Snow Day

These days, it takes a perfect storm to make a superintendent want to cancel school, and that's just what we had yesterday. It started late afternoon, came on strong, and didn't let up until the a.m. It's so friggin' beautiful out now. The Buddha statue in our yard looks like he has a white shawl around his shoulders and a white hat; he's got the same faint smile on his face that he always carries, no matter the weather.

I was rooting for a snow day, myself. I could tell the kids in my classes were ready for one, too--some of them were so low on energy that it felt like less like a Thursday and more like Saturday school at times. That was partly my fault, too, maybe. It's difficult to find a balance in your lesson plan that can keep peoples' attention for 45 minutes or so. I think about that a lot. It's impossible, really, but that's why teaching is fun--it's fun to think of new ways to approach books and writin'.

I got home yesterday and it was already snowing pretty hard and my weird neighbors were of course out shoveling. Never mind that the snow was forecasted to keep falling for another eight hours--one of them, either Victoria or Veronica, I can never remember which--kept shoveling the same 20 square feet of driveway for over an hour. She'd shovel it, the snow would cover it, and she'd start over. I wonder if she wondered why she couldn't ever get it clear. I wonder if she was cold in her omnipresent house dress.