Snow-my-goodness!

Having lived in Maryland my entire life, I can remember some pretty big snows from my childhood. I can still picture drifts piled up higher than my head.  I fondly recall missing multiple days of school in a row for particularly fierce storms.  Once, my parents' street was so deeply covered (and rural, therefore not likely to see a plow for DAYS) that when our next-door neighbor cut himself with a knife while cooking, the Fire Department had to park the rescue truck 1/4 mile away at the entrance to our neighborhood...and continue to the house on a snowmobile.  However, I have never experienced anything like what I endured tonight:  our local Giant grocery store, the night before a Major Snow Event.

These days, this area normally gets a measly 8 inches or so of snow a year. So imagine our collective shock in December, when we got a blizzardy-type of snowstorm that pummeled the area with up to 2 feet of the white fluffy stuff.  The Media Wise Guys--when they had dug themselves out sufficiently to comment--promptly dubbed it "Snowpocalypse."  I'll bet they're wishing they hadn't used that one already. The forecast for this coming weekend, once the Crystal Ball Gazers--I mean Meteorologists--finally committed to some numbers, calls for a possibility of 12-18 inches...on Friday alone.  On Saturday the description, beneath a nondescript picture of a snowflake, merely states "100% chance of snow." (Duh, you think?  I gotta get me a Weather Girl Job...)

Now, I don't know if I've never actually visited a grocery store the night before a predicted snowstorm, or if people are just majorly freaked out because of what happened last time...but you would have thought it was Armageddon (with a 24-hour advance warning), and frozen pizzas were the only thing that could save you and your family from annihilation.  There were no carts outside the store (my first clue; sadly, I did not turn and run at that point).  The checkout lines snaked down the aisles, 10-desperate-humans-deep. (second clue;  still I persisted, like a crazed woman who must have her eggs!  and pancake mix!  the world can end, but breakfast will go on!) I picked up the absolute last can of diced tomatoes on the shelf; no lie, the supplies in this particular store were so depleted, they may as well have closed down after I left, because anyone who wandered in later would have been reduced to purchasing Wheaties...and maybe some Spam.

But the true punchline is: the liquor store was even worse! (How did I know this?  I was there, of course.  Wait, that's completely beside the point!)  At least now if we can't get out of our house for days, we can have beer, and brunch!