Snow days, without snow!

Saturday, February 23, 2008

Ah, the snow day. This beautiful concept was first introduced to me when I began teaching Middle School here in Virgina. School could be canceled for a mere few inches because apparently the state of Virginia does not have the equipment to deal with the snow on the roads. I was not aware that a few inches required equipment to be dealt with but I am not complaining. I was also told the the humidity here makes things more icy. I have done my share of fishtailing on slick roads in Utah, but I still am not complaining. People also say that no one here knows how to drive in bad weather conditions. I have seen some awfully disgusting traffic here in bad weather, but traffic is pretty much always bad, so a few accidents will really slow things down. My general observation has been that people here slow down more for bad weather conditions than they do in Utah. And over Christmas break when driving from Logan to Kaysville the median of the freeway was filled with cars that had slid off the road. Worse drivers in Virginia? I really don't think so but I still am not complaining about snow days. That is until late in February and we had not had any snow days. A few delayed starts but no days off, and once you have been taught to expect them, it can be surprisingly difficult to deal with.

Advance to February 22 at about 1:00 in the morning. There have been severe ice storm warnings for two days. It was supposed to start snowing around midnight and turn into ice rain in the morning. I woke up needing to use the restroom and took a moment to peek outside to see the beautiful flakes coming down that would get me a much needed day off work. Except that there was nothing. Not a flake, not a drop. Much disappointed, and dreading the prospect of going to work to what I knew would be a difficult day anyway I returned to bed and a restless sleep. (Here I feel I should inject a note to say that this job has turned out to be a an extremely trying experience for me. I work very long hours and many of the kids I teach, for a lot of reasons, are very unappreciative. Thursday the 21st had not been an easy day and the bad part was I was teaching my best classes. I could hardly stand the thought of going back the next day to teach my more challenging classes.) I woke up again at 4:00 in the morning and once again climbed out of bed to peek out of the window. Still nothing. The roads were completely dry. I climbed back in bed to toss and turn, and get myself all worked up about the prospect of the day ahead of me - teaching my worst classes when my kids had been expecting a day off as well. They were not going to be happy, and I was not going to be happy either.

Drew woke up in the midst of my agitation, and tried to comfort me, but 4:30 in the morning is not a time of comfort. I was desperate! There was no way school would be canceled now, but I didn't think I could survive the day with my sanity intact. I called the school's emergency hotline just to be sure, and sure enough there were no cancellations or delays. At about 5:00 after some more tossing and turning, a little bit of pacing, and lots of bemoaning my fate I heard a few taps on the window that sounded like rain drops. I thought I would check just one more time to see if maybe we would get a delayed start. I wasn't listening very closely since I was sure that school would probably carry on as normal, when all the sudden I realized that the announcer was saying that every school in the district was canceled. I popped out of bed completely elated and completely relieved. I spend wonderful relaxing day at home and didn't think about school at all. Poor Drew had to get up at 5:30 to finish a paper to submit online, but he came back to bed about 7:30, and we slept until 9:00. We didn't see any snow and very little rain all day, but I am certainly not complaining!