Half Snow Day

I got myself out of bed early and rambled down to the Crime Lab for 8:30 am so I could get in a couple hours before the snow started. Mom arrived around 10 am with bread and milk for me. It's a Rhode Island thing, to stock up on bread and milk before a snow storm. I think it embedded itself in the collective unconscious of Rhode Islanders as a pre-snow ritual, buying bread and milk, after the Blizzard of 1978. I was in utero at the time, and I never remember to stock up. Today's reason why I'm grateful for my mother.

She also chased me out of the lab when the first flakes started to fall just before 11 am. So I grabbed some work I can do from home and headed back to Providence. It's been snowing briskly for a couple hours now, and getting stronger. I made it home easily, had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich (with bread and milk).

I wish Aaron weren't at work so we could go for a walk in the falling snow.

I'm worried about how he'll get home after work, and hope his day isn't too long. That goes for anyone else NOT home in a snow storm. But they have a day of meetings with an Executive, so no one is taking a snow day today. Likewise, I spoke with the lab director's wife this morning, and she told me she was panicking because her daughters have final exams today, and have to be out for hours in snow that is falling more heavily by the hour.

You know, we slow down so infrequently in our culture. Snow days are like Nature's way of making us slow down. We have 6-10 inches on its way today. Why can't we stock up on some bread and milk, cozy in with our loved ones, and kick it for two days while the snow falls? Will our Gross Domestic Product slip THAT much if we just checked out, collectively, once in a while? Is it worth the stress, the time lost stuck in snowy traffic, risking the dangerous conditions on the roads?

Here's hoping that the Executive will call it a day at a reasonable hour, and that URI will cancel its afternoon exams. I'm grateful to be able to be home. And I already warned the others at the lab that I will be in tomorrow if I can get my car out of the driveway. If not, I brought enough work home. I'll stay productive! Heaven forbid we don't.