Holy crap, make the snow days end, already! All indicators point to a return to school tomorrow and I could just about do the Naked Dance of Glee in the nine inches of snow in my yard.

I do love time with my daughter. Absolutely. But frankly, we’re bored with each other. So bored we even took a little nap together today. That never happens.

You’d think that with two days of snow closures I could get a lot done. I haven’t. Well, I got Clara Jane’s birthday party invitations in the mail. Other than that, I have done little more than atrophy my ass by sitting on it. I’m not even knitting or writing while sitting on my ass. No. I’m farting around on Facebook. Watching “Yo Gabba Gabba”. Thinking about cutting my snaggly big toenail.

This is madness and it needs to end.

I did one productive thing today – I showered and washed my hair. Yeah, I know. It’s bad when basic hygeine is considered “productive”. I’d hope for a relaxing, rejuvenating shower experience that might motivate me into shoveling the driveway and getting the hell out of this house. Instead, I got an answer to the great mystery of my life: Why have I always been plagued with panic and anxiety?

Before I came upstairs to bathe, I settled Clara Jane into a video game and told her I was going upstairs to bathe. She acknowledged this, and I went upstairs.

About half a nanosecond after I wrestled the conditioner through the knots in my hair, the phone rang. Great. I hate the phone, and apparently I’ve passed this hatred on to my child. There’s a corded phone next to the computer where she was playing. As soon as it rang, I knew what was going to happen: either she was going to answer it with a brusk, “What?” (which she probably learned from me), or she was going to pick up the reciever and slam it down without taking her eyes off the game.

I figured the call was either Brian or my parents, since they’re the few people I’ll talk to on the phone. When the phone rang about half a nanosecond after the first ring, I knew it was my mom.

In the time it took me to rapidly bathe, the house phone rang no less than six times. The cell phone rang once. That means one thing: my mom.

Once I rushed through the shower, threw on the same pajamas I’d been wearing before the shower, and called them back. My parents are on vacation, and one of my mom’s best friends was in a horrible car accident on Monday night, so the urgency of the calls had my heart racing.

When my mom picked up, I didn’t even say hi. “What’s going on?”

“Oh, I was wondering the same about you. I asked Clara Jane where you were and she said, ‘Well, I’ve got a problem. I don’t know where she is.’ And then she hung up on me!” And, apparently, continued to hang up on them. “I didn’t know if you were sick, or hurt, or what!”

Now this is a huge clue as to why I’m anxious and panicky. I was raised by people who instantly go to “sick or hurt” when the squirrely child answers the phone, instead of more normal things like, oh, daily hygenine maintenance.

I’d say that I have to work on that child’s phone manners, but I can’t say I blame her. Hers are already better than mine, in a lot of ways.