Snow Days
November 17th, 2008 – by Uncategorized
Snow Days: A piece I wrote for Creative Writing with Mrs. Rauch my senior year of high school. I am posting this because of the flurries we got this afternoon, which reminded me of my favorite days of winter. I have not had any snow days at EMU thus far, but m looking forward to the inevitable. The weather is unpredictable, and hopefully, sooner rather than later, we will enjoy a snow day!
Although I’m not much for cold and dreary weather, snow days are some of my favorite days of the year. I can always feel the excitement growing inside of me from the night before: It’s in my stomach and its in my throat. During the night i cannot sleep, I am excited and i keep waking up, checking the clock, and peeking behind the curtains to see if there is snow sticking on the ground, while desperately hoping that I won’t have to wake up at 6:27 tomorrow morning. Then when morning rolls around, no matter how tired I am, or how late I stayed up the night before, I cannot sleep past 6:15. So I go downstairs and turn on the computer to check the weather, the dockhs.org website, and the Souderton School District page to see if we have a snow day, or at least a delay. When, to my delight, I discover that school is canceled, I race back up to my room and try to go back to sleep. By 7:00 am I know that I won’t be able to sleep any more, and so I give up, and I either read in bed or move down to the warm bacement family room to watch TV.
When I am finally hungry for breakfast I am forced to put my relaxing activities on hold and either prepare something like eggs and toast for myself, or pour out a perfect bowl of cereal, both of which can easily be eaten in front of the TV. By mid morning, my two sisters and I start getting the itch to go outside and play in the piles of beautiful white snow. The only problem is that there are no hills on our property, and sledding is the “funnest” part of snow days. So we pile into the family van with all of our gear: sweatshirts, jackets, ear muffs, scarves, snowpants, and boots, and head over to my aunt Marice’s house: our home away from home (seriously though, 9 out of 10 times, if we aren’t at our house, we are probably at the Kratz abode). Once we are there we bundle up and head out to the perfect hill behind their house, acompanied by my cousins Morgan and Drew, of course! We make jumps out of the snow, have races and competitions to see who can sled the farthest (the ultimate goal, of course, being to end up in the stream at the bottom of the hill). As the cold, hunger, and exhaustion begin to settle in, we one by one start to dissapear into the bacement where we un-bundle and dry off.
Eventually we end up sitting at the kitchen table, sipping hot chocolate while trying to convince Aunt Marice that we can make our own lunch and that she shouldn’t bother. Sometimes this works, and she will simply guide us to the fridge and her robust assortment of food choices, but more often she will refuse to listen and proceed to make us grilled cheese sandwhiches with tomatoe soup, or osmethign equally as warm and delicious.
During the afternoon we will most likely sit around watching Gilmore Girls, or something on the Disney channel, such as Hannah Montana or the Suite Life of Zach and Cody, while snacking and drinking hot chocolate. Some of our best family memories come from times like these: relaxing in front of the TV when we are just tired enough to find humor in the simplest things and appreciate the antics of Drew and my sister Adrienne. Even though nothing particularly funny productive ever comes from a snow day, for me they are the hilight of the long winter!
Again, I have never had a snow day at EMU, but, today it was snowing, and someone told me that there is a chance of snow tonight, which sparks the glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe, tomorrow we will find ourselves in a winter wonderland, and won’t have to go to classes….