I was parked in my car getting ready for my lineup of students at the music store when this cold front began to push into town. I sat there for some time watching the low clouds overhead, grateful to have remembered my coat. As the clouds tumbled and spun in ominous silence, so low that you felt as though you could reach up and touch them, moving so fast that they made you almost dizzy, I knew we were in for something unpleasant.
Well, after two solid months of beautiful weather, we have finally had our first taste of winter. For those of you who live in places that get snow measured in feet, four inches is not a big deal. For denizens of the desert, we behave as though the apocalypse were upon us. Schools close, 24-hour weather reports fill the airwaves (if the broadcast towers are still functioning), and we wander around our houses aimlessly, wondering what to do for the next.....god, HOW LONG IS THIS GOING TO LAST???
Snow is very outside our comfort zone here. Nobody seems to know how to drive in it (or in the rain, for that matter), or if the grocery store down the road will have run out of soup. There is a vague sense of panic that pervades each newscast, probably because the junior reporters don't really want to get stuck doing the out-in-it  location shoot.
I used to love the snow, until I had a delivery job which put me smack in the middle of the mountains. Trying to make express deliveries on iced-over, steep canyon roads, with 20-foot ravines to one side and big rocks and downed trees on the other was not my idea of a picturesque drive. I have no idea how to install tire chains, and a rear-wheel drive truck doesn't do so well in this kind of weather.
My other half, the long distance trucker born and raised in the Northland knows how to install tire chains. He ponders others' lack of preparedness (if there is a chance of snow, why are you driving around wearing flip-flops and shorts?). He is so prepared for winter driving that he names his tire chains. There's his Diggers-good for going over a snowpacked, icy mountain pass, and there's his "All-Dayers"-Swedish made, ridiculously expensive but can be run on dry ground if necessary. His motto: "Over-prepared is better than upside-down."
He even knows how to keep busy on a snowbound day like today, as though it were no different from any other day...Right now, he is upstairs working on some wood trim for the Big Project, and nagging me to get something done. But WHAT??