Partially Thawed

Now I know why Mr. Rogers became friends with his neighbors. He was preparing for when he got snowed in.

On Saturday morning, after two straight days of going absolutely nowhere and crazy, I asked Hubs to drive me to the mall.

I'm ninety.

Seriously, we had no idea what the roads were like. The street in front of our house was still covered with snow. I knew the major roads were clear from what I had read in the paper, but that wouldn't help me if I couldn't get to them.

I had three choices:

1) Attempt to drive myself and have to call Hubs to rescue me from the ditch.
2) Let Hubs drive me to the mall.
3) Stay home one more day and go nuts with cabin fever making Hubs wish he had driven me to the mall, or that I was stuck in a ditch. Oh, I kid. Sort of.

Hubs offered to drive me and we all bundled up. I trusted his driving more than mine. He has skills.

I wore my Target snow boots like a REAL BONAFIDE winter expert. I was a wee bit self-conscious wearing snow boots shopping. They seemed a little casual compared to say, some cute ballet flats. However, I decided that sporting snow boots to Dillard's drew less attention than sliding across the icy parking lot and landing on my rear.

Plus, as a nice surprise, most of the other ladies at the mall were sporting snow boots or Uggs or whatever. Simpatico.

Saturday night we went to a baby shower BBQ as opposed to a baby BBQ shower, which could be ugly. (Never say the order of the adjective and/or adverb does not affect the meaning of the phrase.)

The lady who hosted the Shower BBQ should earn extra jewels in heaven. Not only did she invite husbands and kids to the shower, she had them all in her house after the snow storm. Bless her heart. That's hospitality.

I was telling Mama about the BBQ when she asked me,"What kind of BBQ did they have?"

Now if you aren't from the South, you don't know the complexity of that question. In the South, we hold BBQ nearly as close as our religion and guns. (In fact, we may even cling to it.) There are types of BBQ (beef, pork, chicken) and subtypes (Memphis, Kansas City, Texas, Carolina.) It goes on an on. You could call it a BBQ Taxonomy.

The other thing you may not know is that, for us, BBQ is a noun. Not a verb.

I told Mama that at this BBQ, we had hamburgers and hot dogs because the term meant just to grill something.

And grilling, they did. In the cold. We had some of the best tasting burgers I've eaten in a while. I even asked for the recipe.

Yesterday the snow really began melting and turning to slush. It's still cold, but at least we can get out of the house.

I learned a few things from the snow storm.

I like my flip flops more than my snow boots.

When I am ninety, Hubs will do a fine job driving me to my hair appointments during a blizzard.