Kate Bush – 50 Words for Snow

I’ve got 50 words for snow, but not one of them is nice.

Earlier this week that blizzard that all the New Yorkers complained was a bust, dropped close to two feet of snow on us. My kids had an early dismissal from school on Monday before things got bad and my daughter has yet to go back. More snow is forecast for Sunday night/Monday morning.

My main concern was that we would lose power. The last time a blizzard moved through here it switched over to freezing rain and then back to snow again, which resulted in lots of downed power lines. It’s one thing to lose power in hurricanes (that’s happened twice – Irene and Sandy), but when there’s no power and the temperature outside is below freezing, it gets cold inside, fast. I was not eager to repeat the experience. I bought food we could eat cold, I made sure we had flashlights ready, I left the heat up overnight. Luckily nothing happened, except all that snow that needed to be shoveled away.

I don’t find the snow pretty. I am incapable of seeing anything other than hours of shoveling, the inevitable melting and re-freezing creating ice rinks in the driveways and on the sidewalks which in turn leads to twisted ankles or wrenched backs. It depresses me. It stops being bright and white after one day and instead is gray and brown with hard, dirty chunks everywhere. Why can’t we hibernate like bears? Just sleep through it all and then come out of it when the weather starts to get nicer.

Soon I will have had too much and I will start dreaming about Caribbean Islands and Hawaiian vacations. I’d even settle for California or some other place with no snow but yes, palm trees. In the end I will be lucky to find a greenhouse I can stand in for twenty minutes. Spring can never get here fast enough.