I Love the Winter Weather

A week ago, we'd have already been on the road, headed north to our Thanksgiving vacation.  We'd be about to drive into torrential rain, moderated with periods of heavy rain.  It would not let up for days, although once we were in the mountains of North Carolina, it would turn into snow, which at least was pretty.

I expected some bad weather, but I had hoped we could beat the worst of it.  Weather reports for cities along the way called for periods of rain, which I hoped meant that we would have periods where it wasn't raining.

It was not to be.

Along the way we stopped for a better wiper blade.  The wipers still drug in a strange way across the windshield, but we learned to ignore it.  At some point, we probably need to replace the windshield.

At each stop, I tried to determine if the temperature was dropping into the freezing range.  For the most part, it didn't.

We stopped for a late lunch at Rush's, a fast food place in the Columbia, South Carolina area.  My spouse used to LOVE their fried chicken, and it's still pretty tasty.  I had a barbecue sandwich:  shredded (or was it pulled?  or picked?) pork, mustard sauce, a fluffy white bun.  I took my first bite and felt intense happiness, and I'm not even partial to mustard sauce.  I like a tomato based sauce, more sweet than spicy.

But it was so good to be taking a break from the rain.  It was so wonderful to hear that South Carolina accent again.  The woman who took our order asked, "Aren't y'all cold?"  Why yes, we were, in our shorts and me in my sleeveless shirt.  But we had layers to add.  We would be OK.

We did get to our Thanksgiving gathering place before the worst of the storm.  I'm always happy to pull into Lutheridge, the Lutheran church camp where my family rents a rambling, rustic house, a house where the 7 kids, all under the age of 8, can be their rambunctious selves.  But last Tuesday, I was happier than usual.

We had a good vacation overall, which I may blog a bit more about later.  We had our usual round of pestilence, which isn't unusual with so many little disease vectors.  Some years it's pink eye.  Some years, a vicious cough.  This year, it was a stomach bug.  Some of us threw up.  Some of us had problems at the other end of the GI tract.  I had cramps that lasted for a few days.  At the end of Sunday, I felt like I'd spent several days doing sit ups.  It could have been worse.

Before the stomach bug set in, we had good food, like we usually do on Thanksgiving.  We didn't have as many walks and trips to the play ground.  This year it was just too cold and rainy.  Luckily, we had plenty of room to play inside.

Now it's time to get back to regular life--or December's version of regular life.  We've done most of our unpacking.  We've done a bit of Christmas decorating.  It's time to enter into the final weeks of my online classes that I'm teaching.  It's time to think about what needs to be done in my administrator life as the year draws to a close.  And then, there will be holiday visitors . . .

But for now, let's take these tasks in order:  the online classes, the administrator work . . . and hopefully, a poem before the week ends.