Snow Day!

I was supposed to drive up to Delphi, Indiana today for an author visit and library talk--both of which I was very much looking forward to. But when I got up this morning at 5:30 to take Louise outside and could barely open my front door because of pile of snow on the porch, I knew I wasn't going anywhere.

In my view, snow days are one of things that make living in a place with crappy winter weather bearable. Mother Nature speaks up, reminding us that we're not really in charge of anything, forcing us to take a break from our regular routines. Kids are sprung from school (not to mention their happy teachers), people can’t get their cars out of their driveways to go to work. You can freak out, or go with the flow. Going with the flow is definitely the better choice.

So after Louise completed her bodily functions (with an amusing amount of confusion), I retreated to my cozy writing room where I drank coffee and worked on my novel, still in my pajamas, till after ten. It would have been perfectly pleasant to stay there all day. Owning a Jeep, however, I felt compelled to have a snow adventure.

I swept about a foot of snow off the windshield with a broom, picked up Jenny, Jake, and Heidi and we headed for the Original Pancake House, where we pigged out on a gargantuan breakfast. Chocolate chip pancakes and big glasses of chocolate milk for the kids; the Sunrise Breakfast (eggs, pancakes, sausage--and more coffee) for Jenny and me. Blech. I'm still stuffed hours later.

Fortified, we headed for Holliday Park to play in the snow. We were the first ones in the park, so we made the first footprints, except for the marks birds and rabbits left, and they got to clear the snow from all the slides—short ones, long ones, straight ones, curvy, tunneled ones.

FYI: Slides are very slick in the winter.


Heidi and Jake came rocketing down, laughing and screaming, creating fabulous little explosions as they hit the bottom. More than once, they flipped half-way down and flew out, landing face-first in the snow. They slid about a million times, their cheeks getting pinker and pinker, their parkas more and more covered with snow.


After sliding, they climbed the spider web for a while. The sun had come out as they played. The sky was was that blue, blue, blue that often comes after a storm, the bare trees looked beautiful against it, iced white with snow, and, at that moment, there was no place else in the world I'd rather have been. Though I have to admit that I was pretty darn happy later, too, when when I'd dropped them off and came home to my warm house where I spent the rest of the day just fooling around, doing nothing I was supposed to do, nothing I had planned.