Wondering Wednesdays Vol. 4: SNOW!

Today I am wondering... WHY, oh, WHY is it still snowing?!

This winter (even though winter officially started less than a month ago!) has been crazy! It snows a ton. A week goes by with bitter-cold temperatures that don't allow any melting. Then more snow. Then more...and more and more and more!

Remember when we were children when we would do a happy dance when it snowed like this? When I was little we lived next to the Catholic Church parking lot and when they would come to plow, the snow was pushed to the sides and became my own little mountain range. I would build tunnels and sled down the little hills for hours. I guess being a kid makes one semi-immune from becoming mind numbingly cold!

I also remember being enchanted by the snow. Actually, I still am mesmerized by all the sparkly little flakes that fall from the sky. Today my mother walked out on her front porch and snapped the above photo. I might complain about snow now, but I still think it's pretty.

In high school we lived at the bottom of a very large hill. At the top of the hill was the United Presbyterian church. This hill (named U.P. Hill after the church) was the place to go to sled for the kids in my hometown. I rarely went sledding on U.P. Hill but if I looked out the window and saw kids slide past our house on a Tuesday at 1:00 p.m. that was a very grand thing because that meant school had been cancelled. That meant I could sleep in and be my usual hibernating teen-age self.

I remember those early years and seeing the stress on my mom's face about the treacherous drive to work or even the couple blocks to the grocery store. I always thought she needed to "chill out." (No pun intended...) That was... until I started to drive.

Yesterday when I went to my in-laws house to wait for my husband's arrival back to Missouri, I ended up driving in rush hour. The roads were slick. People were driving like maniacs. My heart was racing. I was freaking out. Rush hour in my hometown was when a little old lady was driving too slow and you were 3 cars behind her. Or maybe a tractor was on the highway. Needless to say I was white-knuckled and praying a lot of Hail Mary's.

Then there was the ice-covered hill to get up to his parent's house. I shot up a quick prayer and gave my husband's truck a pep talk. "C'mon ol' Blue! (his truck is the color blue in case you hadn't figured that one out!) You can DO this! Let's go Blue...c'mon baby..." I crept up the hill and made it into the driveway with no problems!

I then gave a thank-you prayer to God, sent a silent thank you to the inventor of 4-wheel drive, and then thought back to the days when snow was fun.