State of the Union: Much Frozen. Very Not Okay.

Thanks, Snobama.

You know you want dogeweather.

You might have heard that the South got up close and personal with climate change biznasty starting on Tuesday.  The promise of a feather-light dusting of flurries (yay!) very suddenly became a giant fuckbucket of ice and terror (boo!).  

By 11AM Tuesday shit got real and everyone in my office said deuces up and scrambled back into our cars to head home.  A 25 minute commute took me 2.5 hours.  Dozens of cars already littered the ditches and I think I whimpered out loud most of the way.  Also, I had to pee. Being stuck in traffic and having to pee is my worst nightmare.  I began to think of elaborate plots to pee into used coffee cups or plastic Target bags while remaining fully clothed and not pulling over because the interstate lane was literally the safest place to be.     
Fortunately my crazy pee brain was over-dramatizing a tad and I was okay after I found my second wind and a McDonald's.  Not surprisingly it was the only clear driveway within 20 miles because OF COURSE lots of people wanted fries before they died in the freezing cold. 

The calm white river of terror after the storm.

I turned off on a smaller road before I got home to avoid the standstill of cars and also if I wrecked I'd be near my second homes: Taco Bell and liquor stores.  I may have been visibly shaken but I had enough wits about me to develop a strategery.  

After inching through a few giant wrecks, the cars thinned out and I was able to eventually slide home going about 5 mph with my stomach churning.

Less than two inches of snow might seem like no big deal elsewhere but never in my life have I seen such dangerous driving conditions down here.  Blizzard-like wind gusts of snow that immediately turned to ice on the roads makes everything completely impassable to our 2-wheel drive cars.  Our cities aren't meant to handle that kind of thing anyway and we use our salt trucks for storing cold beer in the summer.  We spend our tax dollars on good Southern, Christian things like community pools filled with sweet tea and Confederate flags large enough to blanket an airplane.

I felt victorious as a storm warrior until I realized that it took some people in town four hours to get home.  Praise be to my fairy goddiva Beyonce for her infinite protection and goodwill because then I started to hear stories coming from Atlanta.  It was a post-apocalyptic nightmare down there of 6, 8, 10+ hour commutes.  Thousands of people stranded on the interstate or sleeping in grocery stores, kids stuck on school buses, sweet tea swimming pools frozen over.

Buzzfeed was not exaggerating:

Pretty much what my road home looked like minus a few lanes.  And minus the horse and Ice Walkers.  Check out here and here for much frozen.

I had actually planned to go to IKE-Rah in Atlanta that night because it was the last night of a sale.  Just think, I could have been stranded in an IKEA eating Swedish meatballs and actually living in their 250 sq ft knockout spaces for a few days!  Sounds like the making of a great iPhone documentary called Stranded Lingonberry Sauce.
But instead I'm at home (boo IKE-Rah dream) and set up a makeshift home office which means I lit a bunch of candles, made some hot chocolate and turned on Star Trek in the background.  During work breaks I did laundry, cleaned the kitchen, cooked dinner, made a quilt and wrote a novel.  You work-at-home freelancers are living the dream! 

(If this is not home telecommuting works, DO NOT SPOIL THIS FOR ME!)

Driving through the heart of shitty weather did not make me want to go outside and play when I got home but SOMEbody was intrigued:

"Da fuq is dis shit?"

Look, Charlemagne!  This is the climate your Viking cat ancestors bred you for!  Don't you feel at home?

NOPE.  DO NOT WANT.

She turned tail pretty quick but it's in her genes.  You can't deny your destiny, Charlemagne.  She gets snow crazy though and will go outside for five seconds only to return inside and race up and down the hall for five minutes.  This is exactly what I do to warm up too.

Go!  Fly like the fluffball of arctic wind that you are, cat!

So I'm stuck at home for a bit longer with the taps still running and wearing two pairs of socks.  I get snow blindness every time I look out the window because I'm stupid and it's like looking at the sun when you're seven - it's so exciting but it BURNS SO MUCH.

It's also amazing to see how picky a person normally gets when there aren't terrible weather conditions.  I have a fully stocked pantry, fridge and freezer that I could live on for weeks and yet three days ago I HAD NOTHING TO EAT WAAAAHHHH I'M SO HUNGRY AND POOR.  Well now everything in my kitchen looks fucking delicious.

The bright part of my forced captivity other than the smorgasbord of food is that my amaryllis is in full bloom!

Even this picture will make you snowblind. At least you can't see the dirty window.

It was a Christmas gift that I haven't killed yet.  Leaving the country was probably the best thing that I could have done for it.  I think my mere presence is enough to distress plants.

After all day of being (gratefully) stuck at home, I may be out of toilet paper (oops) and wine (double oops) but I'll be manage.  

I hope all my local people and Southern comrades are doing okay.  If you can make it here I have a crock pot full of pork and a freezer full of appetizers and vodka.

Please bring toilet paper.