Last weekend’s snow in central and north Georgia dumped six inches of very celestial powdery white stuff on our small town. A few hours before it all began Sunday night, I saw the mayor at an event at the Crawford W. Long Museum and asked if the city was ready for the winter storm.

He indicated we would attack the streets with our personal shovels and spades. So far, nobody’s shoveling off our street. The problem really isn’t the snow. It’s the freezing rain and freeing drizzle that came down on top of the snow. The traffic around metro Atlanta is a chaos of wrecks, jack-knifed tractor trailers blocking the interstates, and cars in the ditch.

At least, metro-Atlanta has sand and salt trucks and plows. We don’t. So, we are more or less ice bound even though the ice is probably less than a half an inch. Yesterday, the temperature got up over freezing for just long enough to begin creating slush, slush that froze solid last night making the roads worse than they are.

We’ve been making do with whatever groceries happened to be in the refrigerator from last week. The vat of chili has been tasty, but were running low on wine, candy and doughnuts. The snow has brought a lot of birds to our feeders, giving the cats something to watch out the kitchen window.

After living in northern Illinois, I feel somewhat awkward being snow bound and/or ice bound with less than a foot of snow. A friend who got hit with 14 inches of snow says that we’re just lightweights down here in Jackson County, Georgi.

Possibly so. We’re staying warm, though. Wasting time on Facebook. Reading more. Being ice bound is conducive to working on my next novel. Goodness knows, I can’t escape from it right now. As the words pile up, I can feel virtuous about my dedication even though the weather ought to get a mention on the acknowledgments page of Sarabande when it comes out later this year.

Thank you for all your help, Mother Nature.

Ah, a locomotive’s horn: well, at least the trains are running.

—Malcolm

Learn more about my novel The Sun Singer via Vanilla Heart Publishing’s book club extras!