As I trudged through the snow and ice with Mark in Chicago on December 26th trying to find the train stop at the close of our Christmas adventures, I thought to myself, "Everything from my toes to my teeth to my hair follicles is freezing right now. I can't feel my face. I shall never complain about Georgian forty-degree winters again."
Even as our plane touched down to snow flurries in Atlanta, I reckoned "Ah, well, I guess I missed our yearly winter snowfall."
Oh, how wrong I was.
When you live in Georgia you learn to become immune to the ominous reports the weather channel doles out when they think there is a chance of snow. If I had a dollar for every day the Board of Education pre-emptively canceled school in a frenzy because of the foreshadowed blizzard only to wake up to a perfectly un-precipitated day, I would have, like, twenty bucks. (Okay, maybe that is not a dramatic enough example...but you get it. And twenty bucks is nothing to sneeze at. It buys you almost two whole movie tickets as long as you don't want to see it in 3-D.)
So when I kept hearing rumblings of snowfall last weekend, I didn't really start getting my hopes up until mid-Sunday. The weather channels seemed sure of it, and I was texting my fellow co-workers throughout the day about what the implications would be for the following work day. As the predicted 7:00 p.m. beginning of the snow came and passed without so much as a flurry, I started to become grumpy.
"I'll bet nothing is going to happen and I got all excited for no reason," I pouted grouchily to Mark.
And then around 8:30 the skies opened up and I have never seen so much snowfall in all my life. We were fascinated, the cats were fascinated- we just sat there in awe watching the world turn white in record time.
"Well, shit," Mark said as we gaped at the window. "We probably should have picked up some more stuff at Wal-Mart."
"Yeah, and maybe not have called everyone we saw there who were stocking up on supplies dumb and panicky..." I said sheepishly.
When we went to bed the snow was still coming down steadily, and we woke up to what we later learned was just shy of nine inches of snow. Mid-afternoon we bundled up and ventured out to one of the main roads close to where we live to see if we could find any sort of life form. God Bless America, because while there was not a car in sight, the Waffle House on the corner was open and ready for business. It was comforting to know that even in a snowstorm, the sign on their door held true: "We've got you covered. Scattered, smothered, and covered."
The notion of being snowed in sounds wonderful and romantic, sipping hot cocoa by a crackling fire and reading stories and poetry to one another by candlelight as you gaze into each other's eyes. In actuality, the closest we had to cocoa was Diet Coca-Cola, a crackling fire doesn't really work out in a second-story apartment with no fireplace, and we never lost power so the reading by candlelight turned into playing hours on end of Donkey Kong Country on the Wii. Sensual. And when I tried to gaze into Mark's eyes, he just said, "What is wrong with you? You're creeping me out."
The other problem you encounter when Georgia gets subjected to abnormal winter weather elements is that the lovely, powdery snow quickly gets buried under a layer of ice that stabs your ankles as you sink through eight inches of it and then when you complain about it a certain husband of yours says, "Well, maybe you should have rethought the outfit." Which he was probably right, because my winter weather ensemble consisted of sneakers, black leggings and shorts (a look I would NEVER sport in any other circumstances), striped knee socks, several layers of mismatched shirts and coats, a further mismatched scarf, and an even further mismatched head-warmer. I looked like a walking episode of What Not To Wear: I Live In The South and Don't Have A Clue How To Dress Myself For The Snow Or Really At All For That Matter Edition.
As the next few days progressed, alternating between slightly above freezing temperatures that slowly melted the snow and temperatures in the 'teens that just re-froze it into a precarious sheet of ice over everything, navigating anything on foot or in a car became damn near impossible. It is a wonder I did not break my ass bone.
Ultimately, the better part of last week saw me spending the majority of it as my alias Diddy Kong and Mark and I dipping into the Island of Misfit Foods as we began resorting to eating things that had been hanging out the pantry for quite some time. I was pretty excited to finally get out of the house and back to work on Thursday.
And then I quickly realized, what was I thinking? Work sucks! Why didn't I appreciate the time off when I had it? Man, I really need a break...
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