Mother Nature gave us an early Christmas gift the weekend before Christmas. Snow. And lots of it! As the week progressed, the "chance of snow" that they called for Sunday and Monday turned into "winter storm warning" by Wednesday and Thursday. We were prepared. We were snowed in for 4 days, but we were prepared!
On Friday morning I gave the dogs a bath, did the dishes, put a load of laundry in, and folded what was in the dryer ... all by 7 a.m. I was on the ball. I knew the snow was coming and that I would be preparing for it later in the day, so I wanted to knock out as many chores as I could early on. After I made Megan's breakfast and took her to school, I came back home and carried wood from the wood pile and stacked it under the porch, replenishing our nearly depleted stack. It seemed as though the air was getting colder, and the sky grayer, with each trip I made to the wood pile. I carried and stacked until I could no longer feel my butt and thighs. I covered the stacked wood with a tarp, went inside, did my hair and put on makeup so I could go to the store. What kind of guy wouldn't love a woman who isn't afraid to do "boy chores", but is a girly-girl sometimes, too? And did I mention that I love college football and I can cook? Oh yeah, he'll miss me someday! Anyhow ... I thought I would run errands early in the day, before the stores got packed with snow-panicked shoppers, then have time to clean before I picked up Megan. Wrong. I received a call from Page County's automated message system saying that schools were dismissing at 1:30.
I thought that, due to the early dismissal, Wal-Mart would be crowded after 1:30. I thought I was pretty smart getting there before school let out. As it turns out, 3/4 of the county's population thought the same thing as me. When nearly 2 feet of snow is forecasted in a rural area, everybody stocks up. Add the fact that it was the weekend before Christmas and some people hadn't yet finished their Christmas. Add, also, that Wal-Mart is the only place to shop around here, unless you want to drive 1/2 hour or more, and you get a kind of ridiculousness that boggles the mind. Over an hour. It took me over an hour to get through the store, get what I need, and get to a checkout line. I counted & re-counted the items in my cart. 19. Hot dog! I could go through the 20-item express lane. I think that, if I had more than 20, I would've ditched an item just so I could use the express checkout. That's how ready I was to get the hell outta Wal-Mart!
It started snowing late Friday afternoon and didn't stop until around 8 p.m. Saturday. We ended up with 21 inches of snow and snow drifts even deeper than that. Megan had snow much fun playing in it! (I just had to throw in a corny snow pun!) It was more snow than she had ever seen all at once and she was so excited! She would play for a half hour or so, come in, drink cocoa, thaw out for a few hours, then she would be ready to go out again. It was just us girls all weekend (Sonny was in MD pushing snow for his company) and we had the tv all to ourselves. So, between snow playing sessions, we cuddled up on the couch together and watched those cute, sappy Christmas movies on ABC Family and Hallmark Channel. I just love those! I watch them every year and now I have Megan hooked on them, too. On Sunday, we put on Christmas music and decorated the house. I had gotten as far as pulling the Christmas stuff out of the attic, but didn't have the oomph to do anything with it. This year has been such a terrible one. So much death and loss and hurt. So much unresolved pain. I had been in no mood to decorate. But, I guess watching all those Christmas movies must have stirred something inside me, so I just decided to roll up my sleeves and get it done ... well, somewhat done ... but it was definitely more festive around there than before. As an added bonus, I no longer had to walk past a big pile of Christmas decorations and feel guilty for doing nothing with them!
All in all, we weathered the storm well. I am proud of myself for being a pretty self-sufficient woman. One of these days perhaps I will find someone who recognizes and appreciates that ... as well as all of my other good qualities.
