Ice Ice Baby

AAAAhhhhh!

I’m home alone.

With an eye to the winter weather, the college girls left yesterday afternoon to get back to school. Super Dad followed right behind them and continued beyond to Atlanta for the week. 

He was rewarded for his efforts with a beautiful winter snowfall and used his shiny little blackberry to capture some evidence. 

 

Braggart.  

As for me, I sit here alone in the piney stick forest without even a flake or flurry to call my own.  

Instead, I have ice. 

Schools in this area were canceled by late yesterday afternoon because that’s pretty much the way things fly around here. If we hear the words SNOW and FORCAST in the same sentence, we shut down Dixie. 

Now, I would have gladly driven a dog sled to get to the school this morning because I’m a contract employee who is paid per session. But no…The Great Ice Adventure of 2011 is costing me a day’s wages.

And it’s neither pretty nor useful.

You can’t play in it.

No one throws ice balls…

Or builds an ice man.

Instead, you stay housebound and pray that your roof is not invaded by torpedoes

  from the piney stick forest.

 

South Georgia pines, you see, are gangly sticks which shoot up branchless for about fifty feet before pluming out like feather dusters at the top. When they get iced, they look like hundreds of little porcupines.

Their needles are very long and heavy and the natural prey to heavy winds.

And ice, of course.

Sometimes, they just drag down the the branch.

Sometimes, it's the entire top heavy piney stick tree.

I'm waiting for that one to go next...

And so I sit here this morning, listening to the snap, crackle, pop of pine boughs giving up the ghost. Periodically, I peek out windows to see the damage. For the most part, I stay downstairs because I’m a scaredy- cat.

If the piney stick torpedoes were not enough, our power has teased off and on all morning as well. I’m  praying that it stays intact until the Ice Capades are over.  I did bring in some firewood in advance of the storm, but if you recall from our Fuddy Duddy Adventure, the wood is green.

Plus, we’re short of newspaper to start it.

Plus, I forgot to bring in any kindling.

And besides, I have never started a fire in my life. 

I have visions of myself huddled in front of a very large candle, dressed like the unibomber,
drinking iced coffee, and crying because there is a skylight in my bedroom where my roof used to be.

So I did the only logical thing I could do about it.

I blogged.

How’s the weather in your neck of the woods?