Snow Day

So we’ve had a major weather event here. The snow that was supposed to “sock” the Pacific Northwest Tuesday night, sneaked south of Seattle and north of Portland. And landed right in my back yard. At least twelve inches of it.

Lying in bed this morning, I watched it through the little square window above my bedroom fireplace. The one through which I can see the fifty-foot fir tree that stands guard over the cemetery. It was beautiful this morning, heavily frosted in white. I knew it had been snowing all night; knew there was bound to be a heap of it out there. I got up and looked out the front window. Wow! It was gorgeous. And it was wonderful beyond words not to have to worry about it.

I was reminded of our winter from hell three years ago, when the snow kept coming and coming. The year I had to shovel the walks (and the street!) around the restaurant every day for three weeks, because our good ole landlord was vacationing in Arizona. The year the last vestiges of snow didn’t disappear until almost April, and that same good ole landlord gave me a horrendous dressing down for “ruining” his sidewalks by putting rock salt out to melt the ice.

I wonder how long it will be before I stop seeing everything through the filter of what “it” was like when we had the restaurant. I looked out at the pristine, deep white stuff this morning and wondered if this would have been the day that the Old Town Café was closed by the weather. And immediately dismissed the thought. Who cares?

Because this morning there was no restaurant to worry about. No sidewalks to shovel. No employees to call in snowbound. No wondering how long or how much the weather event was going to mess with my sales numbers. No worries at all. I didn’t even have to fret about the husband, because he (wisely) chose to telecommute rather than risk the drive into Portland. Total bitchin’ Snow Day!

So I made soup, I baked cookies, and watched the antics of the weather-challenged birds through my kitchen window. And I allowed the snow to kick my butt around the block when I went out to tackle shoveling the driveway. Husband and I are now both in need of traction, but there are clear paths to the street behind both cars that will be leaving the house in the morning. (Mine is not one of them.) All that work when there’s every chance the snow will mostly melt on its own by morning…

We had been promised 50 degrees and rain by this afternoon—the better to make history of the Big Snow of 2012. Well, not so much. But out on the neighborhood streets tonight, steam is rising from the blanket of snow itself as the slightly rising temperatures slowly dispatch it. It looks for all the world like the Wicked Witch of the West disappearing from beneath her robes... “I’m melting! Melting! Oh, what a world! What a world!”

Yes, it is quite a world. And I’m getting to know it all over again.