How's the weather in your parts?

She finally said. My sister finally said what I have been waiting to hear since I moved to Erie 10 years ago. "Why do they keep canceling school just because of the snow?" A lifelong Connecticut resident like I used to be, little miss sister has been raised in the what I like to call the state of hysteria. That is the state that cancels school before the first flake even arrives. Such has been the case over and over again this winter, in Connecticut as well as Massachusetts, New Jersey, Rhode Island and New York. They have received record amounts of snow, sufficiently trading places with us.
   Finally, with their umpteenth storm on the way and no more snow days to be had, she finally understood what I have known since moving to this land of lake effect snow: deal with it. My son never stayed home from school during all his winters of living in northwest Pennsylvania. There are no such thing as snow days. Snow is a part of the winter here and closing down schools and businesses makes little sense.
   Speaking to a friend from New Jersey who used to love snow, I showed no mercy. She is fed up with shoveling and longs for the warm winds of spring. She complains as do my eastern seaboard siblings, yet I show no mercy. Walk a mile in my moccasins.
   Weather is weather, and perhaps the best lesson I have learned since transplanting here is that nobody wants to hear you whine about  it. Cheers.