...before helping others

It could have gone either way. 

I could have flipped out. No one would have faulted me:3 days in a row of post 5 am wake ups. A month of work to make Christmas not feel like an empty gaping hole in the calendar. A torn muscle in my back. Shoveling alone. Feeding chickens in the dark. 

And then the 3 hours of sledding. Driving down the mountain alone looking out of the fog forming in the corners of the windows.  

Standing alone in the snow loafing on the side of the road like a smoker. Waiting for the girls to appear out of the white woods. 

Loading them up and driving back up the snaking canyon road to repeat. 

Not a nap insight.

So you could see how scraping ice off the inside of the car windows at 7:15 am, 7 degrees, might have sent me into a fit of justified mom ranting but it didn't. 

I was working on the back window when I discovered Beach's entire winter wardrobe still in the car frozen-stiff between the sleds. It was the reason for the coat of ice inside the windows.

Now the reason her stuff never made it inside was because she carried in everyone else's stuff. 

I had watched it happen. Not realizing what was going down until the moment I found her crystallized clothing turning my car into an ice cave.    

She had loaded herself up with 2 of the 3 bags of produce we picked up on the way home. Then gathered the items her friend who we had already dropped off had left behind. 

And just as she was heading for her own gear Sophie half way inside the house asked her to grab her bag for her...please. So of course Beach did.

She had given up her favorite sled to Sophie when Soph wanted it. Given up her new hat. She took the bad spot to sit in the car. She cleaned up the mess they all left in the kitchen making cookies, cocoa, and popcorn to take. 

The frozen clothing also explained why she helping me scrape the car off without a coat on. Which I had given her some grief over thinking she was just being lazy.

Instead of me chewing her out for not be responsible we had a different conversation on the same subject. 

You know the one flight attendants give before each flight takes to the sky: secure your own oxygen mask first before helping others. 

She's a good kid but I know she wasn't listening. She was plotting on how she could do both at once. I know because she gets it from her mother.