Snowbound

After blogging last night about needing sociability for happiness, I woke up this morning looking forward to a staff meeting, lunch with the press people, and a reception at the National Cowgirl Museum to view Georgia O'Keefe paintings. But when I looked out, everything was white. There was about two inches of snow on the ground, but kids seemed to be arriving at the school across the street. I debated--did I really want to get out in this? Looked at the computer, and TCU was closed. Usually it's the ISD that closes, while TCU stays open. Then the Cowgirl called to say the reception had been rescheduled for next week. I resigned myself to a day at home--no socializing. I fiddled and piddled for much of the morning, reading emails, unloading the dishwasher, showering, essentially making busy work. About eleven I finally settled down to work and have worked fairly steadily since, going through the manuscript I'm editing for a third and, I hope, final time. To my horror I discovered that somehow the edits I made to one chapter hadn't been saved. It was fairly easy to recreate since I knew what I'd done, but still. My computer keeps telling me the file is "read only" when it is clearly not, so I save it under a new name. Somehow, I guess, in doing all that I lost something.

Back to the snow--it came down all day, and it's still snowing tonight. The picture above is my porch, scene of many happy summertime parties and dinners--looks pretty bleak. Above that is one of the photinia in my back yard, bent down to the ground by the weight of the heavy, wet snow I'm afraid they're broken, but then they needed trimming anway. The snow appears to have stopped now (8:30 p.m.) but Fort Worth/Dallas hasn't had this much snow in one day since January 1964, six months before I moved here, and we have set a record for the most snow in any winter, ever since records have been kept (something like 10.5 inches). It was beautiful today, but toward dusk I began to get a little depressed that it was still coming down.
I got out about three to move my garbage carts to their spot next to the house. The crossing guard had brought them up for me yesterday (now, that's a neighborhly gesture, and I thanked him heartily). He left them right by the gate, and I intended to move them before I got out this morning. If the ice begins to melt tomorrow, I hope to go out the back, work my way along the fence to the garage, and get to the grocery store, but I couldn't doopen the gate with the carts there. And I may not get out--it's supposed to be really bad because it will go into the upper 20s tonight and all that slush will freeze. Another day at home, but tomorrow someone is coming by at one to talk about a book and Jacob is coming to spend the night. Surely by Saturday I can get to the store!
Meeantime, my neighbor Sue, a hearty Canadian by birth and upbringing, said the snow made her feel at home, and she got out and shoveled both our walks. I urged her not to do it, pointing out that it was still coming down, but she said it would take too long to melt tomorrow if she didn't do it this afternoon. Good point. As far as I can remember, this is the first time ever since I've lived in Texas that I thought I ought to shovel my walks. Of course, I have no shovel (and am amazed Sue had one) and lifting two shovels of snow would do my back in.
Meantime I've gotten very ambitious about that manuscript, hope to finish it this weekend. My mom always told me the Lord works in mysterious ways, so maybe the snow was designed to keep me at my desk.
If anyone in the Northeast is reading that, you may justly call us snow wimps. When I lived in Chicago and Missouri, I was as at home on this stuff as Sue is today. But I was a whole lot younger. These days I don't mind driving on it--it's walking that worries me.