I don’t like snow storms all that much. There are a couple of reasons for that, I guess. I went to college in Syracuse, New York. In Syracuse they average around 100 of inches of snow per year. My four winters up there were generally considered to be mild, yet there was almost always some snow on the ground from Halloween to Easter. I’ve also done a couple of tours in New England in the last decade or so. Maine and Rhode Island both produce plenty of cold and snow, even on the coasts where we lived.

The main reason I don’t get super excited for blizzards is because I used to work in the news business. Working in news for any length of time will turn you into a cynic. You root against big stories developing to keep your head from exploding. While the rest of the area is excited to sit on their couches and watch the news coverage, those in the newsrooms have to get into work to produce that material. News people don’t get the day off. They work twice as long in most cases. They get hotel rooms within walking distance to the office. Or a super long and dangerous commute. So please excuse me if I don’t get pumped up seeing stories about long lines at the grocery store, or the lack of snow shovels available in town.

There is a different reason why I wasn’t wild about this particular snow storm- Snowzilla! Sara was in Atlanta for all of it. She had a conference down there that started on Thursday. There was talk of her canceling, but these are good networking opportunities for her as she builds her career. Her original travel plans had her back on Saturday afternoon, she quickly changed that to Sunday as the forecast got more serious. That left Cam and me (and our trusty sidekick Quinn) home alone for who knew how long. Sunday turned into Monday. She finally got home Monday afternoon. I was on solo duty with Cam and Quinn for five full days. My first solo mission longer than a day in almost a year. Cam will be two in about six weeks. This was by far the biggest challenge I’ve faced as a parent.

I first noticed a smell in our laundry sometime Wednesday night. I couldn’t quite make it out, but by Thursday afternoon (after Sara had left) I knew just what it was. Something had died. And it was only going to get worse. Our laundry room is the unfinished part of our basement, which makes up about a third of the total basement. It houses the washer, dryer and our backup fridge, which we got when we moved back to store extra food for our growing child. It is also where we store all of our crap that we like enough to keep, but not enough to use. Finding a mouse in these conditions wouldn’t be easy. By the time the smell became almost unbearable, the snow storm had started. I’d have to wait almost a week to get someone out to help. In the meantime I used every deodorizer I could find in the house to neutralize the smell. Even calling on some disgusting scented lavender vanilla trash bags (that had been banished to the basement) to help. All it produced was a potpourri of awful that left me nauseous every time I went in to do laundry. Unfortunately, I’d be doing a lot of laundry.

Thursday and Friday without Sara were easy enough. We were able to stick to our routine, his school stayed open until 1:00pm on Friday. I was even able to successfully deflect questions about Mommy’s whereabouts. The weather didn’t really start until late in the afternoon. And we even got out on the back deck to see the first inch or two of the storm. We were breezing through, even looking forward to having a couple of days stuck at home to enjoy the first real blizzard of his life.

By 5:45am Saturday morning, I was less optimistic. Cam woke up with a cry I hadn’t heard in a while. When he wakes up in the morning, he doesn’t usually cry unless he’s been up for a while and is being ignored. Instead he will bounce around, or starting throwing stuff out of his crib. Just to let you know he’s up and ready for the day. That wasn’t the case here. He was sick and had vomited all over himself and his crib. Not the start I was looking for to the weekend. We cleaned up and moved on, but he got sick again. And then again. The final blow was something out of The Exorcist and unfortunately we were sharing a chair at the time. He was very upset as I scrambled to clean up a pretty big mess before Quinn did. Yuck.

So now I’m obviously concerned. Sara handles all things illness in our house. I don’t really know when to give Tylenol, or when to give something else. Or when to call the doctor. There was already more than a foot of snow on the ground, so I couldn’t take him anywhere. And if he was really sick, I wasn’t convinced anyone could get to us. I took his temp and started praying that we weren’t going to be doing this every hour. Not sure if this was a flu bug or just the result of too much dinner, we switched to just water for a while. We took a rare midday bath and he went down for a nap. A three hour nap. That saved the day. Fortunately it appeared it was just something he ate.

Sara arrived home just after 2:00pm on Monday. Stuck in Atlanta for an extra 48 hours, she was able to get to BWI after changing her flight home five times. Things were back to normal. Until they weren’t. Turns out Cameron probably had a bug. As I said, Sara handles all things illness in our house! He vomited again Monday, he was jumping around a bit too much after dinner, but enough excuses. He had a bug. I was about to find out just how bad a bug it was.

I lost track of how many times I got sick. Starting around midnight Monday until late Tuesday afternoon, I was useless. Luckily Sara was able to stay home while I stayed in bed all day. I hadn’t been that sick in decades. Maybe ever.

By Wednesday Cam was back at school and Sara was back at work. We were finally back to normal. Then Sara called. Yup, she was sick now. Of course. Since we had only managed to dig out one car by Wednesday, I was running a carpool. I picked up Cam, Sara got an IV at work (a perk of working at a hospital) and I grabbed her later. Sara would spend most of Thursday at home. She hadn’t taken a sick day since she had to get her wisdom teeth out in 2007. This stomach flu had wiped out our entire family. I’d heard of this happening, but living it was unbelievable. The only one in the house not sick as a dog, was the dog. The only good news? The Orkin man found the dead mouse buried under our fridge. So we had that going for us.

On Friday morning things actually were back to normal. Finally. Sara returned to work. We were all feeling better, but still not quite 100%. Plans we had made for Friday night were postponed. The weekend would now be for catching up on rest and getting rid of the snow. The longest week in recent memory was mercifully coming to an end.

When I dropped Sara at the airport that Thursday morning, I was prepared to spend a couple of nights with Cam by myself. Maybe an extra solo night if the weather was as bad as predicted. What followed is something I couldn’t have seen coming. Which I guess is the point. I’ve been a parent for almost two years, and the only thing I’ve truly learned, is to never expect things to go as planned. Routines are nice. But you earn your money when those routines fall apart. Weather happens. Travel delays happen. Illnesses come out of nowhere. Coming out the other side, mostly intact, is about the best you can do.