Snow Days!

Just as I was beginning to lose all hope, we finally got our first snow day of the year yesterday! As excited as I was about that, I was NOT excited about the fact that the snow (all 3 inches of it) was accompanied by what felt like a 40-50 mph north wind that made it feel like it was -18 degrees outside. Because of the miserable conditions, I had great plans of spending as much of my day inside as possible. As I ventured out of bed around 8:00, I began what I figured would be a nice, relaxing day inside. I went into the living room with my mom, curled up in my blanket, worked on my Sudoku puzzles, and tried to tune out the perpetual news coverage of "Blizzard 2011". That is really one of the downsides to not having cable TV, because when there is a major weather event (snowstorm/tornado), ALL of the major channels have continuous coverage. The channels that don't have weather coverage usually have either infomercials or some ridiculous reality show.  I digress...So I was sitting in my pajamas, all comfy on the couch, when the phone rang. It was one of our neighbors who has a farm right by my house. He called to tell us that we had about six cows out. Lovely. Just lovely. As if blowing snow and subzero temperatures weren't enough, our cows had decided, for some reason, to get out. (I think this qualifies as a part of Murphy's Law) Thankfully, Scotty and Jeremy were both home where they could help my mom and I wrangle the cows. In my mind, I was holding out hope that it wouldn't be our cows out, but I wasn't expecting to be right this time.

The first part of the process was getting dressed. This turned out to be quite the ordeal. After layering up with a pair of my running tights, two pairs of sweat pants, two pairs of socks, three shirts, a hoodie, ear muffs, a stocking hat, knit gloves, work gloves, snow boots, coveralls, and another coat, I was nearly exhausted and very warm. I was almost ready to be exposed to subzero temperatures at that point, because I think I had nearly broke a sweat. Not long after my mom and I were bundled up, Jeremy arrived to pick us up to go down and check on the cows. Scotty was already down there. As we got down there, we saw that none of the cows looked like ours, and they also had a different brand! We knew who the cows belonged to, so we let them know, and, after his reassurance that he didn't need any help, all of us loaded back up and went home! I was glad that for once my instincts proved correct! When my mom and I got back home, we unlayered. After we unlayered, my mom and I wore shorts around for a while on account of how warm we were. Once again, we went back to lounging.

Around 4:00, I knew that I couldn't put off the inevitable for much longer. I had to go back out and water the cows. I layered back up, and trekked outside. It wasn't too bad going out there, since the wind was at my back. As I was walking to the water tank, I was feeling especially grateful for gravity, because I was certain that if it didn't exist, I probably would've been about a mile south of my house at that point. We really didn't get that much snow, it just drifted up really high. When I finally was done watering cows, I came back in and my mom decided to make taco stew for supper last night. It was perfect for a cold night! After supper, I treated myself to a mug of hot chocolate with marshmallows.

When I was done with my hot chocolate, I ventured back to my room, and stumbled upon my nine-weeks novel for English. At that point, I really hadn't read too much of it, and wasn't very impressed, either. My book is "Izzy, Willy-Nilly" by Cynthia Voight, who also wrote "Homecoming" and "Dicey's Song", which were two books that I thoroughly enjoyed. The book was set in the mid 80's, and was about a popular cheerleader who had to have half of her leg amputated after she was involved in an accident that was caused by her drunk date. I eventually finished the book, about two hours later. At the end, I still wasn't that impressed. Perhaps it is because I'm not a selfish, popular cheerleader who has hordes of guys knocking down my door; perhaps it is because my family is not part of a country club; perhaps it is because my mom wouldn't baby me as much as Izzy's mom did in the book. Regardless, I had a hard time with the book because I couldn't relate to it, but I finished it nonetheless. The end was okay, but nothing spectacular.

Today, I lucked out again with another snow day! As I was beginning to wake up, I heard what sounded like Wyatt and Andrew in my kitchen. It turned out that my mom offered to watch the boys today so Gina wouldn't have to take them all the way to their babysitter in Garber, since Wyatt didn't have school. As soon as I got out of bed, the boys were excited and already feeling the effects of cabin fever. We had lots of fun today. Wyatt, Andy, and I played cowboys/superheroes/ninjas for the first little while. After that game got old, Wyatt and I were talking about letters, and we ended up playing with a dry-erase alphabet book that my mom had. Wyatt did an excellent job with his letters, if I must say so myself! Suddenly, Wyatt went and laid down on the couch, which was uncharacteristic of him. He told us that he was hot and his head hurt. My mom gave him some children's Tylenol, and he took a small nap. Andy also took a nap during this time. When Wyatt woke up, he said that he felt much better, and was ready for lunch! (Yes, he was feeling better!) After lunch, Wyatt and I did a puzzle, and played a couple of board games. First, we played Chutes and Ladders, at Wyatt's request. Wyatt soundly beat me in that game, and I didn't even try to let him win. He then told me that he wanted to play a different game. He actually wanted to play Yahtzee, but I convinced him to play Candy Land. (He called it Candy World, same difference, I guess) After he got sent back to the Peppermint Forest when he was almost to the end, he was ready to call it quits because "he would never make it to the end, ever". However, after he caught up (he got moved up to Grandma Nutt's house), I got moved all the way back to Plumpy at the beginning, he easily beat me. At that point, my mom came in and told me that I needed to go run water for the cows. It was probably best, because Wyatt was on the verge of getting a big head from beating me twice.

I knew that when I went out to water cows I had to dig out my pickup from the shed. There were drifts in front of our shed that went all the way up to my hip. I knew that I really didn't want to try to break the drifts with my little pickup, so I figured that I would just shovel the snow away. As a note, the opening to our shed is about twenty feet wide, and the snow went out for about three to four feet in front of the shed. This was a pretty decent-sized snow drift that I was about to tackle. After I had shoveled for about ten minutes, I thought that I would never finish. I devised a strategy for clearing the area, and I finally began to make progress, of sorts. About twenty minutes into my shoveling, I remembered that we had a radio out in our shed, so I turned on some music, and I felt like I worked much faster that way. By the time the water was done, I had nearly cleared about 1/3 of the space. I considered the fact that people who earn money from shoveling snow really earned their money, because, not even an hour into it, I was very warm. Also, my back was beginning to hurt. And I thought I was getting tennis elbow and frostbite on my nose. Well, not really, but I was feeling it. I took a breather and sat on the bed of one of the pickups for a few moments, then went back to work. AFter I worked for about two hours, I was done! SUCCESS!!!!! There was nothing like the sense of accomplishment I felt after I saw the huge pile of snow beside our shed. After that, I came in and got some trail mix and water, and I relaxed on the couch, basking in the glow of a job well done! (Actually, that was the most shoveling I have ever done in one sitting, and I was exhausted.) As soon as I was done eating supper, I went and took a nice, hot shower. I would say that it is worth it, because now I will have a relatively easy time getting out of the shed tomorrow morning, when I finally have to go back to school. I know that I will sleep well tonight!