SNOW DAY!

I know all of you are spread out across the country, but for a lot of us in the north east, we hit the jack pot of a reprieve from the day's duties thanks to the massive blizzard sweeping up through the states here.

Thinking about weather days off in the past, it made me laugh. When I went to school in Michigan, there would be TUNNELS of snow, and not a snow day in site. When I lived in Georgia, a small dusting on the ground would get us the day off. Florida, of course, doesn't have snow days (even though it did snow in some cities there last month!), they have hurricane days.

I just took a break for a minute to look out the window at the snow coming in enormous spurts like cotton balls falling from the sky. My favorite snow days were the ones that I would spend with my little sister, Katie, who is four years younger than me. A lot of the girls I went to high school with would spend those surprise days off on the phone, sleeping, or watching crappy daytime TV. Not me. The beauty of having a younger sibling is, sometimes, it lets you wait a little longer to grow up. Most snow days, our parents would still go into work, so it left Katie and me to our own devices.

The moment our parents would leave the house, we would throw on the heaviest jackets we owned, raid the (usually mostly untouched) vegetable drawer in the fridge, and head out to the snowy backyard. We'd spend hours making snow families (one snow person for each of us--mom, dad, Katie, me and our baby sis Lee) with carrot noses, sledding with garbage can tops, and making sister snow angels. We drew the line when we couldn't feel our toes anymore and would head in, where I would make us hot chocolate with entirely too much cocoa and not enough milk.

Even though it wasn't the coolest thing to admit as a teenager, my little sister was one of my best friends (and still is) on the planet. As I sit her typing this to all of you, I miss those days, and honestly (though embarrassingly) just teared up a little bit thinking about the two of us starring at our side-by-side snow angels, mine just a bit taller than hers. Today, my sister and I are both in the blizzard, but she is in DC and I am in NYC, sadly too far away to head to a backyard together. She also surpassed me in height many years ago. On days like this, I want to go back to when Katie was twelve and I was sixteen, so I could have an excuse to act like a kid again.