Snow school

It's snowing.

For most people this is something they're either used to or not. I am and I'm not. It's been YEARS since I was faced with snow. Snow and children? Never before. Today is a sno-school day. Translation? No school for my kiddies due to there being a small amound of frozen white stuff not only ON the roads/ground etc but still falling from the sky. We've experienced a few days of snow before this one. One day it was good enough to make a snow person out of.

There is something magic about the big fat dancing flakes Something especially strange and amazing about ground covered with what is, esentially, water. That what would otherwise be rain can look like magic, like fairy dust. But damn, it's cold.

I've mentioned before that I am a very very spoilt desert rat. The last 9 years of my life were spent in Tucson, Arizona. IT snows on the mountains occasionally. Every 5 years or so the snow even touches ground. It very very rarely drops below freezing during th day there.

Here? The temperatures have been between 30 and 18 for over a week. The other day it was no joke 8 degrees outside. I didn't even know that was a temperature. Well, okay I knew- lbut experiencing it? No thanks.

I am not fond of being cold. I love the way my girls look bundled in layers of clothing. I love my gorgous pale winter skin. I'm lucky enough to be blessed with the sort of skin that looks nice pale and cold flushed. The girls are as well. We're all so beautiful. And COLD! My electric bill is shockingly high. I'm careful about what lights I leave on. Careful not to CRANK up the heater, despite being so tempted. But the result of heating a house from well below freezing to livable is a higher then usual electric bill.

We can handle it, I'm paying it later then I usually do this month- due to being stupider then usual with my spending last month. I'd blame Christmas, but really it was mostly me.

I'm not fond of the lack of sunshine. I had too MUCH bright and hot in the desert. NOT enough sun here. It's amazing how a place this green manages to freeze every year and yet come back. Some of the grass under that thin layer of white is STILL green. I havn't seen the sun more then a few times the last few months and the grass manages to stay green. It's surreal.

Any way! This morning I displayed an amazing moment of good parent/bad parent quandry. My younger daughter wanted so bad to go play in the snow. How can I deny the eager joy of fresh snow? Isn't that part of the reason I dragged these poor children cross country? I might be fighting the season but younger daughter wants to embrace it in all it's icy white glory. So. I bundle her up. two (in places three) layers. gloves, socks, snow boots. I untape the back door (I duct taped the bottom to block an especially cold leaky draft.) and I let her out. I then watch- from inside- out the window thats set in the door. I watch from my nice warm indoors while my sweet baby gets ice in her gloves, catches flakes on her freakishly long tongue and throws fistfulls of snow in the air just to watch it fall.

I talk her into coming in after a while, when the snow that got under her gloves starts to melt make make her hands cold and wet. And the quandry begins. I SHOULD have gone out with her. I still can. We can go out and play. It's not deep enough for proper snow men or flapping our arms to make angels It's not deep enough to jump around in. But there's enough of it liing about and falling to play., a little. It's just so COLD! And WET and eeeww!

Bad mommy? I don't know. I know I'm going to "man" up put on layers and go try to drive in it later. I need orange juice. Perhaps driving in snow (for the first time, EVER) will be the grown up equivalent of playing in it?