The snow started falling this morning, a January Nor’easter as they call massive snowstorms here in New England. Warnings popped up earlier in the week on television, newsfeeds and on the radio. Maps with snow totals (12-20 inches!) began creeping into the Breaking News lead-in segment during the evening news. Mother Nature did it again. She preempted the pandemic, the economy, foreign conflicts, politics. She tends to do that, as if to say…Remember your priorities people!I am really in charge here!
News anchors cranked out the usual…Get your snow shovels! Batteries! Bread! Milk! When it gets down to it, survival needs can get very basic. Although, I noticed more shopping carts filled with chips, cheese balls, frozen pizza, beer and wine.
And then the term blizzard (with its definition of wind speed blah blah blah)…and then: this could rival the Blizzard of ’78! That got my attention. I spent the Blizzard of ’78 huddled in a tiny 3rd floor apartment with my then boyfriend, watching the snow fall. I don’t remember anything about bread and milk.
Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year. How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year?
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This post was published January 28th, 2019. Interesting follow-up fun fact – but perhaps more of a personal lightbulb moment…kids everywhere who passed those notes have all grown up and now use email. Anger is highlighted in red. Rumors and character assassinations run wild. Weekends and holidays are no exception. Boundaries disappear. They can still be a gut punch.
So goes a very short rant-of-the-day from my current life as a condo board member. It’s time-consuming, emotionally draining work and eerily reminiscent of times past. Bullies at 70 are just as awful as bullies at 12. On paper and in person. Which is why I have neglected my favorite place here on WP. Who knew that middle school (learning!) experiences like this would be called upon now…
…I saw a note that Gail wrote & it says she hates me… I don’t know if you’re mad at Gail but I am…
Notes. When did I first run headlong into notes? At that awkward will-I-fit-in-say-the-right-thing-avoid-exclusion-at-all-cost stage that characterized my middle school years in the 1960’s.
When successfully passing notes was a prized achievement. A right of passage. If you didn’t get caught.
Notes directed the intense undercurrent of a girl’s ever shifting social hierarchy. They could make or break your day at school.
Scrawled on lined notebook paper. Ripped out of 3-ring binders. Torn into halves. Or quarters. Hastily folded as small as possible. Then..slipped to a friend. Or potential friend. Or some kid sitting at a desk on the way to the note’s intended recipient.
With one eye on the teacher, who with chalk in hand might not turn towards the blackboard as quickly as you think. Who might snatch the wrinkled piece of paper. Which held the potential key to your social future. And then, horror of horrors, read it out loud. So everyone would hear…
Are you mad at me? Write down yes or no. Check next to these names… Do you like them or not?
Or worse, if the note was for you… From the girlfriends you just had a sleepover with…
We have decided that you are not our type. Please don’t hang around with us that much. You can if you want….Every time we look at you you are reading. I know you like to but not every second. Don’t hang around that much anymore.
Elaborate codes were devised
I’ve always wondered…why? Why did girls jostle for position in such cut throat ways? Which is probably why I saved a few notes for 50 years. Thinking I’d figure it out. I have not. I still have no clue.
Except I am grateful there was no Facebook when I was struggling to fit in. No Instagram. No social media. Notes would have followed me everywhere. Day and night. I can’t imagine.
Notes on wrinkled paper were thrown away. Or stuffed in a drawer. Only public for an agonizing minute if the teacher recited them in front of snickering classmates.
Then the bell would ring. And out the door I’d go.
For the Last on the Card challenge…The rules are simple: 1. Post the last photo on your SD card or last photo on your phone for the 31st December. 2. No editing – who cares if it is out of focus, not framed as you would like or the subject matter didn’t cooperate.
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I found this quickly taken photo on my iPhone for bushboys world‘s Last on the Card challenge. It wasn’t taken on December 31st, but it’s the last photo for December 2021. I was sitting at the computer – far from my camera – but couldn’t resist this surprise pic of my favorite 7-month old granddaughter poking her head into the kitchen. She was always happy to see me during my visit at Christmas.
Wouldn’t you like to expose your newer readers to some of your earlier posts that they might never have seen? Or remind your long term followers of posts that they might not remember? Each Friday I will publish a post I wrote on this exact date in a previous year. How about you? Why don’t you reach back into your own archives and highlight a post that you wrote on this very date in a previous year?
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This post was published on December 17, 2020. One year later…there is no snow outside my window. It is actually warm for this time of year (54 degrees F)…a welcome change from the cold. Unfortunately, some things do remain the same from one year ago. The pandemic unexpectedly rages on as not enough people have chosen to get vaccinated. So scary, stressful and deadly. The political craziness in DC continues – less surprising, though still discouraging. I continue to be overwhelmed by the challenges and political craziness in my own little condo board world; which has turned into a full time job trying to get things done and calm frazzled nerves. It is important to remember that this too will pass…eventually. I have really missed my blogging friends, but hope to be back on track here sooner than later. Maybe it will take a snow day to get started.
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Snow Day
I sit here at my desk in the room where I write…surrounded by white. White walls. White windows. And outside the windows…white crystals and flakes swirl past…settling on window sills and our tiny porch. The line of evergreen trees. The path to my woods.
Gone are the vibrant reds and warm yellows of autumn. The colorful peaks of nature’s splendor. My world’s palette is – once again – on its way toward a rustic simplicity of browns plus green.
Snowstorms trigger time travel…
Circa 1990s…lying in bed at 6am listening to WTSN – a local AM radio station…waiting for the long-time morning show host to drone through the alphabetic list of school closings. My kids were living at home then and had gone to bed praying for mountains of snow to fall overnight. As they got older, sometimes they heard the radio announcement before I did…MOM NO SCHOOL WOO HOO…drifted down the hall from their rooms to mine. The sweet sense of excitement and gift of a DAY OFF never failed to fill those days with a magic all their own. Why is that I wonder…how snow gave us permission to play. To not consider other alternatives. Admittedly we were able to switch gears fairly easily as I worked part-time with a flexible schedule. My husband, a teacher at a private school, never got snow days off when our kids were…well…kids.
I don’t recall all that many snow days when I was growing up. I’m not sure why, unless in the 60s we were expected to power through. Safety issues were not all that prevalent back then. Those were the days before mandatory seatbelts and bike helmets after all. In my memory, school was cancelled when the snow was Two Feet High. Whether that was actually true is not verifiable.
My kids built snowmen and slid on plastic discs down windswept or snow-shovel-swept piles of snow. Over and over. They climbed snow drifts as high as the mailbox atop a pole by the street. And made snow angels in the front yard.
My younger brother and I built snow forts – making snow bricks by (mittened) hand, one by one, carefully stacking them onto short walls until finger numbness began to set in. We would spend most of the day in the front yard, coming inside for lunch, hanging our wet wool coats and snow pants to dry in the hallway, the steam rising while we ate. Filling the kitchen with that distinctive wet wool smell. My mother never took photographs of our snow day exploits – just shooed us out the door after breakfast and then again after lunch. So I rely on memory. After the fort came snowball production & stacking – followed by one sided snowball “fights” with passers by…mostly my sister or the boy next door. We all got along, my siblings and I, during those times outside. Just us. There was something about all that snow and a shared sense of fun and purpose.
Maybe it’s why – when I saw children in this over 55 community the other day – I got a little choked up. Looking out the window I spotted 2 little kids down the path…trudging up a small hill of leftover snow and then repeatedly sliding down. An adult stood nearby. Grandchildren…with their grandpa. Just a guess, but I bet I was right. Lucky them.
The only time I can usually sleep past sunrise is during a snowstorm. Today was one of those days. The highway grows relatively silent as only a few of the bravest drivers hit the road that early.
More snow than we’ve gotten in 2 years announced the very excited meteorologist this morning on our local TV station. Meteorologists LOVE snow storms. They stand outside in the middle of this once-in-a-2-year-blizzard, shivering and freezing with hoods pulled up…announcing the obvious: It Is Snowing.
Every channel is about the snow. Interviews with “plow guy” (always a guy) abound. Reporters on street corners with coats wrapped tight shoving yardsticks into snowbanks, directing videographers toward the view behind them. Look it’s snowing!Look there’s a car off the road! Remember to drive slow!
The fascination with extreme weather – one more onslaught we can’t control – continued for hours.
But you know what? There was no mention of the latest ridiculous political maneuvering in Washington DC. No discussion of who lied to who. I don’t think anyone even mentioned the pandemic. And all the relentless pain and suffering. The increasing numbers of the sick and dying. Hospitals strained to capacity. All in this surreal world that doesn’t make sense anymore. All that explains why my husband and I have to spend Christmas alone for the first time in 45 years.
Mother Nature mercifully took over today and gave at least some of us a brief respite…from all that is so much worse than a simple historic few feet of snow.
It almost felt like a regular snow day.
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photo a day challenge: Windows photo a day challenge: Colors and letters – White Ragtag Daily Prompt: Rustic Simplicity
one letter UP ~ diary 2.0 