Eyeing the man in front of me, I exhale. "Eight inches is a little too much."
"Don't be picky, Cara. Be grateful."
I put my coffee mug down on the end table. "Grateful that the schools are closed and I have a snow day? Of course. Grateful I have to remove eight inches of snow today? Not particularly."
Sarah, my roommate, clucks her tongue. Out of the corner of my eye a pillow comes flying. It bounces harmlessly off of the flat screen TV as I duck. The weatherman that I've been glaring at carries on with the forecast, oblivious to the assault.
"All right, fine. I'm sorry that you are eternally cursed by the god of emergency room necessity. Good?"
Her nurse scrubs have snowflakes on them, and I can't help but giggle.
"Good enough. We'll be busy today with shoveling injuries, I'm sure." She grabs her keys off the hook by the front door and pulls on her winter coat.
"I'll have the driveway done by tonight. Promise." I hold out a pinkie, leaning forward on the couch.
"Well, that's nice of you. But I'm staying at Tyler's tonight, so the only person you'll be plowing it for is yourself." She raises her overnight bag off the floor and gives me a naughty grin. "Or plowing yourself."
I pull my pinkie back, trying not to look too excited. "Oh. I suppose there's no reason to plow it until tomorrow then." I giggle at her suggestion. "The driveway, I mean."
With a stretch, I rise from the couch. "I love it when snow days fall on a Friday."
"Oh, shut it already." She looks around the room for something else to throw at me, but all the pillows are on my side of the living room.
I stop teasing her. "Have fun. Really. You deserve that day off tomorrow."
"Thanks, Cara. Try not to eat all my Girl Scout cookies while I'm gone this time."
I look sheepish. "One-time thing. I promise."
"Mm hmm." Without another word, she opens the front door and steps out into the storm.
From the window, I see her brush the snow off her Jeep Cherokee and carefully drive down the snow-coated asphalt. Trees obscure my view of where the main road meets our driveway, but I know she'll be fine-that Cherokee has gotten us through worse snowstorms than this.
"What to do..." I muse. Truthfully, I know exactly what I need to do-grade papers, clean the fridge, and prep some meals to freeze for next week-but doing it is the hard part.
Cooking is the least daunting task, so I decide to take care of that first. Maybe, if I'm lucky, I'll accidentally spill tomato sauce on my pile of grading.
"Keep dreaming." I chide myself. Not because it's wrong to want to ruin my students' papers, but because it would take multiple cans of sauce to sufficiently cover the pile of papers I've got stashed in my workbag.
The day suddenly seems too short.
"Shepherd's pie, here we go."
Potatoes take the longest to cook, so I pull a 10-pound bag of them from the pantry. Like a squirrel, I dig through it, tossing the ones that look easiest to peel into a colander over the sink and leaving all the awkward-shaped ones in the bag.
Snow falls rapidly as I wash and peel the potatoes, coating the pine trees in the backyard and covering the flower pots I forgot to bring in during fall cleaning.
December snowstorms are a treat because they're novel; usually the first big storm isn't until January or February.
"Shit. The onions." Shepherd's pie is incomplete without them, and I should chop them once I finish the potatoes.
They're buried in the garden, leftovers from the summer harvest. Sarah swears they will last through the cold as long as she covers them with mulch. I'm skeptical, but she planted them and so she can accidentally kill them too, if she wants.
Annoyed, I slip on my boots but skip the jacket-it will take two minutes to pull up a few bulbs. I unlock the backdoor and push the screen door forward, dragging a pile of snow with it.
If it keeps snowing at this rate we'll have over a foot by nightfall.
"Onions, onions...onions." Green shoots poke vainly from beneath the snow and I regret not taking the trowel from the garage. Yanking them out by the stalk doesn't always work.
"Damn..." I turn, sighing, and loop around the house, heading to the front, so I can hit the garage door opener on my car visor.
In surprise, I stop halfway between my car and the garage.
There's a pickup truck in the driveway.