Snowmageddon 2017

Normally I like winter.  The temps dip down, so most people stay inside, and what few do drive by have their windows rolled up, preventing them from sharing their obnoxious bass-ridden music with me.  I'm an unabashed fan of quiet, and winter is a great time for quiet.  Plus you get the occasional snow fall (well, occasional where I live now) that covers everything in a blanket of purity that makes everything look beautiful, as long as it stays off the roads.  There's a lot to be said about winter.

However, this season I think someone forgot to stop singing "Let it snow! Let it snow! Let it snow!"  That or the local farmers couldn't stop praying for the precipitation.  Whatever the cause, I'm officially sick of winter and desperately wanting it not only to stop but to go away.

Lots of other locals feel the same way.  School was cancelled during the entire first week of the month, leading many parents to complain about having their kids home.  I don't completely understand that because while I was out and about shopping I saw many parents in the stores dragging their kids along.  That's the part I don't understand.  If the parents can drive the kids to the store, why can't they just drive them to school?  Have we become a society so dependent on someone else to do things for us that we've lost the ability to do them ourselves?  I understand that the buses can't get around the neighborhoods because of the all the snow and ice.  What I don't understand is why we just chalk the whole week away as snow days instead of figuring out Plan B for keeping the kids in school.

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Normally the snow comes and then temps rise just enough to clear it out within a couple of days.  This season the temps didn't rise but fell.  That means each snow fall become a new layer of ice on the ground.  And people just aren't equipped for clearing out as much snow as we've been getting.  I'm glad my dad has a snow blower, but I had to be out with a shovel helping him clear the snow away.  It was so cold the snow would start to freeze soon after settling.  So here I am with a shovel picking away at the snow so my dad can then blow it away with his blower.

It's so bad, in fact, I heard my father say that he retired here to get away from all this snow.  Now he's seriously thinking of becoming a snowbird, traveling to a warmer place like Arizona for winter and then heading back north for the summer (though the summers here can get into triple digit territory, so I'm not sure what good that does in summer).

I was expecting many of my work colleagues to agree with him this week at the usual in-service activities.  But they were all cancelled due to the extreme weather we've been having.  And this week I lost a whole week in my M/W class because Monday was a holiday (MLK Day) and Wednesday classes were cancelled due to a freak storm that decided to make an entrance today!  And that was after I had to borrow my mother's car because my doors were frozen shut!  I had never before had the experience of being frozen out of my car.  It's times like this that I miss parking my car in a garage.  Rewind.  It's times like this that I miss spring.

Enough already!  Spring, where are you?  I'm am so ready for you!  If there is anything I can do to entice you to come early this year (I don't know, like maybe a bribe to Punxsutawney Phil not to see his shadow), let me know because I'm standing at the ready to do it.

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