Thursday, January 18, 2007

Another Reason I Love the South...

The mere thought of snow or any kind of wintry precipitation has a tendency to bring things to a halt.

We got some freezing rain here early this morning. Apparently some other parts of the state even had some snow. They started announcing last night some schools that were going to be on a 2-hour delay. I thought I'd heard on the radio last night when I took J. to basketball practice that the schools in our county were going to be delayed. Actually, I'm quite sure that's what I heard. So we didn't set the alarm as early as we usually do and slept a bit later. This morning J. wakes me up saying he just saw the bus go by and pick up the other kids. OOPS!! No problem. We just got up, got ready real quick and we hopped in the car and I took them. Made it in plenty of time.

One of the neighboring counties did delay school by two hours though. We didn't even get any snow here, but they THOUGHT we might. Another county (where it actually did snow today) actually closed schools all day. They're calling for schools to be closed again tomorrow, from what the husband's First Sergeant told him. The freezing rain was enough to put a nice layer of ice on the windshields and we had "icicles" on the inside of the door handles (which delighted the kids..."Icicles, Mom!").

I went to work and one of the ladies asked me if I made it in all right. I kind of laughed and said "yes, no problems." She laughed back and told me to be nice. I reminded her that I had spent the last five years in Germany where it takes an awful lot of snow to delay or shut down anything. Yes, I know that Southern states aren't equipped to handle a lot of snow, but there is such a thing as overkill. Also, yes, I grew up here, but my parents are from West Virginia and we spent a lot of time up there when I was young.

My kids were pretty disappointed that they didn't get to see any snow, though. That's probably what J. was looking for when he saw the bus go by this morning.