What a Veteran's Day

Today was not my typical Veteran's Day.  In the past I always attended the morning Veteran's Day program at one of the Wawasee schools.  This year I knew that I wouldn't be participating in that endeavor as I had actually decided to take advantage of all of the Veteran's Day sales at the local stores.  My parents had offered to go with me and to take me out for an early birthday lunch.  I was happy with my plans, but what I didn't expect was five inches of snow to alter my afternoon activities.

I did post about my favorite Veteran first thing this morning and also did some shopping on Kohl's website, but other than that my day revolved around getting the snow off of my driveway.  As it hadn't started snowing when I dropped Cameron and Jacob off at school, I really thought that the meteorologists had overblown their prediction.  In fact, I made fun of them on the drive.  Obviously the weather gods heard me and while I was halfway through my walk the snow started coming down. By the time I got home, I was soaked and freezing and soon after I showered the roads were completely covered.

I spent some time after lunch finishing laundry and catching up on a few items my computer.  I headed outside at 2:15 to shovel the drive.  It didn't look like a lot of snow, but once I got started I realized that it was very wet and extremely heavy.  Thus, the hour I spent shoveling only cleared enough for me to get my car out of the driveway.  The trip to Bethany was a treacherous one.  Their was a wreck on county road 29, so I had to turn around and take a side road.  It had not been cleared very well, so the detour added an extra twenty minutes to my trip.  Thankfully, my Mom was able to text Cam and let him know that I would be late.  Cam and I took the main roads back home.  It was better than the route to school, but overall it was pretty stressful, especially since I barely avoided an accident in town.  As soon as we arrived I went back outside to finish Doug's side of the driveway and the front walk.  I ran out of steam before I completely cleared the area behind the truck, but I did get enough done that we could get the truck out if we had needed to use it.

Doug's trip home was long and challenging.  He was positive that school would be cancelled tomorrow.  Wawasee had a delay already, so we knew that Cam wouldn't be going in before 9 a.m.  Doug worked at home this evening while we watched television.  We both enjoyed the fifth episode of the Ken Burns' Country Music on PBS and I have a new favorite song, Loretta Lynn's "Don't Come Home a Drinkin' (with Lovin' on Your Mind)."  Even though today wasn't my typical Veteran's Day, it didn't mean that I forgot about PawPaw's time in the army.  The two hours of shoveling actually gave me a lot of time to think about him and remember those who had served.