Dave Mows Grass on Priorities

Despite all my prayers and supplications, it was apparent early this morning that Northwest Arkansas' first snow event of the year was not going to me much of a snow event at all. The grass and the cars were covered, but the snow melted almost instantly on the parking lot. The weatherman was nonchalant about the whole thing: "You might take it easy on bridges and overpasses." Rogers was having school. Springdale was having school. Nothing indicated that attempting to drive to work would be any more suicidal than it is on any other day. It would not be a significant snow event.

Disappointed, I left for work. In the time it had taken me to get ready, the snowfall had actually increased quite a bit. Cambridge and then Robinson were nearly covered, with previous sets of car tracks appearing in progressively lighter shades of gray. Still, several tests of my brakes gave no indications of ice under the thin snow. I looked ahead and could see that Thompson, the big road that takes me all the way to Rogers, was completely clear. At that point, I did the only thing I could do: I turned around in the Walmart parking lot, drove back home, and called to inform my supervisor that I would not be coming in.

Back at home,  I enjoyed the chaos of getting Donald clothed, fed, and otherwise prepared for school, which is always fun. We dropped him off together and walked him all the way to the classroom which we aren't supposed to do. We have a conference with Mrs. Patrick tomorrow but she couldn't wait to show us a handwriting assignment he had done very well on. He has some fine motor problems and struggles with handwriting so we were very proud to see his work. He has an amazing teacher!

Back home again, we ate breakfast and packed some goody bags for Donald to take to his Valentine's day party tomorrow. She took a nap after that because she worked last night. While she was sleeping, I cranked up some Pandora real low and went online to shop for trekking poles.

It sleeted a few times as Cristina slept, just as the weatherman said it would, but not enough to destroy the remaining snow. Fortunately, the temperature stayed a few degrees below freezing all day. The clouds were beginning to break as we went to pick Donald up. My gamble, an "occurrence" and a day's pay, was going to pay off, but just barely.

There was an inch of very wet snow left on the grass when we got home. Donald and I rolled quickly while Cristina gathered several small rocks, two sticks, and a baby carrot. The three snowballs cleared the dead grass of snow completely. We zigzagged to be sure to capture every bit of the precious commodity until roughly half the yard was cleared. The other half would become slushballs, be loaded into a Tonka dump truck, or simply be stomped away. Within an hour, we had cleared our entire yard of snow.

By 5:00 PM, my normal time to arrive home from work, none of the grass areas visible from our second-storey apartment had any playable snow, not even the east-facing slopes bordering the Tyson parking lot.

Priorities.