Marooned in Dayton

For the past week, I have encountered more snow that I ever remember seeing in Dayton, Oregon. As a kid, we had the occasional snow day during which my siblings and I would have snow fights, build speed bumps, or go sledding down our cousins' hill. This past week, the "rough weather conditions" led to five snow days, leaving me out of work. My sister was ecstatic. She tends to be a bit of a procrastinator and her work for school wasn't completed by Monday. My job doesn't require much "homework" so I was a bit bummed to not have school.

Fortunately, the snow didn't wound my spirits. I happen to be an avid fan of snow. Why wouldn't I be? I don't own my own car to ruin while driving in the snow. I didn't have to trudge through the snow to work every day last week. I was in snow heaven.

I was happy that my sister and cousin still lived on my road. We adventured through the snow in our jeans (snow pants have NEVER been a necessity in Yamhill County) and visited our Grandfather. While this was fun, we decided to enjoy the snow on a deeper level. We built ourselves a snowperson. I claimed that the snowperson was without gender or more accurately transgender, as it was first built as a snowman and was soon transformed into a snowwoman. My sister, not wanting to mess with the politics behind such a statement, named the figure, Frostette, both after Frosty and Smurfette, I believe. It was a sad hour when, the evening of her creation, Frostette collapsed into a few blocks of snow. Her makers had not done well to her preservation against tough wind conditions.

For the last few days, I've taken to writing stories, some of them dark, some light. It's been fun to delve deeply into my imagination and emerge with tales of humor or of woe.

And now I'm sitting here, taking a break for Twilight (reading it for the third time) and wishing that I could walk into town and go shopping at the antique mall or eat at the Italian restaurant. Snow may be fun, but being marooned in my parents' house for a week begins to get me a little bit stir crazy.