Snow day!

Inner Child

Early in today's winter storm

Ah, snow day.  I think those words call out to the inner child in us all.  We may not usually (or ever for those of us who can work from home) get the day off from work like we used to in the school days of our youth, but it seems like there is always that strange feeling like this time is going to be special.  That we'll be able to go out and frolic merrily in the fluffy white winter blanket that nature has lain out for us.

As part of that wondrous feeling I found myself up early in the morning, waiting impatiently for the snow to start falling.  The weather called for it to begin around midnight when I had checked it yesterday, but they pushed it back until this morning.  At 6 A.M. I began to wonder if they had completely missed the mark.  No snow was falling at all.  By around 8 or 9 A.M. I finally looked outside to see the snow falling heavily.  Of course, soon I realized that I didn't have a snow shovel.  The past couple years the snowfall has been so minimal it simply never came up.  So, I ended up making a quick run to the store in the middle of the storm to grab a snow shovel.  Luckily, the store is only a block away.

After the snow let up a bit

It was definitely a good thing that I obtained a snow shovel as you can tell from the photo of my sidewalk.  That's over a foot of snow on each side of the walk there.  I can't imagine my four year old trying to walk through that when she comes to my house for the weekend.  The snow would be past her knees.

Today was also the first time I broke my normal habits regarding shoveling snow from the walk.  Usually, I just wait until the snow stops to shovel.  This time, I was out shoveling nearly every hour.  In this case I think that was actually less work since I was only shoveling a couple inches of snow instead of trying to dig through over a foot of it.  According to the weather forecasts, my job shoveling snow probably isn't complete today.  They're calling for another 3-4 inches of snow by 7 P.M. tonight.  I think our current "official" snow total right now is around 6-8 inches, but I took a measuring stick out and tried in every place I could find that wasn't drifted up.  No matter where I measure the snow was never lower than 12 inches.  If we get another 3-4 inches on top of that by the end of the day I'll be looking at snow somewhere around 15-16 inches at my house.  Man, that is a lot of snow.

Snow putting out my fire

So, what did I do other than shovel snow on this wonderful day?  Well, obviously I took a few pictures.  I would have taken more, but the snow was caking on my digital camera and I didn't want to risk damaging it from getting it too wet.  Other than that though, I stayed inside curled up under a blanket drinking hot tea and just tried to stay comfortable and warm.  I'm thinking about going out later though and playing in the snow.  Maybe I'll make one of my infamous snow men... the kind with the tentacles.

At one point I did try to enjoy the outside by starting a fire in my little outdoor fire thingy (whatever it is called), but as you can see from the photo the snow started to fall hard enough that even a fire wasn't really much of a match for it.  So much for my plans to sit outside warmed by the fire and watch the snow fall.

Hope you all are staying warm and enjoying your day out in the snow.