sNOw day
Winter is
upon us, and months of people whining about snow is beginning with it. I don’t like driving in a snow storm, and
commuting by car, bus, or train can be a mess in Winter weather. I understand
the inconvenience and even danger of Winter, but still I confess to enjoying
Winter.
I don’t feel comfortable talking about liking Winter, it is one of those things you are just expected to complain about. It is right there with:
TV,
fruitcake, The DMV, smokers, bad fashion, and Republicans…all are things it is
perfectly acceptable to speak of with disdain in most company.
Still I will
speak of Winter with affection, I firmly believe there are many others who
while they nod their head in agreement that Winter and snow are perfectly
awful, can’t wait to run to the window and watch a good storm turn a blah
outside into a magic wonderland.
I lived most
of my youngest years in southern California.
Winter was just any other time of the year and snow was a fairy
tale. When we moved back east, I fell in
love at my first snow storm.
The first
big storm resulted in no school. It
became known to me as a sNOw day. That
is what I love about the snow (my apologies to those who HAVE to be somewhere
or HAVE to do something) it is the perfect excuse for doing nothing, for saying
NO to normal routine.
Don’t feel
like going shopping…take a sNOw day.
Don’t want
to go to a boring party at the Frumps…sNOw day.
Got work in
the yard? Can’t; sNOw!
The list of
things you don’t want to do is endless, and you don’t have to do them,
why? It’s a sNOw day.
When the
storm is over, the roads are clear and the driveway shoveled (I even enjoyed
that back in the day) there is sledding, skiing, and skating to be enjoyed,
snowball fights to be fought, snowmen and snow forts to be built. Well for me not so much anymore, but the
memories of such things are rekindled.
So yeah, I
like Winter, I like snow and I don’t think I am alone, so come on, admit it,
for all the inconvenience, and all the slop when it starts to melt, the snow is
magical, it makes you feel young again.
Snow is the
perfect excuse to heat up a hot chocolate, put up your feet, turn on the TV and
do nothing. What else are you going to
do, it’s a sNOw day.
No sNOw day if you live in Montana. Son was bummed the 8 years we lived there. He wanted one sNOw day and none was ever granted. They go to school any old day (at the time we lived there, the school secretary said in her 18 year career the schools were only closed 2 times, once when it was -20 outside and the buses wouldn't start and the other time when the air was so thick from the ashes of the volcano at Mount St. Helen's. Those Montanans were hardy people. They got out there in the worst of conditions. Having lived in Southern California and Santa Fe, New Mexico before moving to Montana (Santa Fe they cancel school at just the thought of snow) it was a new adventure to get out there driving in it in Montana. I have to say it took a good 5 years until I felt comfortable doing so. Liked the first snow fall and the snows of March and April (because they would melt fast). Forget the snows of January :)
ReplyDeletebetty
Here in the swamps, snow is magical. We get a bit once every 10 years or so. One time when it snowed here, a friend of mine had the neighborhood children at her door with shovels and a wheel barrow. They were asking everyone, "Can we have your show?" They shoveled as much as they could get from around the whole neighborhood and piled it all in one of their yards so they could have enough to do the things you talk about, build a snowman and have a snowball fight.
ReplyDeleteSnow is beautiful and it has its fun sides, and i certainly don't mind the months when we don't have to use the A/C here.
Snow is magical, or so I believed when I was younger.I love to see it but no longer enjoy going out in it. Memories of it are golden, like the days when we built snow caves and played doctors and nurses!!!!
ReplyDeleteI'm proud to say I love both TV and a good fruitcake. But I do hate winter. I was the kid whose school would be the only one open in the county. Our superintendent was a real jerk.
ReplyDeleteWe had three sNOw days last week and the hubs was happy to see that THIS week there will be NO shoveling. We have an immense drive way. At least, it seems immense when you stand at the bottom and look at the barren trackless waste waiting for the shovel. As a kid it seems we had way more snow in winter than we do now....it came early and left late.....we had a farm driveway. Poor Dad.
ReplyDeletePersonally, about a week of winter weather is quite enough for me, but I am definitely the outlier here in ski country.
ReplyDeleteI'm a Michigan boy (and a Northern Michigan boy, at that), so snow is an integral part of our lives here. We have snow on the ground pretty much continuously from mid-December until early March (and Up North, where I grew up, you can add almost a month to both ends; we like to say it's nice when summer comes on a weekend. . .)
ReplyDeleteI have always loved just about everything about winter. . . except the driving. I love the muffled quiet of the snow-covered world; and ice skating and cross-country skiing (never got into the downhill variety; the hills were a bit far from where we lived). And like you, I love the enforced stay-home-ness of it all. . .
But driving in snow is, at best, a necessary evil. I'm getting close enough to retiring, though, that I can begin to think about the days when I won't have to do it so much. . .
As a former teacher, I lived for snow days! Here in the hills of Missouri, our rural districts call off school often. One year we had 25 snow days! 10 were built into the schedule, 11 were made up with canceled holidays and workdays and extending the school year, and four were waived by the Missouri legislature.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE SNOW DAYS. With 4WD, I can still make a trip to town for my daily 44 oz Diet Coke!
Snow days are rare here in Portland, but I do love them when I can stay home and do nothing.
ReplyDeleteLet it snow, let it snow, let it snow!! After last years skimpy disappointment it has been a treat to watch as the snow falls. We are in a banner year for snow here, 54 inches and counting to-date. The only disappointment is the thaws that have popped up in between .....
ReplyDeleteNot a fan of snow. I've been in snow, I've driven in snow, I hate snow. I'm a fair weather kind of gal. I could live in Hawaii year around and be just fine.
ReplyDeleteHave a fabulous day. ☺
It seems we have to complain about something or life can get too lop-sided. My brother and family are snowbirds and spend winters in Az. Now it's scorpions that mess up their lives.....not snow. I think I'll take the snow. For 25 years I lived in Fl and complained about the bugs, snakes, hurricanes and mold. I can't take the mold smell but survive the below zero weather with gusto.
ReplyDeleteYou gotta hop a plane to Salt Lake come March or so, Crank. Ski in the mountains on the greatest snow on earth in the morning and golf in the valley in the afternoon.
ReplyDeleteSnow is magical, when I drive up to the mountains to see it. The first snow I saw this year was at Crater Lake, Oregon in Oct. So much snow, we didn't get to see the lake. It was shrouded in a eerily fog. Still beautiful though.
ReplyDeleteI LOVE snow but it helps that I am retired and don't have to be anywhere. Also living in Arkansas, it is pretty rare for us to have a really pretty one but when it does come, my 6 year old self is alive and well.
ReplyDeleteI've never lived where it snows; I'd like to give it a try!!
ReplyDeleteI'm with you Joe. I love snow, but I can afford to as I line in Texas. Here it might snow 3 or 4 inches, the city shuts down, the local news crews act like it's Snomageddeon, then 2 days later it's back to 60 degrees and sunny. There's no down side to that. :)
ReplyDeleteI grew up in North Dakota. There rarely was a sNOw day although there was a lot of snow.
ReplyDeleteDad, you love fruitcake!
ReplyDeleteI do miss winters and snow...at times. There's nothing better on a Sunday afternoon when you can lie on the couch, with the Sunday paper in your hands, a cup of coffee and a plate of brownies on the coffee table next to you, a fuzzy warm blanket and a purring cat on you, and a snowstorm howling outside. Bliss!
ReplyDeleteI LOVED snow my whole life and then.. Living up on a mtn, population 100 and not being able to get down it when you want just really turned me off of snow - for a time. I think it was the confinement. You absolutely could not come off of that mtn for so many reasons. I guess I'm too social. I love the snow, I love the mountains. I don't want to be a stranded shut in. :) I have amazing memories of snow growing up. Now I'd just like my snow with sun otherwise the gray days really get to me.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in NJ and then moved to Connecticut for 20 years before moving to the warm south. Physically, I can't take the cold and snow anymore. It makes me hurt but I do have wonderful memories of cold weather and snow days and all the things you mentioned.
ReplyDeleteWe don't get sNOw days out here, but that's okay. I don't need an excuse to heat up some hot chocolate :)
ReplyDelete