Must post or keyboard will ice

I woke up this morning and noticed it was raining. "Strange," I thought, "It's not supposed to rain today." As I was looking out the window, I noticed that the car and van both seemed to have the windows fogged up. "Strange," I thought, "The van usually doesn't fog up just because it's raining."

Because the windows weren't fogged up. They were covered in a sheet of ice.

Lovely.

As I got ready to walk the dogs, I told Craig to turn on the TV to see if school was canceled. Because in Memphis? If there's a snowflake on the ground, there's probably no school. (Weirdly enough, they closed both bridges that connect Arkansas and Tennessee over the Mississippi River, but they did NOT close schools.)

Thirteen years ago this week, Memphis (and the surrounding area) was hit with a whopper of an ice storm. It hit on a Thursday afternoon, and by Friday morning, life was a mess.

Craig bolted out of bed Friday morning, exclaiming something to the effect of, "What the f### was that?" That was the sound trees make when their limbs are breaking off due to the weight of ice. That was the sound of said trees falling to the ground, landing on cars, houses, power lines, and, sadly, people.

I bolted out of bed, exclaiming something to the effect of, "Holy $hit, it's cold in here!" Cold because the power lines were down. Cold because the electricity was off. Cold because it was freezing outside and our 60-year-old bungalow was not particularly well-insulated.

Little did we know that morning that the next week would be, um, challenging at best.

Long story short, our power was out from Friday morning to Friday morning a week later. In that house, we were fortunate to have a gas log fireplace, which was our only source of heat. We blocked off the doorway to the dining room with heavy curtains and closed all the doors in the house and used a lot of blankets at night.

It was easy to figure out who, at work, had electricity and who did not. By hair. Because it was the '90's. Blow drying was pretty much a necessity for most hairstyles.

We were lucky to have as little damage as we did. Our trees were badly damaged, but the tree trimmer gave us a great deal at $385 to trim them afterward. Our electrical box came off the house, but a friend was an electrician so he did right by us. The contents of our refrigerator and freezer were pretty much ruined (including the top layer of our wedding cake, sad...), but it could have been worse. There could have been a tree in our attic or through the front of the house. We could have lived in a more rural area, where power was not restored for three or four weeks.

Today's ice is nothing like that storm other than the date and the fact it was not predicted.

I just hope Susie's concert isn't canceled.