It took 2.5 days to turn this California native into a complainer. Scratch that. Eighteen hours. It was the snow we’d wanted, hoped for, even longed for. “I just want the kind where I can sit by the window and admire its beauty while I drink my coffee,” I shared with the bus driver the week before. Give me snow, but in my comfort zone.
The picturesque, peaceful, postcard kind.
Instead, it dumped about ten inches in our Washington neighborhood, and I went from the lighthearted laughter of watching Peyton Manning’s intro and the NFL 100 commercial into an avalanche of complaining and critiquing. It started with the early-morning phone call to my husband, the former Alaska resident, who was pulled over at the AM/PM getting gas. Why are semi trucks in ditches? Why is there a Camaro in the intersection? Why is my husband in peril? (He wasn’t.) Where is the DOT?
And the constant questioning and second-guessing continued from there, a barrage of negativity. Why aren’t the main thoroughfares salted? Plowed? It started snowing when I left Safeway yesterday. I thought the USPS delivered in rain, sleet and snow? Why is my teenager waiting for the bus for 25 minutes; what about his poor, cold little piggies? Why a 2-hour delay? Is this safe? Are the buses chained up? Why is school canceled, now we have another make-up day? Why exactly did we buy a 2-wheel drive Highlander?
On and on, my mind raced as my disrupted routine marched on. I trudged through the snow to my part-time job, too terror-stricken to get behind the wheel on the compact snow and ice for the one-mile drive.
I needed a break from myself.
I went out for a short run and at the end, slowed to a walk.
Piles of snow still adorned the trees. The brilliance of the sunshine showed off the dimension of the flakes under the clear blue sky. It was a breathtaking sight. The snowflakes glistened.
Glistened.
There it was, the picturesque, peaceful, postcard. But I was missing it as I focused on road conditions (which I was too chicken to drive in), school alerts (that were either delivered too early or too late) and iPhone forecasts (when did I become a snow expert?).
So as Round Two looms for the weekend, may this complaining Californian seek out the sparkling, glistening beauty that awaits and see that somewhere out there, if I just look intently enough, there really is that postcard.
Kira Hagenbuch Monica 