{"id":1300,"date":"2013-02-08T18:57:41","date_gmt":"2013-02-08T23:57:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/?p=1300"},"modified":"2013-02-08T18:58:22","modified_gmt":"2013-02-08T23:58:22","slug":"snow-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/2013\/02\/08\/snow-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Snow Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

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There was no such thing as a predetermined snow day when we were kids.\u00a0 The siren would go off by 6 or 7am if there was no school.\u00a0 Pandemonium in feety pajamas would ensue and there was all manner of hooting and jumping on the bed.\u00a0\u00a0 Seems to me there was more snow then, seems to me that hot chocolate tasted better on snow days, seems to me that kids and snow go so naturally together.<\/p>\n

After eating breakfast, which was an everyday occurrence, of bacon and eggs and juice and vitamins and toasted white bread with strawberry jam we would \u201csuit up\u201d.\u00a0 And by suit up I mean full on three layers of underwear, turtlenecks, ski pants with the stirrups and the now extinct snow suit for my sister.\u00a0 The movie Christmas Story illustrates it damn well; no you couldn\u2019t put your arms down\u2026<\/p>\n

There was a Flexible Flyer down in the basement next to the upright freezer.\u00a0 I\u2019m not sure where it came from, I\u2019m pretty sure it wasn\u2019t purchased new, or who the donor was but we grabbed it and out the front door we went.\u00a0 Right outside our door was \u201cthe hill\u201d.\u00a0 Right outside OUR DOOR\u2026do you understand the magnitude of that?\u00a0 The police would come and barricade the side streets and we could flexible fly to our hearts content.\u00a0 Somebody would shovel a narrow strip along the side of the road and bring it down to bare pavement so you could head there to stop and yes it actually sharpened the blades.\u00a0 And if you were going fast enough it might just spark.\u00a0 My sister would be in front of me on the sled\u00a0(arms sticking straight out) and off we would go down the hill.\u00a0 There were times we could make it all the way to Marcy\u2019s house half a block away.\u00a0 Walk back up, translation: I walked back up the hill hauling Terri on the sled for the next round.\u00a0 And we would continue until we were either frozen or hungry.\u00a0 Warm up, eat, and repeat.<\/p>\n

Fast forward to adult snow days and you can pretty much break them out into three categories: delayed opening, work remotely in your fuzzy slippers or full on state of emergency.\u00a0 I pretty much always skip the delayed opening option because why would I want to get in the way of the plows and salt trucks, battle the \u201cI\u2019m terrified to drive in the snow\u201d crowd (thank you God for being born in February so I could learn to drive in the snow) or rush to clean off my car.\u00a0 My job is important but I\u2019m not saving the world, as Cookie would say \u201cit\u2019s just cars\u201d, and I can work anywhere (remember when we called it telecommuting?)\u2026thank you modern technology.<\/p>\n

So now what does a snow day look like?\u00a0 Pull something from the freezer first thing in the morning; I\u2019m thinking beef for stew.\u00a0 Have the first cup of latte after popping the girls out back to play in the snow.\u00a0 True to form latte also tastes better on snow days.\u00a0 Set up for work, VPN in and see what\u2019s happening in my email.\u00a0 Another latte, some breakfast; which doesn\u2019t even remotely resemble the hearty one from days of old. \u00a0And get to work.\u00a0 Another romp in the snow with the girls before lunch, this time with my camera, and then a delicious bowl of soup and grilled cheese for lunch.\u00a0 Back to work, but the emails dwindle as the snow gets deeper and the people begin to find their way home to the warmth of their families.\u00a0 For the very first time this year, my sister took a snow day.\u00a0 She, too, is beginning to believe that it\u2019s \u201cjust cars\u201d.\u00a0 And no bad can come from staying home in your jammies every once in a while.\u00a0\u00a0 As the emails dwindle I see the people coming home to Stowe Lane, many of them bringing with them the requisite brown bag and Duraflame log.<\/p>\n

Finish what I can from my work day and think about dinner.\u00a0 As the stew simmers on the stove, I light the fire, open a bottle of Bear Print pinot noir and relax with the girls.<\/p>\n

If I had my preference I would rather wake up to the sight of several inches of snow on the ground. I prefer to go out with my camera before everyone else and capture the snow in the morning light.\u00a0 I also love the pure quiet of newly fallen snow before all the hub bub of the challenge ensues.\u00a0 Thankfully, the back garden and the enchanted forest provide just enough of a barrier that the only thing I can hear is the sound of the commuter train going through town in the early morning.<\/p>\n

At the end of the day the fire will die down and we will be out for a last time before going to bed.\u00a0 My boots stand ready at the back door and I slip into them easily.\u00a0 I love the shearling lining so I don\u2019t need any socks. The girls will be just as excited about the snow this last outing as they were this morning.\u00a0 Toto will come back in with a face full of snow and Lina will be anxious to get her feet cleaned up.\u00a0 Exhaustion will set in and we will have the best sleep we\u2019ve had in quite some time.\u00a0 I know like I know that this is the end of a perfect snow day.<\/p>\n

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There was no such thing as a predetermined snow day when we were kids.\u00a0 The siren would go off by 6 or 7am if there was no school.\u00a0 Pandemonium in feety pajamas would ensue and there was all manner of … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1300","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-in-the-company-of-women-2","category-pause-points"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p27hQ5-kY","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1300"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1300\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1300"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1300"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ordinarylegacy.com\/word\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1300"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}