CLEARWATER - Victoria Thompson woke up Monday morning and whispered a quiet prayer.
"Please, God," she said. "Let there be school today."
Then she went outside to smoke a cigarette. She looked up at the sky and the puffy white clouds.
A perfect school day. But no such luck. Classes were canceled.
With schools closed for a fourth hurricane day, Pinellas County students played at the beach or hung out at the mall, thanks to Hurricane Ivan, which declined to appear.
But while children may have been thinking "allrightttt!,' parents may have been cursing their luck and Ivan, which forced some parents to change work schedules.
But some moms didn't mind too much.
Kathy Davidson's 6-year-old daughter Danielle, who attends McMullen-Booth Elementary, got a day off to watch her sister Sara Preston, 4, show off at the skating rink at Westfield Shoppingtown Countryside.
Their grandmother, Mary Gray Black, said the family had had to accommodate Danielle's day off.
While their mother attended to other duties, Sara and Danielle "had a busy morning," said Black of Largo.
"We played beauty salon. Danielle did my nails. Mine are pink, hers are jasmine," she said.
Thompson, who was sitting on a bench nearby, had recently returned from Germany. She is living with her mother and her two children, Colin, 11, who attends Dunedin Middle School, and Caitlin, 10, who goes to Skycrest Elementary School.
"I picked the wrong three weeks to come back," she said, saying her mom's Clearwater home was without power for five days after Frances.
While Colin and Caitlin played, Thompson said she understood that the county had erred on the side of caution, but declared "there is no need to cancel school unless there was an (absolute) need."
"It's a disruption in their normal routine," she said.
Carol Amorose, a Realtor, had a harder time.
Although her 15-year-old son Vince passed the day doing chores, she had to take her 11-year-old daughter, Olivia, to work with her. "I'm very lucky," Amorose said. "I own my own business."
How Ivan might affect us