The Quiet Times

Winter Storm Pax came a-roarin' into town earlier this week.  All the usual jokes and ribbing about Southerners being genetically incapable of driving in the snow were made, along with our own self-deprecating remarks about the sudden run on grocery store supplies of bread and milk.  Let me just say this - it's true.  Maybe once a decade do we get that much of the wintry stuff - I took two measurements in my front yard and I had somewhere between 7 and 9 inches of snow/sleet - so no, we don't prepare the way others might.  We don't have much in the way of snowplows, road salt, or brine (isn't that used to prepare Thanksgiving poultry?).  And snow tires? Don't make me laugh - I'll probably slip on my ice-covered steps.

But you know what?  We probably enjoy it more than folks who are inundated with the white stuff.

For me, it was all about attitude.  Pax screwed up my plans - since FryDaddy is enrolled in grad school up and over the mountain, he took off from home a day early to beat the storm.  He wound up getting snowed in up in TN, with everything he went up there to do being canceled, so he could've stayed here and we could've been snowed in together, complete with that sinfully-rich hot chocolate from The Chocolate Fetish in Asheville.  Then he was scheduled to get more icy mix this weekend and our Valentine's plans crashed (not that big a deal actually, as we both think V-Day is a bit of a over-commercialized rip-off.  Still).

So there I was, safe at home with the snow starting to drift down with the promise of a snowfall the likes of which we haven't seen in a decade here in North Cackalacky.  I had food, water, the Furs for company, candles in case the snow turned to ice (it usually does here and that spells "disaster" for power lines), and movies in case it didn't.  (Not everyone was so lucky.) What to do, what to do.

Here's the beauty, so stick with me.

It snowed.  And snowed.  And just when I thought they had overestimated their forecast, it SNOWED!  The road I live on is a gentle, yet continual, slope, so driving up that was simply not happening - not in my little sedan that clutches its automotive pearls at the sight of snow.  So I eventually put on layers upon layers of clothing (thanks for teaching me about that early on, Mom!) and took the Spooky-dog out to 'splore this winter wonderland.

And everything was perfect.

Perfect.

It was quiet.  No traffic.  No fuss.  Just - snow.  I hiked up to the secondary road (which was completely covered at the time) and down to the main road (which had been scraped, but was impassable with new snowfall by then) to "tsk, tsk."  The owners of the local Mexican restaurant were busy building five-foot tall snowmen by the road and draping them in serapes.  I'll probably never see that again.  When I got back to my street, my neighbors were experimenting with the best way to create the perfect sledding hill out of our slope.  We all took our dogs off-leash and laughed at their doggy enthusiasm.  We watched the kids play and remembered how to play ourselves.  We built snowmen (okay, just the base for a giant one), and decided to join forces for a four-house potluck that night, which involved homemade soups, Russian tea, and four kinds of desserts (we like to bake when it gets cold, it seems).
Am I behind on grown-up work?  Yep.  And I wouldn't trade any of those two-and-a-half-days my car was parked for a gold monkey.

You want to know the people around you?  Let it snow, baby.  Let it snow.