Atlanta is on day five of Iceapalooza 2011. It's been renamed Hothlanta, seriously. Anywhere from four to eight inches of snow fell, beginning Sunday night. By Monday morning, the sleet and freezing rain had begun, and the snow was topped by half-an-inch or more of ice. Even if you broke through the ice, the snow was so powdery you couldn't really build snowmen with it. Not at our house at least.
The first day was really fun. This was the most snow the kids had ever seen in their young lives. Seriously, this is the kind of winter weather event that this part of the Deep South sees every ten to fifteen years. The boys were home from school. Snow day! They loved the way the world looked, so shining and light. And it was fun to watch the wonder of exploration on their faces.
I heard from a lot of my northern friends that it seemed insane to have kids stay home for six inches of snow. The Atlanta metro area covers ten counties. We are the southeastern home of urban sprawl. We also sit very close to the end of the Appalachian Trail, which means there are lots and lots of hills. And trees. The combination of the two means lots and lots of areas that stay shady even in winter.
The county we're in covers 437 square miles of the 58,000 square miles that makes up Georgia. We have a population of about 800,000, nearly ten per cent of the total in the state. As densely populated as it is, the county has nine (yes, NINE) trucks equipped with snow plows. There are also six graders and as many as eighteen sand/salt trucks. These are the ones that are controlled by the County itself, not including the ones that belong to the small municipalities within the county. The County also has about 2,750 miles of road. (I won't do the math. If you're capable of reading this, you're capable of figuring out that the big trucks are woefully outnumbered by the roads.)
If the roads aren't passable enough for the school buses to pick up a certain percentage of students, then they have to call the day. Our school district has three inclement weather days built into the calendar, just for things like this.
Day two was okay. Lots of video games and movies. The snow was too crunchy and hard to be any fun, and I don't trust young boys to not lob iceballs at each other's heads.
The Snow Madness began on day three. I was restless and thought I'd try again on the snowmen. No such luck. But I realized I could paint on the ice-covered snow with some tempera paint. It worked beautifully. I had some fun, waiting to see if the boys were going back to school on Thursday.
By the end of the fourth day at home, we finally had a little sunshine and some radiant heat to help melt the ice. Our driveway is very flat and long, leading to our small, uphill street. Which leads to another small, uphill street. An hour of shoveling snow and ice cleared a bit less than a quarter of the driveway. I really was tempted just to drive that fifteen feet over and over, like I used to do when I was fifteen and "practicing" while my parents were at work.
Oh, and the Snow Madness continued.I was a little less enthused than I had been the day before. I seriously debated doing a remake of the video for Depeche Mode's "Enjoy the Silence" in my backyard.
Today is Snow Day #5.
And Monday is a school holiday. MLK Day.
The boys have had enough of each other and me. They'll have been out of school for ten days by the time they make it back on Tuesday. DH is working steadily from home and needs to be not disturbed. (Good luck with that, on so many levels.) Every mom I know is drinking alone while she shovels her own driveway. I spent some more time doing a little snow painting, knowing it's all about to melt away. My subject matter improved a bit, because I knew I would be able to escape my icy internment very soon.
Hothlanta reached a balmy 38 degrees this afternoon, and the boys and I managed to get my side of the driveway mostly cleared. (Good luck with your side, DH!) The build-up in the street was slushy enough that I could slowly make my way to civilization. My youngest actually cheered when we got to the gym, happy to be going to childcare while Mommy got to work it with the trainer. I was happy to take two boys to a grossly crowded grocery store. All those provisions we'd stocked in anticipation of the snow were nearly gone. (I was so exhausted after an hour in the grocery store with the kids that I stopped for take-out pizza on the way home.)
I have a couple of friends who travel a great deal throughout the year and miss a lot with their own children. They seemed a little appalled that I was tired of being at home with the kids. I guess it's a 'snow is always whiter' kind of a thing.
Don't get me wrong; I whole-heartedly love my children. But it's like being with anyone for too much time; it will make you insane. Especially when they have the social skills of, well, children. I can't drink with them or make crass jokes. And I just don't think fart jokes are funny.
So now we're facing a few more days of togetherness. Thankfully we'll be able to leave the house and venture forth into the world. I fully intend to take advantage of a movie theater or the mall or some other place where the sights and sounds overwhelm my children into quiet, even if only for a few minutes. I'll be sure to snuggle them close when it happens and revel in the warm stillness that I know will be gone all too soon.
