It's Snowing!

We had lovely sunny days with normal amounts of daylight when we traveled south to Egypt. It made coming back to the dark and gloomy north just a bit more depressing. It isn't just the short winter days and the constant rain, it is the fact that when it is supposed to be daytime, the light is so dim! This far north, the sun stays low in the sky. The low sun, combined with thick cloud cover, makes for very dull, dark days.

To make up for that, today we have snow! I love snow! I don't mind shoveling it or driving in it. I love how it makes everything look so pretty and clean. I love walks in the snow and trying to figure out what animals have made the strange tracks.

I'm sure that the love of snow comes from school days in the Midwest. If there had been any sort of snow at night or over the weekend, school might be closed. My siblings and I would be eating our cornflakes at the breakfast table in silence, ears plastered to the radio hoping beyond hope that our school would be closed due to snow. It seems that the school closure was dependent on whether the buses could get the students to and from school safely. Our bus drivers were retired farmers. These guys (usually called Vern) could get a big yellow school bus through anything. I swear that the snowplows used to follow Vern down the roads.

It seemed that all other schools in the nearby towns would be closed. We'd hear the names of the closed schools called in alphabetical order and when the radio announcer got to Solon, twelve miles away (the town between us and the metropolis of Iowa City) without mentioning Mount Vernon, we knew we'd have to trudge our way in. It would have to be one spectacular snowfall to make our school shut. I only remember our school being shut once.It's snowing now and I'm hoping that the goddess of snow will remember that she forgot us last year and try to make up the shortfall now. You can see that we've got big fat, wet flakes and they're not melting too quickly when they hit the ground. Pray for snow!