Oh, the weather outside is frightful.....

That's right, it's snowing. Can you see the little flakes blowing around? Look close, they are there. My friend K who is a yankee say's it's dandruffing.

The kids are out of school by default. This is South Carolina. Our highways turn into die-ways at the mere hint of inclement weather. The district made the decision yesterday, before the snow began. This is due to the Great Snow Travesty of 2004. Or maybe it was 2003. It was one of those years. I remember it like it was 5 (or 4) years ago....

It was a cold winter, one of the coldest I'd ever seen. We got up that morning and the clouds were so full of snow they looked pregnant. The flurries began before sunrise. Everyone expected the district to issue a two hour delay to see how the weather was going to play out. Most of the time, the snow here doesn't stick. In fact, it melts by noon and then it's 50 or 60 degrees the rest of the day. This time was different. It was in the high twenties and falling. The snow stuck immediately. I warned my mother about sending my brothers to school. "They are just going to cancel." She didn't think so. After all, the district didn't even delay.

They should have.

She sent my brothers to catch their buses and went to work. By the time the kids go to school, it was a mess. The snow had begun to accumulate, a rarity here. Half the teachers couldn't even get to school due to the wrecks that littered ever intersection, stretch of highway, and side road. Two buses hit ice and ended up in ditches. No one was hurt seriously. School was cancelled at around 8:00 am. The district also stopped the buses from running. So, you had kids at school with no way to get home. The buses wouldn't take them and their parents were at work. I got my car down our hill as soon as it started sticking; otherwise, I would have been snowed in and I don't know how my brothers would have gotten home. I had just moved back from I had just moved back from Virginia-it was 2003, I remember now-and had some experience with real snow. I got in my car and went to get my brothers from school. On the way, I passed multiple wrecks, along with stalled motorists. I saw people so scared to use their brakes for fear of spinning on the ice that they just rolled throught red lights. I was more scared of the other drivers than the ice. We made it home safely in the end.

Ever since then, our district is paranoid and overly cautious. There was a PR sh*t-storm after all this took place, of course. So my kids are home drinking cocoa and playing Operation.

Right now, our snow is only sticking in areas but I see the conditions being conducive to worsening. It's cold and getting colder. The ground might get really cold and the snow will stick everywhere. Then it will ice over.

I need to go to the store and buy some bread and milk.