Christmas Category 4 Kill Storm!

I'm sitting in my cute little wood stove room, with the tree glowing, the Patriots on the tube, and knowledge that any second now we should be inundated with a sky full of snow.

It is already snowing south of here, and by south of here I don't mean all the way down in New Jersey (it is snowing there), but a few towns south. Our sky has yet to slough off the flakes and begin the mayhem.

Long time readers of this blog know my ongoing passionate love affair with the TV news weather people and the hyperbolic approaches they take to snow storms. Several times in the past two or three years they have forecast FEET of snow and we've received ... inches. They've had press conferences with the governor and the mayors begging and imploring people to stay home, and dust settles on the towns. Trucks and trucks of salt are unleashed and begin seasoning our asphalt, and no snow falls; and then a month later a real storm arrives and there is no salt or sand because our Departments of Public Works shot their wad on the horrible flurries.

It is a world where some people continue to take the prognosticators seriously, and others hear "The Boy Who Cried Wolf" and don't prepare at all. We're prepared because that's just the thing to be, but I didn't run like a maniac to the store and buy ALL THE BREAD! ALL THE MILK! ALL THE EGGS! I've long held that there is a conspiracy between the TV news weather dudes and the Milk, Egg, Bread Coalition of America. I am patiently waiting for the Wikileaks cable release confirming my suspicions.

But such is life in the 24 hour news coverage world. They have to talk about something. So they talk the hell out of this. Until people panic.

I had to go to the grocery store today to get dog food. In my haste Christmas Eve to finish up the grocery shopping (we still didn't know what we were planning to eat for Christmas Dinner because we are slackers, total slackers) I totally forgot to pick up a bag of dog food. I realized Christmas morning when Doug served the last cup and a half to the three beasts.

Knowing today was going to be a disaster at the markets, I waited until the Patriots game was about to start to go down. My hesitation was wise. The market was empty, and there was plenty of dog food, but God save me if I needed milk.

I started this entry over an hour ago, walked away, did dishes, ate a slice of cake. And the snow just started to fall, like ash over a city of ruin... softly, silently.

God help us. We'll see if we get the 18 inches they're predicting, or if once again Pete Bouchard sits on his throne of lies.