Ten years ago or so, a snow day in Cincinnati, Ohio, was a great thing. Yay!! I would scream at the top of my lungs as I finally saw Loveland City Schools – Closed, scroll across the bottom of the local newscast.
(Insert that ripping sound a record makes when you stop it quickly.)
Who am I kidding? I loved school. I was the ultimate Lover of School, for Pete’s sake. But noooo…I really wanted to read more Hamlet…nooo…I really was looking forward to starting Civil War history. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, but generally, a snow day for me wasn’t the stuff dreams were made of, it just gave me another excuse to read. Sure, I busted out the sled and went for a few rides, made a snow angel or two, but that was that. But generally, the day went something like this:
10am: Watch Little House on the Prairie and Saved By the Bell on TBS.
11:30am: Finish reading a book.
Noon: Make a sandwich, eat some pringles, and watch A Dating Story.
1pm: Clean out old school papers.
2pm: Play school with my imaginary friends (less of this as I got older).
3pm: Play Operation Neptune or Amazon Trail on the computer.
4pm: Dance around in my room to showchoir tunes and practice songs from a drama production on my keyboard.
5pm: Start another book until my parents get home.
Boom! The day was done, just like that.
Fast forward to 2010, the great Snowpocalypse of DC (dum dum DUM). But instead of just one snow day, we got 4.5, and a weekend thrown in for fun. (Wait, I’m not yet at the part where I’m going in to work tomorrow, but then we have a weekend and a national holiday immediately after.)
Anyway, as much as I loved The Long Winter, I’m over watching Half-Pint and Pa on the tube – instead, it’s Giada and Bobby mixed in with the longest newscast in the history of the world reporting on the insanities of grocery-runs, idiots on the road, and how many new words DC residents can coin for the double whammy snowstorm (they’re saying more snow coming on Monday (God, I don’t ask for much, but please, not this). And instead of dancing around to showchoir tunes, my days went more like this:
9am: Breakfast, coffee.
10am: New York Times, Washington Post online, blogs, Facebook, Twitter.
11am: Work out.
12:30pm: Shower, sandwich for lunch, while watching Giada, Tyler, Ina…
2pm: Pay bills.
2:15pm: Twitter, Facebook (note: these can be inserted throughout the day, sadly)
2:30pm: Wander up to the lobby to see if the mail was delivered. Nope. Trash not being collected either.
2:45pm: Sportscenter, chat with Mom.
3pm: Nap.
4pm: Clean out old receipts.
4:30pm: Read.
5:30pm: Watch a movie.
The above daily schedule is nice on the weekends, and nice every now and then when we want a mental health day. But for 6.5 days? The whole living in a studio by myself thing can get a leetle old at this point. Notice there was no sledding involved here. Damn, I knew I should have trekked up to Dupont Circle for the snowball fight. I want to know how many kids in the DC area got bored after the second day – there are only so many snow angels you can make. But hey, these days, we get paid for snow days, so it can’t be all that bad, can it?
Jenna Sauber 