Snow Day!

Oh, when the saints go marching in
Oh, when the saints go marching in
I want to be in that number
When the saints go marching in

Saint Louis is a very Catholic city. When winter weather arrives, the large number of parochial schools around town becomes self-evident when school closings are announced. Most of the TV stations announce these closings with a crawl across the bottom of the screen. The closing institutions are announced in alphabetical order, Saints Alban, Cecilia, Gertrude, Norbert and Theodore, to name just a few, are all clumped together and make for a significant constituency. We’ve always referred to this part of the closing’s list as when the saints go marching in.

When the boys were growing up, they always longed to be in their number too, but Maplewood has always proved to be a tough old biddy. This time was no different, because it was the last school district to announce its closing in the county. They did this last night, which is unusual; usually they wait until the last moment in the morning. They must have succumbed to peer pressure. Shortly have the closure was announced, Anne received a call from the substitute scheduler, not to confirm the cancellation of one of her assignments, but to ask her to work in the central office, so no snow day for her.

I had originally planned to take the day off, but since Anne was working, I felt shamed into going to work. I ended up only working three hours, before the storm arrived. After a somewhat tricky drive home, punctuated with talk radio safety bulletins asking people who had [foolishly] gone into work, to please stay there and stay off the roads [drive on the sidewalks instead], I arrived home. Anne had gotten home just before me and we settled into our half snow day.

I eventually convinced Anne to go for a walk in the snow. It was still snowing and sleeting out and wasn’t all that pleasant. I did mange to get this picture of her. As of writing, it looks like most of the storm has passed. There may still be another band or two yet to come, but it looks like the 3-5” on the ground will be pretty much all we get. It doesn’t sound like much, but it is easily the most snow that we’ve seen all season.

I think that I’ll wait until tomorrow morning to shovel the walk. The storm will have surely passed by then. This will give the morning’s rush hour a chance to sort itself out too. I hope that I don’t have to salt, but the storm began with sleet, so it may be necessary. On the other hand, tomorrow’s high is supposed to be forty. It may be better just to wait on the salt, after all, it’s not very ecologetic.