These are the (snow) days of our lives …
Posted
January 12, 2009 at
3:51 pm by
Kymberly
You have no idea how many times I have thanked the good Lord for creating me in this century. He, in his infinite wisdom, knew exactly what he was doing when he put me in a time period blessed with hot running water and warm toasty furnaces.
Pioneer. Granted, I wouldn’t have survived pioneer life long enough to complain about it much. I would have been one of those people with a life expectancy somewhere around twelve.
I would have never ‘gone west’. If by some serious misalignment of fate I had been talked into by my pioneer equivalent of Mr. Wonderful (he would have been a cowboy, I’m sure of it) and loaded up my belongings in a covered wagon and then gotten caught in a winter storm along the way, well, let’s just say I have the utmost faith that Mr. Wonderful would have arranged for me to “accidentally” tumble out of the buckboard somewhere along the trail.
Fortunately, I am blessed by the aforementioned modern conveniences that allow me to never leave my house for vast stretches of time (I’m aspiring to be a hermit and getting quite good at it) and to work from home in my pajamas. Thus, I can find joy in the kind of things that make most adults crazy. Yes, I am a nine year old stuck in a thirty-something body and I love snow days. I check the early news obsessively for the possibility of a snow day from Thanksgiving until mid-March. I enjoy and even welcome the snow, knowing I have nowhere to go and taking the opportunity to snuggle up with some candles, a good book, and whatever chocolate I have managed to ferret from the latest hiding place the children have tried to no avail.
A snow day captures that “get out of jail free card” feeling perfectly.
Degrees. Granted, this is difficult when all this ferreting out and relaxing is done directly in the line of sight of my little-ones-who-should-be-at-school-but-aren’t-because-this-morning-it-was-minus-10-degrees-out. (What’s so wrong with minus 10 degrees? A nice round double-digit number, it is.)
Even as a stay-at-home-mom, my mornings are hectic. I do have a “job” and it’s to get this rocket we call daily life off the launchpad. Nonetheless, I think my body knows when it should have a snow day today. At six a.m. I try to wake up, really I do. Sleep keeps pulling me back in. At 7:10 I finally get myself into the shower. I emerge from the steamy bathroom to the incessant ring of the telephone. Our nine-year-old shouts “I got it!”, and a few moments later I heard a shriek of delight. “Snow day! It’s a snow day! Zack (the neighbor) says it’s a snow day!!!”
This is followed immediately by my 7-year-old saying, gravely, “well we really should check the television and the web site to see if it’s TRUE.”
My, how things have changed.
I had a clock radio by my bed (one of the early ones, with the slips of numbers on rolodex-like pages that actually flipped every minute), and before I’d climb out from under the warm covers, I’d turn on the local AM station and listen to the “zany morning crew” read the school closings. I’d hang on every word of the list droning on between ads for carpet cleaners and bowling alleys: “Akron, Aurora, Cleveland, Hiram, Hudson, (Pause – there always seemed to be a dramatic pause) … Kent Public Schools…” Woah freedom! Off went the radio, and after shouting “Mo-om! Snow day!” I could burrow right back under the covers. Except the adrenaline rush had me right up out of bed and itching to call someone – everyone – and share the good news. Then I’d spend the day drinking cocoa, eating cereal, and watching Bewitched reruns on UHF. Forget dogs. A school kid’s answered prayer was Lake Effect Snow.
Good times.
Mandatory. There’s a reason I love snow days: I still do that. In fact, I propose we implement a mandatory annual snow day for all ages. Next time it snows, clear your schedule, stay in your jammies, pour yourself something warm, and watch some comfortable old TV. Work can hang for the day — it’s snowing!
Snow days aren’t so bad. They provide an excellent opportunity to stay home, count your blessings, and be grateful for warmth, shelter, good food, and great company. Be it family, friends, neighbors, pets, yourself or all of the above.
Not to mention being really, really grateful that you aren’t a pioneer.
Tags: blessing, cozy, pioneer, snow |
3 Responses to “These are the (snow) days of our lives …”
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1. lora said:
January 12, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
I’m always trying to tell myself that it isn’t that bad, in these days of heaters and down jackets and lots of non-louse-ridden blankets and days off and and and.
But I’m still miserable, and I moved away from the Great Lakes 14 years ago!
2. mully said:
January 12, 2009 @ 5:15 pm
Unless youre like the millions of us out there who have NO choice and have to brave the snow and ice to get the office opened. Then snow days are nothing more than a huge nuisance and a real danger as we try to slip-slide our way thru traffic snarls and hopefully get to work in one piece with no damage to man or machine.
3. Cin said:
January 13, 2009 @ 2:14 pm
I am a realtor in Michigan. It gets bitter. The houses are all vacant, repossessed, and cold. Although the “idea” of a cozy snow day sounds dreamy, the reality is my face will be stinging from windburn by the time I am done shoveling the driveway and taking my buyers from house to house. The crazy home buyers are so excited they do not cancel. I am right with you on the hermit aspirations, though.
Remember that movie THE NET with Sandra Bullock? She was a total hermit and I really wanted to be her.