The Weatherman Hates Me

I live in Indiana. It snows here in winter. Sometimes we get more than a few inches of snow. Sometimes there might even be a--gasp!-- WINTER STORM. Is this news to anyone?

No, it's not news to me either. In fact, having lived in Minnesota for almost a decade, I sort of laugh at the WINTER STORMS here in Indiana. But here, in the Crossroads of America, the snow, well, it is NEWS. When there is even a hint of snow on the radar, the weather people get their undies in a bunch at the idea of getting more than a slice of air time between whatever the top political story of the day is and the forty bajillion sports stories that mostly consist of Colts news and every type of basketball coverage under the sun. (This is Indiana after all.) Perhaps someday I will regale you all with my Minnesota Winter Tales. I know that you can hardly wait for that riveting post.

The weather people have been talking for three days about this WINTER STORM. They only stopped briefly to talk about the Game That Shall Not Be Named. They warned us. They pontificated. They predicted. Schools were on alert. Children were hopeful. Parents were scrambling. There will be lots of snow! There will be great wind! This is going to affect the entire state and go on for 36 hours!

Bah.

I woke up to the sound of the phone ringing at 5:32 a.m. After restarting my heart and nudging my husband to answer the phone the news was handed down and it wasn't the 2 hour delay I was expecting; my three eldest children would have no school today. I clambered out of bed and stumbled down the dark hallway, tripping over the rolled up carpet and construction debris to alert Maggie. After I gave her the news and shut off her alarm clock for her (why would she want to climb down from her warm and cozy loft?) I headed back to bed and reset my alarm so that I could wake up in time to get Mary ready for carpool. Her school (the same school at which I work) is in a different town and it follows that town's school district calendar and closing procedures--which, natch, is different from my other kids'.

I pulled the covers back up to my chin and closed my eyes. The phone rang again. (By the way, you can program our house phones with different rings. Currently they all play "Jingle Bells." That might get changed by sometime this summer.) This time it was Mary's school informing us that they were closed as well. Beautiful. Really, the extra sleep was nice.

Until I woke up and realized that we had about three inches of snow. THREE. INCHES. I kept my eye on the windows thinking that at anytime things were going to crank up. Nothing. I drove to the grocery store. The roads were perfectly clear. This was at about 10 in the morning. I was scratching my head thinking "We needed a snow day for this? This couldn't have been a 2 hour delay day? Now, when my kids are driving me crazy in June I'll have to remind them about how they got this day off. For THREE INCHES OF SNOW."

It has made me grumpy all day. I've been going around saying things like, "Be careful when you go out to get the mail from the mailbox. You might want to tie a rope to the front door so that you can find your way back in the BLINDING SNOW!" And, "Put your snowshoes on when you take the dog out. You don't want to sink into all that DEEP SNOW!"

So for the second time this school year, my children have had a snow day on my day off from work. I have to work tomorrow. And I can pretty much guarantee that we'll have school. It could be the blizzard of the century and I know that I will have to work. You know why? Because I have door duty! Door duty involves my standing at a door for 20 minutes and holding it open for parents to walk through. Normally, a very nice part of the day. But tomorrow? I'm guessing that I won't be enjoying it all that much. I'll be thinking about how nice it would have been to have the snow day on Wednesday. You know, an actual work day for me.

I'll also be pondering what exactly I have done to the weather people to cause them to hate me.