Milk, bread, and snow

Good thing we bought milk and bread at the grocery store last night, along with everybody else in North and South Carolina. Unfortunately we were several hours too late for hamburger and bananas, but we got the important stuff, and sure enough, this morning we have what Chris estimates is a quarter inch of sleet/ice/snow (it looks like more to me, but what do I know?). Cancellations are running on the tv, and I’m waiting to see if we’ll have school Monday. Although people were talking about the weather all week, I didn’t really think we’d get anything to speak of, mostly because this year I finally bought sleds for the kids. Last year we just used the laundry basket.

Having lived in the North a couple of years, I know people up there always laugh at us and our snow, but it’s different in a number of ways. For one thing, what we’ve got right now isn’t really snow—although we call it that because we don’t get enough white stuff of any description that we want to distinguish—it’s really best for the kids if it’s all snow. But it’s really a good layer of ice laid down on the roads with a nice dusting of light snow on top of it. And the second this mess starts in Michigan, where we lived, the trucks get out and salt the roads down—here if we’re lucky we get salt on the bridges and sand on the roads. I guess they figure no sense buying that big expensive equipment for twice a year.

Last night in Charlotte, a water main broke near the bookstore we were hanging out at, and just past the gushing water in the road, a wet trail of tire tracks leading out of the water was already black ice—it couldn’t have been broken 10 minutes, and already at least five cars were busted up in the general vicinity. And that was before any of the sleet. Part of the problem, of course, is that we don’t drive enough in ice to know how to—but a lot of it is that you just shouldn’t really drive in ice. So here we are at home this morning, all the curtains and blinds wide open even though it makes the house colder, so Will and Laura can watch it snow. And later, we’ll go sled up and down the driveway and have hot chocolate afterwards. If only it was Monday, everything’d be perfect.