Don't Eat the Yellow Snow

What does it mean when your 8 year old son has a friend over and your 5 year old daughter comes out of her room wearing a bathing suit and some fancy dress up high heels? She opened her door very dramatically and struck a honest- to- God pose like some sort of pin-up girl. She batted her eyelashes and said, "Hello, Andrew."

I was stunned but had to run upstairs to laugh in my pillow so Mollie wouldn't hear me. Fischer and Andrew were totally oblivious to Mollie's attempts to win Andrew's attention. I guess they thought she was just getting ready to swim somewhere.

Later, I whispered to Mollie that she should change clothes since it was too cold to be wearing a swim suit and also that it wasn't appropriate. And she said, "But I look good, don't I?" And then she did some pretty fantastic dance moves. Where does she learn this stuff? I don't know.

We finally got some snow that we've been wishing for. We got a whopping 3/4 inch and everything closed down. One poor loaf of Wonderbread lay smushed on the floor as panicked patrons made mad dashes to the grocery store to stock up on milk, bread and batteries. I was reminded of my first winter in Taos, New Mexico the first time it snowed one evening. I was so happy to stay in bed the next morning assuming the whole town was snowed in and shut down. I woke to the sound of the telephone ringing. It was my boss asking where in the world I was. I was like, "It snowed!" And she was like, "I know! You're not in Georgia any more, so get yourself to work!" I learned pretty damn quickly how to get snow off my car, how to buy snow tires, and how to shovel a driveway. I realized how lucky we are in the south that whole towns close at the sight of a few flurries so that we can hibernate and enjoy the beauty.