’The morning is cloudy and cold, 33°. My car was covered in frost when I went to get the paper. I am so glad the long ago days of windshield scraping are gone. Now I just wait. The snow has melted on the shoveled and plowed surfaces. My walkway and car are clear. The back stairs are also clear. I threw de-icer on them so the dogs won’t slip. 

I have a few uke events this week, but today I am going nowhere. I’m staying cozy and warm. In fact, I actually fell asleep under the afghan for a bit this morning. The dogs joined me. It is already that sort of day.

When I was a kid, I never really minded the cold. My mother made sure that when I went out I was layered and bundled. My school was old. It had tall windows and hissing radiators. It was never really warm. I always wore a sweater over my uniform. I wore knee socks. 

I loved when my mother gave me soup for lunch. The thermos kept it hot. I remember having chicken noodle, Campbell’s chicken noodle, only Campbell’s, and she always packed Saltines. I learned to be careful filling the thermos cup. Noodles tended to plop and spray soup. I remember lots of noodles and little squares of chicken. 

We always had crayons around the house. My mother and I would sit at the kitchen table or on the rug to color together. She colored the best. She could shade the crayons. My colors were all blunt. I’d always get new crayons for Christmas and sometimes in my Easter basket. At first, I’d keep them in the crayon box. If the box came with a sharpener, I’d keep a tip on the crayons.  When the crayons got smaller, I’d have to peel off the labels, no more exotic colors, just red or blue or green. A cigar box was where we kept all the small crayons. I have a few boxes of souvenir crayons. One is in a tin and has all the colors, even the discontinued colors. The other night I saw a commercial for Crayola. They have a new commemorative box of just discontinued colors. I think I need that box.

The snow started round 12 or 12:30. It came quickly, but when I woke up, I found we had less snow than I expected, maybe only 3 inches. While my coffee was brewing, I went to get the paper. It was on the front step. Someone had shoveled my walkway. A bit later Henry started barking. When I checked, my neighbor was snow-blowing my car free. I went out to thank him. He asked if he could do anything else. I said you have already done so much. All that was left for me was to clear the snow off my car. When I looked later, the car was clear of snow, and all around it in the driveway was also clear. I’m so very thankful for the kindness of my neighbor. I’m thinking maybe I should bake cookies as a thanks. 

We are expecting more snow on Wednesday and Saturday, but the Saturday snow will be followed by rain. I always think rain pocked snow is the ugliest snow. It makes for slush and then it freezes.

When I was a kid, I would have been so disappointed by this storm because the snow fell on a Saturday night so no snow day. 

We always had the best best Sunday dinners. We’d have a roast beef or a roast chicken, gravy, mashed potatoes and a couple of vegetables. I was always partial to baby peas. I’d press down the center of my mashed potatoes to make a well. That’s where the gravy went. I’d keep shoring up the potatoes to make sure the gravy never flowed over the sides. That was my dinner challenge. Sometimes I’d mix the peas with the potatoes. It was ugly but delicious. That meal was my favorite dinner and the last Sunday dinner I had with the family the day I left for Peace Corps staging

Potatoes, carrots and summer corn on the cob were the only fresh vegetables we ate. Mostly we had canned veggies. I wasn’t a fan of carrots, but I loved potatoes. They were always mashed which my father loved. He’d put a slab of butter on the top of his potatoes where it would melt and pool, a bit like my gravy. He loved canned asparagus. I always thought it was gross. The green was an odd color, and the spears bent in the middle.

 I’ve watched so many movies where the driver is chatting with his passengers and not even looking at the road ahead, and there is never an accident. I want that car.