Let It Stop! Let It Stop! Let It Stop!

It's coming down
Snow pains on the motor veins
Keeps your business on the ground
It's coming down
Slow day for the teacher
And her wheels are spinning now
On account of winter, Mrs. Braintree
All the roads are closed
And the stores are loot for vagabonds
It's coming down
Go home!
- Trip Shakespeare, "Snow Day"

A lot of joking goes on about the way Cincinnatians approach snow. Around this time of the year (and during tornado season), every television station tries to one-up each other in their high-tech weather prediction toys. (My personal favorite right now is Channel 5's Power of 5, where they draw their weather information from five strategically placed Doppler systems.) Mass paranoia grips the city as we all brace ourselves for the impending Great White Death.

Occasionally it does happen. I remember the Blizzard of 1977 - 1978. I remember working customer service for a department store credit card where they offered to put people up in the local hotels to assure that they would have a first shift in the morning. (The shoppers in New York and New Jersey would have been ticked if there had been no one on the phone to look up their credit card numbers and explain that their credit limit could not be raised because they hadn't made a payment in 6 months.) I remember the following year when I moved to Clifton to an apartment complex at the bottom of a steep hill with a 90 degree turn halfway down (if you missed the turn, you would go plummeting into the woods); Nature saw fit to dump 18 inches of snow on us. It was ridiculously cold, but my fourth floor apartment was so overheated I kept a window cracked at all times. I couldn't get my car up the hill for two days, and finally hiked up the hill to the hippie market because the cat was out of food.

Since then, I've always joked about the people who rush to Kroger to stock up on food in case the entire city freezes over while they sleep, but yet I always find myself stocking up on soup and peanut butter with the rest of the crazy people. One can never be too sure, right? And it's not like I won't eat the food eventually.

Last night, I finished the last of my holiday shopping, and decided to swing by Kroger to pick up a few things.

Yeah, right. A few things. I had seen the news reports. It was going to snow. The first sighting of the Great White Death was upon our doorstep. My plans to pick up some shampoo, conditioner, sour cream, and oats became an all-out end of the world shopping spree. (Well, to be fair, Diet Coke was on sale. And so was the hard salami. And I was almost out of those two particular types of coffee. And the Banquet Crock Pot Classics sounded kind of good, plus it would make my Mom happy that I was actually using my Crock Pot.)

I awoke this morning to the sound of freezing rain hitting my window. It didn't sound good, but I still had a few hours to sleep. I'd set my alarm early just in case the Power of 5 was correct in its predictions of wintertime hell.

There was already about two inches of snow of the ground when I left for work, allowing myself twice as much time as usual to get there. Combined with the freezing rain, the roads absolutely sucked. It looked as if the main roads had been treated about an hour before I reached them, and they were covered over in snow, mixing in with the slush to make a skating rink out of Dana Avenue. Going up the hill on Rockdale Avenue was an adventure as well. (I chanted "don'tstopdon'tstopdon'tstop" at all of the other cars the entire time.) After almost skidding past the employee entrance at the Zoo (really, folks, whose idea was it to put it halfway down a winding hill?), I settled into my desk and did the small amount of work that I actually needed to get done. I worked ahead a little bit, but spent most of the next few hours checking weather reports and snow emergency announcements on various local news websites.

My supervisor was in as well. She had planned to work half a day, then pick her son up at the airport that afternoon. Her daugher was going to drive from Maryland later that evening. Since all of my family is in town, I had elected not to take any time off for the holidays, saving all of my accumulated hours for time when I actually had something interesting to do.

By 11:00, Boss Lady's son had called to announce his flight had been cancelled. She had called her daughter to advise her of the road conditions. We were all sitting and waiting until we got the "oh this is stupid - go home!" phone call. By noon, our department was released, and several of us went outside to clean off their cars.

Mind you, it had been snowing this entire time. It was snowing hard enough that by the time I had worked my way around with the snow brush and ice scraper, the place where I had started was covered again. I did the best I could, and slowly made my way out of the Zoo.

The hill that I had slid down that morning was covered in even more snow, and had glazed over into a lovely mix of slush and ice. It took me a good few minutes to get up the hill I can usually ascend in less than 30 seconds. I followed a person up Montgomery Road that felt it would be much safer for everyone involved if he went about 2 miles an hour. I made it home half an hour later (it usually takes about ten minutes), started cooking some Herb Chicken and Rice in the Crock Pot, and proceeded to watch the school and business closings that crawled across the bottom of the screen during Days of Our Lives. (And no, I didn't watch the soap.)

It's after 2:00 am. I should be sleeping, but I'm still watching the closings and snow emergency announcements like a hypnotized monkey. There's already 6 inches of snow on the ground in my naighborhood. I haven't seen a single snowplow or salt truck come down my street yet. I've just figured out that the tapping sound I've been hearing for the last two hours is more freezing rain. Eventually the freezing rain is supposed to give way to up to another foot of snow. Several semi trucks have jackknifed on the surrounding highways.

I'm kind of hoping that they city of Cincinnati decides to upgrade the current snow emergency to a level 2. If so, there's a good chance that the Zoo will be closed and I won't have to brave the roads. Today was enough excitement for the year, thanks. But unless they have the good sense to shut us down, I'll have to do it, because I'm the only one manning my office until the new year.

I looked into taking the bus. There used to be a bus stop a few blocks from my house that ran past the Zoo. (Granted the line stopped on the other side of the Zoo, but walking an extra block sounded like a better idea than crashing my tiny blue car.) I say "used to" because apparently they changed the route at the beginning of the month, and the bus now no longer goes past the Zoo, but loops past the other side of the Children's and University Hospital campuses, and I'm still not sure how to do a line transfer on the Metro.

Jim O'Brien, the chief meteorologist on Channel 5, announced in his last update that he might still be at the station in the morning, as he wasn't sure that he could get in, and no one was sure when his shift replacement would arrive. He's been breaking in every half hour all night on top of doing the 5:00 and 11:00 newscasts, plus a full hour of live broadcasts at 7:00. He's starting to get a little punchy. Please, someone, let Jim get a nap. Let Skippy the intern do the next few updates. All he needs to do is read off the teleprompter. Heck, at this point I could do the next update, even without a teleprompter:

The Great White Death has arrived. Stay inside. The entire world has been cancelled due to inclement weather, and will be postponed until a later date.

I feel bad about those who had out-of-town plans or loved ones coming in from other parts of the country, as I know this really screws up their holiday plans. But at this point, part of me wants to wake up to a blanket of white obscuring the street, glistening from the first rays of the sun, and the television proclaiming that the Zoo is closed, the city is closed, and everyone should take a snow day. I don't want to risk my neck driving to work to do nothing but wait for phone calls that aren't going to happen. I want to glance up bleary-eyed at the business closings, then crawl back under The Ugliest Comforter in the World and sleep.

I doubt it will happen, but it will give me something to dream about.

(And by the way, the Herb Chicken and Rice concoction was pretty good. And if I do have to go to work tomorrow, at least I'll have something warm and filling to take for my lunch.)