Let it snow!

This is the fairy that sits on my railing.

Please pay no attention to the garland.

She usually holds a butterfly or a bird or something...

Nope, no garland here.

...but right now she's holding a handful of snow.
That's just...ummm...a tree! Yeah, a tree growing all over my front railing.

See the snow?
But not the garland!

Pretty snow...

Pretty, pretty snow...

I love the snow. We don't get much of it...maybe once or twice a year if we're lucky, and usually less than an inch at a time. In Georgia, we don't need more than a flake or two to shut down the entire state, so an inch or so is a big deal. It's huge. I went out a little while ago, had to run to the market. Why do I run out of things just when the weather is turning people crazy?

The parking lot was crowded, and people were running...no kidding, running...to get inside for their emergency snow rations. What were they buying, you ask? OK, so you aren't asking and probably don't care, but I'm telling you anyway. They were buying...bread and milk. There was almost no milk left, and the store had imported en emergency order of some kind of bread I'd never heard of. Folks, this isn't out in the country - we have a huge Publix supermarket that probably throws away more expired food in a week than some small towns consume in a day. And they ran out of bread! Yikes, y'all!

I needed to get some prescriptions refilled, and we ran out of...oh, wait for it...bread and milk, as well as eggs, so I had to go wade into that insanity. Since I buy organic milk and eggs and light bread, I was in luck. Also, no one seemed too concerned for their pets, because I had my pick of cat food, which was a good thing...we were out of that, too. Y'all, I just went shopping last Friday...how do we run out so fast? What, the people in this house have to eat more than once or twice a week? Come on!

The check-out clerks were sweet, as always. They were also exhausted - I gather that people have been cramming the store all day, and more than a few have been downright rude. That's just wrong. Why be rude to the people trying to help you? Good grief!

It's the weather...it makes people crazy around here. You'd think this was the blizzard of the century or something, and it's just a projected one to four inches.

Tomorrow, if it's still snowy and not raining, sleeting, or otherwise sloppy, I'm taking Bird out to make snowballs and six-inch high snowmen...we won't have enough snow for anything bigger. It'll probably get rained or melted away, though - seems like it never lasts longer than necessary to wreak havoc on people's senses. Sigh.

Oh, before I went out, I picked Bird up and carried him outside - he wasn't dressed, and I wasn't going to let him stand out in the cold - and we let the snow fall on us. He loved the feathery touch of the big white flakes, and he was delighted by how pretty it was. There's magic to snow at night. Heck, there's magic to snow in Georgia or the first snow of the season wherever you are. I told him the Goddess finally answered all his prayers for snow, and he grinned so big I thought it would crack his face in two. I do so love my little guy.

I got him dressed after that, and while I was gone he went out and played in it with T. They made some snowballs and threw them at each other, so I may have that to look forward to tomorrow. Ah, well...I don't mind being a kid again for a little while.

Sweet dreams, y'all...I'll be dreaming of my childhood winters, of sledding down hills and tobogganing and skiing and snow forts, of snowball fights, wood stoves, and hot cocoa, of birch trees standing like silent white ghosts, and how the hemlock was so grand with his deep green branches and snowy robes. Yep, sweet dreams.