Life is what happens when you’ve made other plans.
Just before Christmas I had planned to be back on Tybee to tour some new cottages that are being added to the Mermaid Cottages collection, enjoy more wonderful meals at my favorite Tybee restaurants, get some new Flip Cam video footage and launch my new Blog series, “101 Ways to get Tybee-ized”. That was the plan.
But then, I saw on a weather report we were to have a White Christmas in Atlanta. The forecast was for the temperature to remain above freezing which meant we would be having the perfect kind of snow. Moist, flaky, gleaming white with no ice. How could I resist. Boy Howdy. A White Christmas.
That was until Christmas night, less than a mile from my home, when a driver coming the opposite way lost control of her car and slid broadside into our beloved red convertible. It was one of those moments when you know something is about to happen. You see it coming towards you in slow motion. The thought flashes in your mind, “I should have gone to Tybee like I planned”.
Well, it’s now been a few weeks and the insurance company has finally made the decision to total the car. In the meantime, we got hit with another massive snow storm, except this was not the good snow. This was heavy snow with ice mixed in and the temperatures stayed below freezing. Tybee seemed a million miles away and just a memory.
To top it off, my three favorite souls on this earth, my dogs, decided that since we were all housebound they would become possessed by Lucifer and re-enact THE EXORCIST room by room…for three straight days…It was Satan’s Spawn, The Demon Seed and Cujo and me. And, when did someone rearrange the continents since my last geography class? I have a Scottie, a Westie and a Dachshund and I’m pretty sure they originated in Scotland, Ireland and Germany. I’d open the door for them to go out and they’d take one look at the snow and ice and run hide. This meant I would have to bundle up, pick them up, teeter down off the deck and coax them to tend to business. More than once I slipped and landed face down in the snow while the dogs beat it back in the house. I guess it happened often enough the neighbors began watching from their respective porches and proceeded to hold up score cards judging my technique and form for each face plant in the snow. Rest assured I responded in kind with a little sign language of my own…pointed in their direction.
I tell you. When it comes to suffering, I’m right up there with Elizabeth Taylor (OK. I’m borrowing a line from STEEL MAGNOLIAS when Truvy makes this observation, but it’s the truth!).
Finally, a teeny speck of sun peeked through the skies onto my own little Antartica. I ushered the minions out the door and declared they would not get back in the house until they had been freed of their evil possessions.
