This morning I got up at my usual week-day time of 4:30am, before the birds and even before the sun. I’m not a morning person and I hate getting up that early. But it takes me over two hours to get my boys up, dressed, fed and ready for school.

When I looked out the window, it was poring rain. The third straight day of rain, but as we say in New England, at least it’s not snow. I felt like crawling back into bed, but it’s Friday, one more day and I can sleep in for two mornings. It was raining hard and very windy, so the first thing I did after turning on my coffee and computer was check the school status on the web; there it was in green “school is open.” It wasn’t until my work was finished that I got the automated call that school was canceled. Five minutes later the van pulled up to pick up the twins. The van had already picked up one student! The driver – and apparently the child’s mother – also had no idea there was no school. It took me another 45 minutes to get the boys out of their chairs and braces and back to bed. grrrrr!

I understand that sometimes it’s a tough call deciding whether or not to cancel school. But Grafton is notoriously late canceling. I just wish they would cancel earlier like other districts, for the poor unfortunate soles like myself, who’s day starts very early.

As it turned out, the temperature was hovering around freezing and many cities and towns around us had bad ice storms. There are lots of trees down and thousands without power throughout the state. It actually turned out to be a fairly nice day here in Grafton. Once the rain stopped, the sun came out and we still had power. But many of our friends were not so lucky. We have 3 of them spending the night tonight because they have no power and worse, no heat.