So Kathy and I are lying in bed yesterday morning, right around 6 – in no hurry to get out from under our nice warm covers and the comfort of the world’s best bed. (It’s nothing fancy, and it doesn’t have a $12,000 mattress from Sweden or anything- it’s just a wonderfully comfortable bed to which we’ve grown accustomed and which tends to make any other bed feel like we’re sleeping on a pile of rakes and shovels – or like we’re being swallowed up by a giant sack of flour- the old Goldilock’s “too hard/too soft/just right” syndrome.) After a busy weekend of miscellaneous rehearsals plus a Sunday evening drive to Illinois for me and an out of town sojourn for my wife, we were happy to linger in bed as long as possible on this particular Monday morning.
And then Kathy sat up suddenly in the darkness and said, with a mix of disbelief and dread, “I think that’s a snow plow.” I listened and heard nothing, and said “I don’t think so.” And in the next second, the unmistakable sound of a plow grinding on pavement wafted in from a distance. All I could think to say was “uh oh.”
Kathy got up, went to the window, and was greeted with the sight of two or three inches of snow on the ground – a winter wonderland that would have been, indeed, “a beautiful sight” had it been the day before Christmas. But anytime in the month of November, it’s a really blankety-blank way to begin the work week.
What was a little bit ironic about it is that I had planned to write a little blog entry on Friday about the Signs of Winter in the air. . . and for the photo I was going to use a picture I took at the outdoor terrace outside of the Hedberg Library, just north of Siebert Chapel. In both the fall and spring there are round tables there for any patrons of Einstein’s Bagels who might want to eat outside. The other day when I walked past there, I realized that all of those tables had been taken down- an ominous sign that they were battening down the hatches and preparing for winter’s furious onslaught, whenever it might occur. So I was going to use this rather idyllic shot of the empty terrace and title the entry “Quiet Signs of the Changing Seasons.” But I decided to blog about buffets instead and Mother Nature evidently resented the slight. At least that’s how I explain this jarring jump from autumn to winter.
We are counting our blessings because folks to the far north were hit with the weather equivalent of a punch with brass knuckles. Ours was a decorative dusting by comparison and the forecast promises that it’s all the snow we will see for the remainder of the week. We are also doubling our daily prayers that the good folks at Central Saw will soon be finished servicing our Honda snow blower, which we have not been able to start since the winter of ‘06-’07. (I mean 2006-2007, although it feels like we haven’t had our snow blower since 1906-1907; frankly, I hope I still remember how to operate the thing.) I’m a fairly sunny-minded, look-on-the-bright-side guy, but not when I have to shovel a two-car driveway which has had 20 inches of snow dumped on it. Nobody needs their character nor their biceps built up quite that much. Well, perhaps I do – but surely there’s another way to do it that doesn’t involve frostbite, snow blindness, double pneumonia, dislocated shoulders, sprained wrists and wet feet.
Happy Winter, everybody.