Snow day!

This post first appeared on my Red Room profile

Well, we've had the shortest day, according to reports, but according to me, the mornings appear to be getting darker. How do they make that work?

This morning, I was up and at 'em before the sun had risen. In the glow of the street light, I could see snow falling. Great, heavy, juicy globs of snow, a dozen snowflakes clumping together like heavenly muesli. I thought, "Should I go to work? Will I get stuck?" This was the question I mulled over my tea and toast, sitting at the kitchen table. It was coming down the whole time I chewed on my toast, and was still the one I considered while I held Pig Destroyer up to the window to show him the snow.

Long Suffering Boyfriend came down the stairs as I was checking the news. The journalist, apparently unable to get anywhere with her crew, was forced to make news by hi-jacking a poor old lady in a nearby house. "Are you cold?" she asked, in desperation. "How do you stay warm?"

"I wear lots of layers," the old lady twitched. "And I bake cakes." She helpfully held up a fruit cake to the camera, to better illustrate the point.

"You might get stuck if you go out," Long Suffering Boyfriend said. "There are about six inches of snow in the street."
"Make sure you wear boots with good grips," the TV journalist was saying. "It's treacherous out there." Grinning, she held up a pair of ski shoes, pointing at the sole.

I called my office, and unbelievably, some sucker was at work. Having secured myself an Emergency Snow Day off, I sneaked the heating on, and sat down with Pig Destroyer on my knee to get to work on the Big Secret Project (approximately 6,000 words left to go, dear readers!). But the day seems wasted to use entirely indoors, and so after a big chunk of work, we strapped our boots and our gloves on, and went to take some pictures.

The streets were quiet: no kids throwing snowballs, and only one snowman. There was nobody in the park, leaving me the welcome opportunity to tramp through ten inches of fresh, crunching snow. I had my photo taken next to somebody else's snowman, and wrote half the first verse of 'Ding Dong Merrily On High' in the snow in someone's windscreen with my finger.

As I write, its still coming down: tomorrow might be another snow day....