliant!) Hop the T back to Cambridge and make a hotel reservation just in case.

Worked like a charm.  On Sunday morning we woke to 9  inches of snow and falling.  Better still, C. had found her boots!  A pair of dark green Hunter wellies, veddy Scottish (“By appointment to Her Majesty the Queen”).

As luck would have it, I had booked us on the 4:15 flight to BWI–all the other flights from the previous 36 hours had been canceled. We spent a lovely morning and afternoon drinking tea and chatting, with the kids doing homework at the dining room table.  Then it was a few short blocks to the T station, which took us straight to the airport.  A two hour delay was mitigated by the free wifi (Thank you Google!!) and ample suppy of electrical plugs (Thank you Southwest!) and by 7:30 we were on the ground in Maryland.  Husband Dear had reported that there was no chance of our Prius making it out of the neighborhood and I had visions of sleeping at the airport (true confession:  something I’ve always wanted to do).  Instead we took the SuperShuttle and by 10 p.m. we were safe and sound at home.

Mock the killer poodle if you must, but she is a killer planner.