January 14 It’s 4 pm on a no-snow snow day. I was not expecting any snow at all (part of my new less-Facebook-time mission means that I am losing out on a large part of my regular news, though I personally think the balance of getting more work done makes up for it) and was surprised enough by the 5:30 am phone call that I just let the computer finish its work and went back to bed.

Present has 2 meanings, right? There is present as in “GIFT”. As in jump around, package under the tree, box wrapped in cool-paper-that-gets-ripped-to-shreds. The kind of present that you shake a little, maybe, where the anticipation is more than half the fun.

And there is present as in NOW. HERE. Point to the ground you are standing on grounding.

Which was today?

I’m of 2 minds about it. I mean, who doesn’t like an unexpected day off? (I still had to work, mind you, but since my kids are old enough to stay home and fend for themselves, that stress was gone.) And scheduled exams didn’t happen, obviously, giving more time (theoretically anyway) for studying.

The thing is, though, that those exams got moved to Friday or next Tuesday. Friday we will be out of town, headed to our belated Christmas gift of a weekend in New York City. And Tuesday was supposed to be a day off from school. All in all, since there was merely a dusting of snow? I think all of us would have preferred to get the day done.

Still the sleeping in, for all of us, felt like a present. The breathing room around schedule, even though it pushed a different schedule tighter, felt good today.

In a way, though there was no anticipation, today was almost about both kinds of present. That’s a pretty good deal for a random snow day, don’t you think?

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