Wintery Mix

Snow.  In the offing.  Three inches worth?  Could be.  And then two inches more, on Sunday?  We’re facing an embarrassment of snow, by Georgia standards.

Surprisingly, the Atlanta School System, with its penchant for calling Snow Days before the white stuff even sticks, has chosen not to  cancel school.  Which doesn’t bode all that well for pick-up time this afternoon.

Outside, the clouds tamp the day down into a box and everything is muffled, waiting. You can taste snow coming with the tip of your tongue.

In times like this, Atlanta is such an easy target.* It’s easy to sneer at the way we southerners approach snow, our giddy mix of joy and terror.  It’s snowing!  Batten down the hatches!  Rush to Kroger for milk and bread for we just might be stranded in our houses for days and days!

It’s a given:  if the forecast calls for anything resembling a wintery mix, some northern transplant will curl a lip and comment that there’s absolutely no reason on earth for the city to shut down at a dusting of snow.

O, but there is.

You can argue this practically, by referring to the hundreds of thousands of drivers who’ve never had to drive into a skid before — but I don’t care to.

I prefer a (slightly) more philosophical argument, namely, this:

If it weren’t for our trumped up Snow Days when would life ever not be Business as Usual?  When else, in our eternally wifi-connected world, do we have the excuse to do… nothing?  To take to the streets with our trashcan lids and plastic wading pools in search of slopes momentarily more snow than mud, for sledding?

The Husband went out last night for milk… just in case.  I say I’m working, but my attention wanders toward the window.  Outside, all is tamped down into a box, and waiting.

It’s less than punctual, this snow.  The folk who study such things promised it would be here by 11, and I believed them.

Now, two hours later, and the first flakes, finally, have put in an appearance.

I should be working. Next week is winter break, kids out of school.  Spring break is right around the corner.  Then summer.  The three mornings a week I have to work in are numbered.

But o, the snow!  So lovely.  My eyes keep being pulled away from the desk and toward the window.

*Umm, when is Atlanta not the butt of jokes?  Feel free to read recent media reports that widespread cheating took place at elementary schools in Atlanta on last year’s federally-mandated CRCT tests for more fodder for such.