A Frozen World

After lunch today, I ordered my regular Iced Venti Green Shaken Tea Sweetened at the nearest Starbucks. I sipped it down to the halfway mark by the time we got home where I left the kids and my husband and went out to do a little secret shopping. I sat in my car in the Target parking lot for a few minutes enjoying the beauty of watching snow flurries fall even as the sunshine shone brightly on the lot.

I was in Target for a good hour, enjoying a peaceful shopping trip that did NOT involve any breaking up of quarrels, any whining, any trips to the little girls' room to potty a princess who can't seem to catch on to the concept of emptying the bladder at HOME instead of in the nasty public bathroom, no standing around waiting for little people to look longingly at the newest Lego set/video game/Barbie Doll/Nerf gun for the thousandth time. Nope, just me, wandering the aisles looking at whatever I wanted to look at, lingering in the aisles that interested me.

So all this time in Target my Iced Venti Green Shaken Tea Sweetened was sitting out in the car. When I got back to the car, there it was, same as I left it, half of my tea still waiting for me, not a cube of ice melted. And why would it be melted when the weather outside is 27 degrees? In the sun.

I'm really not complaining. Not yet anyway. In fact, I check the 10-day forecast at least two hundred times twice a day looking for that first predicted snowfall. It seems all of my Facebook friends across the country are enjoying some of the white stuff but us. And I was under the impression I had moved to the Arctic. Or, at the least, not-so-far-from-Canada.

The snow has been there in the forecast. In fact, when I checked last Monday, it was on the docket for today. But the very next day, the little snow picture was replaced with sunshine. At least there were some snow flurries thrown in with the sunshine. Now the forecast has snow flurries forecast for the next few days and snow on the plan for next Sunday. I know these meteorologists don't know what they're talking about half the time, so I won't hold my breath, but I really would like to see some of the snow I was promised when I moved to the Arctic.

Until the snow comes, I will just enjoy watching the world freeze over. I know on the way home from Target today the line of cars behind me probably got a little perturbed by my slowing down every time I saw a frozen puddle. I'm not sure what is wrong with these northerners. Does it not fascinate anyone else to see water that is not in the freezer--water that is outside--freezing? You can bet that to this African/Southern Californian/Georgian girl, that is fascinating indeed.

I know my kids are also quite taken with it because they spent hours the other day leaning over the edge of the above ground pool hauling out pieces of ice that have begun to form on the water that has collected in the cover. And today? It was reported that while I was enjoying my peaceful time at Target, they were out on the side of the street chopping up the frozen puddles with a mallet.

Don't ever think that we southerners can't have a good ol' time up here in the Arctic!