Warm in my Heart When I Think of Winter

I've decided that blogging is kind of stressful because I'm constantly trying to think of what to write about, and then when I do think of something, I have to decide if it's blog-worthy.

Unless you want to hear about how I slept in, ate breakfast, watched 4 episodes of the 5th season of The West Wing, checked my email and facebook, and went to the grocery store, what I did today isn't exactly blog-worthy. But what IS blog-worthy is the reason I had the chance to lounge around all day: SNOW!!!

In the South, snow days are few and far between; in fact, some winters, we don't have any. That's why we tend to remember the big ones. My first big snow day that I can recall was back when I was in 4th grade. It was Valentine's Day, and my classmates and I in Mrs. Darling's class were having our Valentine's Day party when all of a sudden the announcement came over the intercom that school would be dismissing early. By the time my dad picked me up, things were bad out on the roads. Our house on Angola Rd. was at the top of a very big hill, and we almost didn't make it, but we did. After lunch, my mom and I watched Pete and Melissa get married on Days of Our Lives, and that evening, the entire neighborhood went out sledding. It was the best day ever.

My freshman year at Princeton, it snowed 30 inches. I'd never seen so much snow in my life--it was awesome. But then when that snow was still on the ground 4 months later, all black and gross, it wasn't that awesome. Throughout my years in New Jersey and later in Chicago, I admit I got a little jaded when it came to snow. It took just a few big snowstorms for snow to stop being something to look forward to and instead to become something to dread. After all, while in the South, at the mere suggestion of a possible 1-inch snowfall, schools close and people hit the grocery stores to start stockpiling like it's Armageddon, in the North, people scoff at 1-inch snowfalls and even 5-inch snowfalls and expect you to do shocking things like drive and go to class. So harsh.

But now that I'm back in the South, a good snowfall is once again an exciting anomaly. You know, I feel sorry for people who don't live where it snows occasionally or for those whose jobs require them to go to work anyway. I'm sure many of them would argue that they live in sunny places where they don't have to "deal with" snow or that stopping for snow is a sign of weakness, but please. Sure, I may no longer go sledding or drink hot chocolate after sledding or build snowmen or throw snowballs, and instead I just sit around doing a whole lot of unimportant things on snow days, but there's still nothing quite as thrilling as seeing the name of your school scrolling down the bottom of the TV screen with the word "Closed" right after it. It's like being a kid all over again, and you just can't beat that.