We planned to go home this weekend for a visit, but I had some hesitations while packing the car on Friday. The weather forecast for that part of the state looked grim. Snow was on the horizon and they were calling for at least six inches yesterday.
I debated a bit, but ultimately decided to go. We had tickets for the circus and Punky was looking forward to it all month. I couldn't bring myself to disappoint her. Plus, we both had a haircut scheduled for Friday night and cancelling would have led to a disastrous tango with the scissors. We both needed it so badly and it couldn't be put off another month.
When we woke up on Saturday morning, the snow had already started and was sticking to the roads. I made sure we were ready and out the door early. My sister and her family were coming with us to the circus but they weren't quite ready to leave when we got to their house. The circus was a half hour drive away, and I wanted to take it slow, so I told them we'd meet them there.
The ride up was uneventful. Once we came down off the mountain, the roads were only wet. We arrived in plenty of time to wait in the car for a half hour until they finally opened the doors to the arena, but better safe than sorry I suppose.
The circus itself was a bit disappointing. I had never been to one of that magnitude and I expected it to live up to it's name. It didn't. It was far from the greatest show on earth. It had a few exciting moments but they were few and far between. The kid in me really looked forward to the trapeze act, but when it finally came time they had only one guy, all alone, jumping back and forth between two swings that were ten feet apart at most. Talk about under-impressive.
Punky was so excited to see the circus; we talked about it all month. I really expected it to hold her attention, but twenty minutes in she seemed as bored as I was. While I was content to sit there and watch anyway, she opted to jump around in the aisle, kick the chairs of the people in front of us, and harass her cousin instead. By intermission, I was ready to leave. When the circus was finally over, I wished I had.
By that point, a couple inches of snow piled up on the cars and the roads were no longer just wet. Just thinking about the drive home made me shiver. If it was that awful in the valley, I could only imagine how much worse it would be as we made our way up the mountain. Unlike the circus, it lived up to my expectations.
The roads were terrible, the snow was blinding, and people were driving like idiots. I was so thankful Punky fell asleep for the ride; I needed the silence to concentrate on not killing us. In one particularly rough spot, I had a brief anxiety/panic attack but I managed to talk myself out of it instead of just pulling off the road and waiting to die. The half hour drive in good weather turned into an hour and a half return trip, but we finally made it in one piece.
My sister wanted us to come over when we got back into town, but I wasn't facing the snow any more that day. I had enough. Plus, my niece was very sick and I wanted to keep Punky's exposure to a minimum. She's been doing well lately, a minor cold here and there but no unexplained fevers and such. So, I offered to have my nephew over instead so the kids could spend the day together and play.
They really don't get to see each other very often since apparently my sister would rather die than make the two and a half hour ride up to visit us, even though I used virtually every hour of my vacation time each year for three years to go visit her when she lived across the country, but that's another post entirely. The important thing is that the kids had fun together and my nephew ended up spending the night with us.
By this morning, the snow finally stopped. The official total? Sixteen inches. I was more than ready to get packed and leave the winter wonderland. It still amazes me that we live over one hundred and fifty miles north, but get a quarter of the snow they do back home. One call to Punky's dad confirmed what I suspected: not a single flake was on the ground at our house.
So, the circus was a bust, the weather was atrocious, and I didn't get to spend any time at all with my adorable niece, but we had a nice visit with my nephew and Punky's godfather, plus a delicious lunch with my mom before heading back home today.
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