So if I can’t get any real snow living in central Texas, I can always write about snow whenever I want to. Snow is beautiful to look at, but terrible if you have to travel, go to work, or keep the sidewalk clean. My relationship with snow has been a long one, but lately that relationship has been from afar, jealously watching snow fall across the country, but never here. Even my annual trips to Minnesota for the Christmas holidays have been bereft, generally, of snow. It snowed a little last year, but this year’s snow totals are zero up to now. Snow is strange: aesthetically, it is very pleasing to watch it fall and cover up everything in its path with a clean white blanket that shrouds the countryside in a frozen swirl of fluffy ice. Heavily falling snow is mezmorizing, but it leaves me feeling grounded. Winter needs snow to cover things up for a few months. Snow gives me a cozy feeling that blank, bare, brown ground does not. Driving in the white stuff is certainly a challenge, if not dangerous, especially if the wind is blowing. Yet I love to be inside on a snowy day, watch the white flakes transform the landscape, and let Mother Nature have her wintry way for a couple of days. Getting a snow day off from school was always a joyous gift from heaven. Yet here I sit in Texas. Green grass, warm temperatures, and no snow on Thanksgiving eve. It just doesn’t seem right, now, does it?