Winter on Pleasant Ridge had gone on long enough Sure, oved sledding and snowmen, snowballs and snow forts. But they can be boring, especially when you live so far in country that your only companions are a the pair of older sisters. 2 Half the time they didn't even want to play, and the other when they did, they were always too bossy. Mom said maybe I was too fussy. Anyway, I was tired of winter and tired of being bossed. And what else was there? Not much. Get up. Go out in the dark and carry hay while Dad milked. Eat. Go to school. Go home and carry hay again. Eat. Study. And put up with Annie and Sarah. Not much fun I can tell Ou Annie and Sarah would tease me about the girl that the bus driver made me sit beside. When we played games, it was always them against me, and if I cheated just to make it fair they complained Mom tried. She'd offer to play checkers and sometimes we did. But you can't tell your friends when they ask what you did last night: "oh played checkers with Mom I liked working with Dad but winter wasn't the fun time for that. Winter work was all mud and buckets and cow manure. And at night after chores, Dad could only slump in his chair, too tired to do much with any of us. I wondered if he would ever get his old summer strength back Some days it seemed all I could wish for was that something exciting might happen. One Sunday when we visited Grandma after church, I listened to her tell about her winters as a girl She would ride to town on a sleigh behind two black mares. There were blizzards that topped the roof of the old porch. And sometimes her school would be closed for weeks at a time