Thursday, December 15, 2005

The weather outside is frightful...

Tell me, fellow bloggers. Are there 3 more wonderful words to the parent of the school-age child than "2-hour delay"? I heard this glorious utterance from a computerized voice on my phone at 6:30 this morning and fairly skipped back to bed to snuggle with my equally delighted Husband. The day is off to a glorious start!

There was freezing rain last night necessitating the delay. We Piedmont-area North Carolinians don't screw around with the frozen stuff when it comes to asking school bus drivers to negotiate windy roads. Actually, this puts me in mind of my least favorite sentence spoken by nearly every Yankee interloper you run across in these parts this time of year. It is always said proudly and with a bit of a sneer plastered on the face: "You people don't know how to drive in the ice and snow!" Then they stand there with a slight, challenging smile waiting for you to take the bait.

You won't find me arguing, however. The fact is, there just isn't that much in the way of frozen precipitation here. Last year, there wasn't one single, measly flake of snow, much to Sister's disappointment. How can you get expert at something you've got to deal with only every other year or so? And it's not like we're wasting our tax dollars on an armada of snow plows and thousands of tons of salt for the roads. What a way to tie up cash, and the stuff does melt. No, I just stand there and let them sneer a minute before I say to them, "Why would you want to?" Seriously, what better reason to stay at home, maybe build a fire, make a pot of cocoa for the kids, bust out the craft supplies, and just hang out? Leave your pajamas on! Make pancakes for lunch! Call the boss and say you just don't feel comfortable driving and so you can't make it to work! There's one thing a lotta y'all don't know how to do, you know. Relax! Don't rush off, stay awhile. I'll make some coffee, and I think I've got some cookies around here somewhere...

5 comments:

Piece of Work said...

I've lived through ice storms in Chapel Hill before, and I don't care where you come from, that stuff is deadly. Heather and I literally could NOT walk up the hill to get out of Hinton James. No one could, it was that slick. They don't have ice storms like that up North.
But I'm with you--why would you want to drive in those conditions? Hope you all had a warm and snuggly morning!

Dani said...

Being a Yankee, I can tell you that snow is one thing and ice is another. If you've got good tires and extra time, you can get around in snow without too much trouble. But even the best SUVs will slide on ice. So, stay home and enjoy the fire!

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I remember when I was in Chapel Hill and the campus would close down with one flake. Being from New York state (where we got a ton of snow), I thought it was funny at first -- but when I saw how much ice it turned out to be, and how ill-equipped the region was to handle it, I understood why people would stay home.

Plus, I ALWAYS enjoyed a break from school and work. Hope you all had a nice morning and didn't lose power!

Mommygoth said...

Good for you, SugarMama! Sounds like a lovely morning. I remember the incident POW is referring to, and it was funny as hell, although I wasn't sure I would ever be warm again. I am a big fan of pancakes for lunch myself, by the way.........and could use some, since Miss K ate half of my cinnamon toast this morning after eating her OWN breakfast. Hmph.

Anonymous said...

Yes, indeed! And I love ANY excuse I have to stay at home. For me to go to work requires that I travel up and down a small mountain, in a rear-wheel-drive sportscar. A day's pay simply isn't worth the monetary damage I could do to my or someone else's car.

I may not be able to drive on snow and ice, but when I lived out in Southern California, I could at least say that I knew how to drive in the rain!