normally, i am all for a big snow blizzard that forces me and mine to stay inside, snuggle up and make a pan of lasagne or a beef stew. i am really good at reading and watching movies and spending time on the sofa. but this winter there have been so MANY blizzards that they are starting to disrupt my life (not to mention my floors, which i seem to be mopping continuously. i LOVE to vacuum, but mopping makes me feel like cinderella before she married prince charming.) during the week of my dining room leak and repair, there were THREE blizzards that made it very difficult for the ceiling man to come and work. two weeks ago i had to abandon all of my errands in denver because it started snowing so hard i instinctively drove right back to boulder like a homing pigeon. and this past weekend, i was meant to take my son to california to celebrate a friend’s bar mitzvah when it started snowing in the late afternoon. it seemed like it was just going to be a dusting and even though we got a couple of messages that our flight was delayed, we weren’t flapped and headed out for DIA. usually it takes about forty minutes to get to the airport, but on friday we were in the car for TWO HOURS. the closer we got, the slower we went and the harder the snow fell. we felt like the donner party, except we were in an SUV with “snow mode” and we weren’t eating each other… but still, it was stressful. by the time we parked, our flight wasn’t leaving until 10:30 pm (a four hour delay) and by the time we got through security, our flight wasn’t supposed to take off until 1:25 am. of course, it is bananas to depart at that hour so we tried to rebook for early the next morning. nothing was available. since all of the airport hotels were full, we were forced to make our way back in the driving snow… our useless misadventure had taken up FIVE hours. 

depiction of the donner party from bettmann archive

theo and i did make good use of our “found” time the next morning since we weren’t in california… we binge watched “riverdale,” (the TV show based on the archie comic book characters done with live actors and a dark edge - i love a teen angst drama!) while working on theo’s thank you cards from his bar mitzvah and eating sleeves of frozen thin mints (YES - it WAS 9:30 in the morning, but we’d already had our scrambled eggs and we needed a boost to get through that task… plus lucy is a brownie now and i am a TROOP LEADER, which is obviously so far out of my wheelhouse… when i agreed to do it, i didn’t understand that brownies were girl scouts - even though i WAS a brownie for a season. i thought i was just going to be doing art projects with a gang of girls after school once a month, but girl scouts are supposed to learn about the outdoors and go camping, which i am philosophically opposed to so i am quite possibly the WORST troop leader in girl scout history (thank goodness for the girls i am only one of three.) i am also opposed to going door to door selling girl scout cookies in blizzard season so we are eating our way through lucy’s obligatory fifty boxes.)

polaroid proof that i WAS a brownie… although i don’t look best pleased - i am the one scowling in the shadows with the unbrushed hair.

anyway, by noon on saturday the snow had all melted, the sky was bright blue and it was hard to imagine that the blizzard had even been here… cheeky, disruptive boulder weather… but we do have the leftover beef stew as proof!

to read more about blizzards in boulder click here