Snow Day!

Growing up, snow days were just about the best it got. In Oregon, a half-inch snow qualifies as a blizzard and all the schools shut down. Mrs. Vaughn would lend her hill and all day the Messolines and Olsens (and assorted others throughout the years) would go sledding. Bumps of varying sizes for kids of varying braveness would be made, and we would go zipping down, then flying off that steep hillside. It didn't matter if the snow was minimal and we were more covered in cowpies than the white stuff, it was a SNOW DAY. These days held such dizzying excitement for me that in anticipation of them, when snow was just falling and not yet sticking, I would run and record the event in my never-used diary. Seriously, my childhood journals have on average one or two entries a year and each is me screaming about the weather with the words getting progressively bigger.

Since living in Utah and Colorado, snow has sadly lost some of it's allure. There are only so many times you can slip on ice, or get your pants muddy and icy, or almost rear end someone else and not have the dream fade. However, every now and then, especially after the first big snowstorm, those old feelings flicker up in me again. Snow... the wonderful homogenizing power of it. Everything is white, clean and new. Just waiting for me to go romp around in it.

And so we did:





This is Nate and me and some friends at city park. Nate's school was canceled, and though he still had to study most of the day, we got some fun in.





15 inches. Not bad for October.







This blog post reminds me of my old diaries. Nothing for months, then excitement over snow. I guess not too much has changed.

On a side note, this is my finger. Yesterday I was
using a vertical stick blender to chop up some dried apricots and was digging out the resulting goo around the blades with my finger when somehow I pressed the on button and came this close to chopping said finger off. Blood sprayed everywhere and I screamed bloody murder and Nate came running in to find me holding up my index finger with a big deep cut all around the circumference of it. Even the nail part was cut open. Because we are poor and I don't have health insurance, we forwent the hospital and bandaged it ourselves. I think it's going to be fine, but it was very terrifying. It made me think about what a klutz I am, and how if I'm not careful someday I'm probably going to die an absurd and unnecessary death.