Snow!!! Errr... no.

As usual when I can't think of something, I fall back on the weather. This time, it's my personal delusion that it should always, always, always snow on my birthday. Hey, it happens most years - it's in February, after all - and I would sometimes get snow days for my birthday when I was a kid, which, gotta tell you, was completely awesome. This year, though, we've had maybe two days of measurable snow, and one of 'em was way back in October! So when the forecast said snow for Wednesday, well, okay, a little late but better than nothing!


Errrrm... well, we got some snow. It was wet and floopy but things were white! And pretty! Winter Wonderland in the Arboretum! And then it changed to rain. And sleet. And general gross nasty cold wet ugh.

I'm calling shenanigans on this weather. I live in the Northeastern US, you're telling me that it's freakin' MARCH and this is only our 3rd snow? Snow is the whole POINT of winter! If you've gotta put up with bundling up and freezing your toeses and noses and all, then at least you should get pretty white stuff to make up for it. It looks nice, you can throw it at people, you can build snowmen and igloos and forts (okay, okay, yes, you have to shovel out cars and sidewalks and driveways too, but minor inconvenience compared to a good snowball fight) - and we're just not getting any.

No fair, man. No fair.

Image: Wikipedia

#$%^&(*&^% SNOW!!!

Okay, so remember back in early December when I was grumping about how we hadn't had any snow yet? Errrrrm. Yeah. We are now in the too-much-of-a-good-thing category. Holy hexagons, it just DOESN'T STOP. Now, I went to college in Rochester, NY - two degrees' worth, so 6 years. I'm thoroughly familiar with blizzards, lake-effect snow, 8-foot-high snow drifts, and all that fun stuff (not being sarcastic, generally speaking it WAS fun, especially when we sneaked {oh, sorry Tami - snuck} trays out of the dining center and went sledding on them). But the thing is, on the whole, Rochester is far better equipped to deal with massive quantities of the white stuff than good ol' Boston.

Of course, that's part of the problem - OLD Boston. With narrow winding streets and mazes of one-ways, there are roads that the plows just can't fit down, especially when snowbanks from previous storms have narrowed them even further (and there are cars parked on both sides...). Oh, and then there's the fact that we've been getting walloped every 4 or 5 days since the end of December. There's just no place to put the stuff, especially when it doesn't want to melt. Then again, even when it does melt, the grates are iced over...

Speaking of ice, that's been building up in gutters and on roofs, leading to a record number of building collapses and structural failures throughout the region (like this one). As if snow days weren't disruptive enough to schools, how about being closed for days or even weeks because the snow caved in your roof? And there are some sidewalks you do NOT want to walk on, since the possibility of being impaled by a falling icicle is higher than anyone is comfortable with. Check out this set of frozen stalactites, snapped by my roommate as they grew on our house:


They got even bigger before finally launching groundward in Sunday's thaw - I must admit, it was rather amusing to be awakened by the thunderous crashes of icicles into the yard. Surprisingly loud, divebombing icicles...

I'm tired of digging out parking spaces, too. There's a longstanding tradition in Boston that for 48 hours after the lifting of a snow emergency, the rule is "you shovel it, you own it", and you'll find everything from folding chairs and traffic cones to garden gnomes and piles of buckets sitting in cleared spots. The annoying thing in my neighborhood is that we're one block in from a main road that people need to vacate during a snow emergency... and so they come in and park on my street (which means I usually end up parking two blocks away...) and then they don't bother to shovel out their spots properly afterward, just gun it out of there and leave the slushy icy mess to refreeze, meaning no one else can park there without doing some major icebreaking (or just getting stuck, as the case may be... go on, ask me how I know that...).

Now, lest anyone get the wrong idea - I do still love snow. What I don't love is trying to drive in it alongside idiots who don't know how; having to go to work at a silly retail job in highly dangerous conditions (remind me to tell you about my duct-taped windshield wipers sometime); and how it looks after it's been rained on and plowed up and peed on (lotta dogs 'round here). But as I type this on Monday night, guess what's in the forecast for tomorrow? Only about an inch this time, supposedly - enough to make it pretty again, I hope, without any of the problems we've seen lately. I'll let you know.

'Tis the season...

I could finish that sentence so many ways, and most of them would not fit the meter of good ol' Deck the Halls very well at all... Or I could follow in the well-trodden footsteps of my fellow retail-slave and vent about the rude customers and stressed-out workers that will be filling every store...

Or I could actually take the "season" part literally, and say "Hey! Where's my snow?!?"

Friends have reported snow in Minneapolis and New York, in Russia (and Alaska...) and Scotland, but here in Boston I've spotted nary a flake. Had a small dusting out in the suburbs where I work today, but at home? Not even a hint. I'm sure many of my neighbors are cheering this fact - after all, no snow means no shoveling, no trudging through drifts to the train, no fighting for cleared parking spots. But it also means ugly bare branches, brown frozen earth clods, and the need to bundle up without the reward of throwing a snowball at the bratty kid down the street.


The picture up there is from a particularly nasty storm that hit us about 4 years ago; note the three different rescue vehicles all trying to make it up the hill, which hadn't yet been plowed. That's the thing about living next door to an elementary school - on weekdays, you'd better believe we get plowed out first thing. Weekends, though? Not so much. I was about 3 hours late to work that day, as despite having my car fully dug out by about 9:30 AM, the plows didn't come through until sometime past noon, and if those vehicles (with their four-wheel drive and snow tires no less) couldn't get out, I sure wasn't going to risk my neck trying.

But one of the greatest things about a snowstorm is the absolutely guilt-free day of reading and relaxing that comes when work is canceled completely. I don't care how old you get, a snow day never quite loses its magic - a day that had been consigned to the usual drudgery redeemed by beautiful (if dangerous) white, staying indoors and drinking hot chocolate (by the pint, in my case - damn, I love hot chocolate!), and snuggling down with the book or movie I've been saving for just such an uninterrupted stretch. One year I blew through three Philippa Gregory novels during a storm; another I settled in for a Pixar movie marathon while knitting a complicated pair of twisted-stitch gauntlets for my best friend.

So maybe it's no wonder that I'm a wee bit crankier than usual so far this December - but if you happen to wander by the day after we do finally get a good snowfall (because I simply must believe that it will arrive), you might want to keep an eye out for flying snowballs. You know. Just in case.