Impending doom

It is snowing today for the first time since early December. We have been blessed with an unseasonably warm winter (which I love), so I can't complain about a little snow. Makes me want to hunker down and sip cocoa, but Steve and I are cleaning out the basement.

I was raised to believe that driving in snow was never to be done; you would surely die. Granted, my childhood home was on a shaded (read: icy) street with an incline leading to a stop sign, so it was tricky to get out. I never understood why my friends were out within 3 days of a storm - sure death! Turns out most places got plowed before our street. One thing I do like about Delaware is the flatness, so it makes it easy to drive in snow. Plus we live in town so they plow right away. Plus we live near the river so it moderates the temperatures a bit so we get less snow than where I have lived before.

So where have I lived? I grew up in Winchester, VA in the top of the Shenandoah Valley. You can see grass, trees, and mountains in almost any direction and there is local produce in season(something I took for granted at the time). I went to college in central PA and lived on campus so there was no need to drive in snow or buy food for myself. Then I got married and moved to State College, PA where Steve was in grad school at Penn State. Talk about hills and snow in the winter! In the summer they block off part of a street downtown and have a real farmer's market where Amish & Mennonite families would sell everything from heirloom tomatoes to bunches of cut dinnerplate dahlias to homemade shoofly pie. When we moved to Delaware I was excited to learn about a year-round "farmer's market" 2 miles from our house. Upon closer examination, there is nothing "farmer" about it; the shops include a wig store, cheap furniture, a barber, clothes for clubbing, a sock store, used books, imported produce even in the summer, military gear... the list goes on. There is one dear shop run by the Stolzfus family with excellent meats and baked goods, but the "farmer's market" is only open on weekends and is so crowded. Steve and I have gone twice and still can't figure out what all the fuss is about.

Back to the basement... We're cleaning out junk in order to set up our lampworking studio. Very exciting! For those of you who are wondering, we still haven't received our beads from class because our instructor was in Tuscon at the gem & jewelry extravaganza. I'll post pics when the beads arrive.

Happy Snow Day, I-95 Corridor!