We're currently living in the flats of the North Carolina Piedmont region, an area that doesn't get much snow. We get hurricanes, floods, tornadoes, torrential rains, and weird thunder storms, but not snow. The last snow we got was less than half an inch, on Martin Luther King Jr's Birthday in 1998. We get occasional winter weather advisories, but we tend not to pay a lot of attention to them as they usually don't pan out, especially those with 1/2 to 1 inch of snow expected. So imagine my wonder this morning when the alarm went off and I woke up to find out that I wouldn't be working today.

I woke the kids to tell them that there wouldn't be school, then told Amanda that she could NOT go outside to play at 6 am. I checked with the news channels to make sure that there would be no school and work and settled down to look outside the window at the over 2 inches of snow in our back yard.

Meanwhile, Tanada crossed my bed and night stand to stand on QC's nest to look out the window. She stared out the window. Looked at me in disbelief. Stared out the window. Glared at me. Stared out the window. Glared at me some more. Stared out the window. Gave me a really dirty look. Stared out the window. Ignored Meomy laughing at her. Stared out the window. Decided to take action. Crossed over to where Meomy was sitting on her bed laughing at the kitty, climbed into my lap, and mewed the "fix it mom you broke it" mew.

I laughed harder. Stupid me. She reached up, slapped me on the face with her right paw, then used her left paw on the other side of my face. It was as if she were saying "Look, you broke it, and now the world ended. You are laughing at me instead of fixing what you did wrong. Have you lost your cotton picking mind?" She then walked back to the window and sat staring sadly outside at the end of the world. QC wanted her nest back, but didn't get it for a long time. You know, I thought that Tanada took hurricanes badly...........

Copyright © Pam Shirk
January 19, 2000