A Bubble Off Plumb

I love Oklahoma. So much that our family has moved away four times and back five times. It is just where our hearts belong.

But I don’t always love the weather. It has that hot nasty summer to deal with, but that is kind of ok because I like to garden and hot weather makes for a better garden than cool cloudy days. And I grew up in Florida, so I have been used to hot nasty weather since I was in the cradle.

But probably because I grew up in Florida, I have a long-running love affair with the cold. You always want what you don’t have and I have always wanted snow.

I know it makes a big, slushy wet mess on the floors. It can be treacherous to drive in and it seems like as soon as flakes start to drift from the sky, people lose their minds. They forget how to drive, how to stop, how to keep an extra loaf of bread in the house. I had an Oklahoma school superintendent tell me once that to close the schools all he needed was to see one snow flake and get one parental phone call.

I love snow so much I learned to snowshoe. It was a little tricky at first, until I discovered my 93-pound Great Pyrenees was standing on the back of the shoes. Once she started making her own way, it was great fun.

I worked one winter as a high school bus chaperone for weekend ski trips to a lodge near where we lived in Wyoming. The upside was I could snowshoe while the kids swooshed down the slopes. And I made a little extra cash, too. It came to an end all too soon when an early spring woke the grizzlies and the lodge closed for the safety of the guests. Another winter I drove draft horses pulling sleighs at a guest resort. That was more fun than the law allows, even when it was 10 degrees for a high.

But my big argument with Oklahoma weather is the lies. Lies, lies, lies. Every time the forecast says snow, I feel just like Charlie Brown when Lucy pulls out that football. No point in getting excited, filled with anticipation. No sense in hoping for a sky full of fluffy clouds that give birth to a landscape full of fluffy white stuff. It isn’t going to happen. It is as likely to be 70 that day as it is to snow.

My standard answer to a snow forecast is ‘I will believe it when I see it.’ I seldom see it.

But I guess I will pull out my snow boots just in case, maybe find my toboggan (hat, not sled. My bones are too old for sledding) Maybe the forecast is right this time. I might get to walk in the winter wonderland.

But more likely the freeze line will move to the Kansas border, David Payne will jerk the football out from under me, and I will land flat on my rumpus in a pile of not snow.