I sort of disappeared this week. Here’s what happened: I live in Atlanta.
So that’s it basically. I mean, the short version. Obviously if you have any access to a news outlet you saw what happened to our city this week. (I’m using the term “city” broadly since we are actually kind of in the country but around here everyone just sort of refers to the city and surrounding suburbs as “Atlanta.”)
For us, the day started off normally. The weather reports had said that it wasn’t going to snow until later in the afternoon and that it would just be a light dusting. I left the house around 9am to run errands on the other side of town thinking that I had plenty of time before any sort of snow would fall. I’ve been working on an exciting project and needed to pick it up from the printer to photograph. I never made it to the printer though because about ten minutes into my drive it started to flurry. Y’all. I am very southern. I don’t drive in flurry. I debated for a minute but really felt as though I should turn around and head home.
I turned around and decided to just run to the grocery store that is only about 5 minutes away from my house. We weren’t even in there very long but by the time we left my car was covered in snow and it took us almost half an hour to get home. I was so thankful that I did not go across town. I snapped the photo on the top right just as we pulled in from the grocery store.
Half an hour later the mailman got stuck in my driveway. He and I shoveled/swept the driveway off and then he just rolled backwards down the huge hill that leads up to our house – it had already started to ice over. That’s when I called Jeff to let him know that he should probably just try to stay in a hotel or with friends or even at the office rather than try to get home.
Unfortunately, he was already on the road.
Over the next few hours I took Scarlette out to play in the snow while alternately watching the live traffic on Google maps and reading updates from surrounding communities on facebook so that I could tell him which roads to avoid and what looked like it might be the safest way to travel. I was so worried about him.
I tried to stay busy and make the snow fun for Scarlette and so we made maple candy a la Little House On The Prairie. We made a sled out of a cardboard box and a trash bag. We made snow angels and tried really hard to make a snow man. We pretended we were ice skaters. We made snow castles and I stayed in touch with Jeff as best as we could.
Eventually he abandoned the car and walked the rest of the way home in the dark. He walked up our front porch steps over seven hours after he left the office and I’ve never been so happy to see him.
And we were lucky, so many of our friends and family were stranded in their vehicles for 12, 18, 24 hours. Many of my friends spent the night in the aisles of Home Depot, some with their babies, and others slept in their cars in the middle of the highway in freezing temps. As funny as it was to everyone that 3 inches of snow paralyzed our city, it was really quite terrifying to live it out.
I am so grateful that J made it home safely. And so I spent the last couple of days playing in the snow with him and Scarlette instead of blogging. I’m not sure if you can tell by the instagram pictures but Scarlette adores the snow. And I adore my little family.
