Usually snow totals of 5-10 inches garner lots of media coverage and people flock to the store for bread and milk.
The weather service quietly posted Winter Weather Advisory notices bypassing the usual hoopla that accompanies the first snow of the season. They said it would start as rain, which it did and the annoying drizzle that instigates the debate: umbrella or no umbrella?
The rain really started coming down the night before and it was a pounding torrent when I came home from a late shift at work. It was the type of rain that makes you take inventory of your car’s strengths and weaknesses. Tires? Wiper fluid? Traction? Does the radio work? Just how useless will my high-beams be?
When I made it home the air had that sweet smell you only find in the rain in Colorado. It’s easy to understand the term. It calls to your nose in the same way that really good spaghetti sauce or cinnamon rolls or a good smelling man does. The sounds of rain hitting the concrete-hard ground on the driveway and the sound rain makes when it brushes the pine needles and the terrifying WHOOSH when the clogged downpipe let go a terrific belch of leaves, needles and dirt. I about shit myself.
The cats had donned their winter-Velcro behavior and crowded me all day yesterday and told of snow totals edging closer to 10 inches. I trusted them and moved all signs of summer in the shed and dumped the last remaining pot of petunias and tomato plant into the compost pile. I put the snow shovel by the back door.
When I woke up I’d expected snow on the ground but there’s only a dusting for our first storm of winter 2015. It’s still raining and there’s huge puddles in the driveway. Each cat ventured out and returned just as their enchantment with outdoor adventures waned.
There’s a fire in the woodstove and some snow is sticking but I think the ground’s too warm to accept the blanket of cold just yet. Since I didn’t make the requisite and customary pilgrimage to the store yesterday I need to venture out with my all-season radials and buy enough food to get me through until payday. A pizza maybe, some salad, definitely some chocolate, apples and bananas.
Think about it – what life-saving meal can you make with bread and milk? French toast is about it.
