They called it a snowpocalypse around here, and yet when I wrote to friends out of town about how we were weathering the weather they’d be like “Pax? What is that?” The way they were making things sound down here I figured the whole country was watching the winter superstorm. They’re prolly all watching the Olympics or something like that.
Well, apocalypse on its way or no (it had just begun to snow), I wanted to make lolly-pops like my Mom used to around Valentine’s so I headed out to the craft store for a tiny vial of flavoring, it was the only ingredient I lacked. Since I brought all three kids with me I ended up getting three vials of flavoring, since they were so fun to hold on to. Cherry, Raspberry and Orange, yes sir.
When we marched out the doors with our tiny vials there was an inch and a half of snow on the ground! We piled in the car and headed home – a short distance, no problem.
Well, it’s no problem if you’ve grown up driving in snow and driven in snow all your life. Poor southerners, bless them, they just don’t get a chance to practice all that much, you know? So, within a minute of driving, I witnessed my first accident right in front of me. It wasn’t a bad one, just a guy slowly skidding into the lady in front of him. I made sure they were okay and then proceeded around them.
I turned left onto a slight hill and traffic was at a standstill both ways. After a bit I decided I would get out and see if I could help a bit. I approached the guy in the lead as he spun and spun his tires. I got his attention and he rolled down his window. “I don’t think any one of us are getting up that hill,” he says. “Oh, we’ve got this,” I reply. “I grew up in Colorado and lived in the Midwest for a while. Tell you what, you try again but this time just ever so slightly push on the gas – just give it a tiny bit – and I’ll push a bit and we’ll get you going.”
He looked at me like I was a crazy girl.
I reassured him some and he assented, however he was clearly convinced that I was misinformed about hills in the snow. He spun the tires, I reminded him “nice and gentle” and then a little push and a shove and he was on his way. That made me feel good – like I know something about life. I turned to walk back and the truck next in line started spinning his tires. *tap tap tap* on the window: repeat the conversation from before. He sort of listened for a moment and then *spinning tires, spinning and ended up sliding off the road, A few people and I helped him out, then on his ‘way up the hill’ he slid around so much he tried to make it look like he meant to do a u-turn and then headed back down the slope. Next person in line: you guessed it: spins tires: repeat conversation. I felt like a really really useful person during that half hour or so.
A little more drama ensued on the way home, but we made it safe. As long as no one was around I felt very comfortable. I got home sent the kids outside, and got to work making lolly-pops:
I think I called my mom every 10 minutes while I did this. I was convinced that I was going to botch it up in a real way. For some reason that big fat fancy newly purchased candy thermometer really intimidated me. You see those staring eyes there on the handle? To me they were saying: Do you really think you can do this? I mean, I’d proved I was a useful winter driving coach, but candy making? Dicey.
So while I harassed my mom and ended up successfully making lollypops, Nick walked four miles home in the snow.
Yes, that’s right. Nick had taken the 11:55 bus to campus. It had not started snowing at this point. Well, once on campus and a check on his email revealed that at 12:05 UNC had shut down. “All classes canceled it said.” Well, there you go. What timing.
He stayed for a couple of hours doing homework keeping an eye on the bus schedule. However he soon noticed that the live bus updates stopped and when he looked outside traffic was grid-locked and it was snowing like crazy.
He decided to walk to the bus stop to see if it was still running. It may have been, but traffic wasn’t moving. So, he did a few calculations, pulled up his hood, looked at his shoes and started walking home. It was about 2:30.
Evidently traffic was crazy all the way down the main street in town. He kept checking over his shoulder on the way down a slight hill to make sure no one was going to slide into him. He realized as he passed the bus he had intended to take, there stopped on the road, that it was probably the 1:30 bus and not the 2:30 bus he would have caught. This made him feel pretty good about his walking home decision.
When he knocked on the door at home I was finishing my candy and he was soaked through, with snowflakes in his eye-lashes. But he said the walk had been nice enough – it wasn’t windy and he hadn’t gotten too cold. Chapel Hill pretty much shut down and we got excited about a snow day off.
The next day around lunch time we noticed it was getting a bit chilly in the house. A quick check on the thermometer revealed that though it was set to 70, it was about 66 degrees. Our landlords brought over a small space heater and told us they were in the process of calling someone to get things taken care of.
I spent some time thumbtacking every blanket we own over all the windows. Then, not an hour later, we had a knock at the door and she was saying that the furnace fixer man couldn’t get in today, but he thought he might make it over tomorrow, but might not be able to buy the parts tomorrow, and therefore not be able to fix it. So, she called around and found out that the Ace nearby was selling a fancy infrared heater, but the place wanted to close so she’d have to go get it NOW. Nick felt like we would be fine, however I wasn’t as convinced, but I wasn’t saying much – though you can read my thoughts in my eyes. (I mean I did want it, but I didn’t want her to go out to drive to get it, you know, and she didn’t seem keen on us driving to get it). So even though we told her that we’d be good I get a knock on the door not too long after and there she is with this huge box.
It’s a fancy heater. I feel like it’s a nice little grandma sitting in our house. If you met it you’d think the same thing. It’s all wood-encased and on rollers with a fancy remote. But anyway, our landlady was saying that, on account of her fix-it man not being sure he could get the parts to fix the furnace, she just felt better knowing that we’d be warm and safe during the rest of the storm. So, I totally cried and told her thank you and may have made her a little uncomfortable. I didn’t mean to cry, it just happened. I mean, that was a really nice thing she did there. So, the grandma (heater) is amazing and we were all nice and warm.
I spent some time making little rice hand warmers out of my old socks (just the upper parts, not the gross-o feet parts) and the kids really liked those. Once we had that heater I felt more comfortable letting them go outside to play so they sledded a wee bit on our modest little sloped yard and got ridiculously wet and those are the pictures you’ve been looking at throughout this post.
We came in, had a hot bath and then ate muffins and candy that Grandma Empey had sent for Valentine’s day for dinner. We played games, read books and put them all to bed in the boys room since it’s in the middle of the house. Roz’s room gets really really cold when the heater is working even. They were pretty excited about their ‘sleep-over’ and Brookston kept asking for me to re-heat his rice warmer. *knock knock knock* “more hot bag, please. I need it roasted and toasted in the oven.” Ha ha ha, he really said ‘roasted and toasted.’
The ‘sleep over’ got a little crazy. Evidently the novelty of sleeping with their door open and all together was just too fantastic and around 3:30 I woke up to a raucous party of kids running back and forth and all over the house happy-screaming and laughing like no adult can understand at that hour. So cranky mom rounded them back into bed and the night passed okay from then on. I had on practically everything I own but I was cozy.
The next day the fix-it man was able to get in a fix our heat (evidently our igniter had failed) so that was good. Though I almost miss the heatwave our little grandma heater puts out. Sometimes I just plug her in again and sit right in front of her for a minute or so.
Well the snow is melting and now our back yard looks like this:
I ordered those rain boots just in time, and lucky for all of us they just barely beat the snowpocalypse of 2014.
