Um. Yeah. So all of this happened recently. And it's not even everything.

Oh wow.  It's been two weeks since I've posted, huh? 

I think I've been busy doing a lot of things that I could blog about, but now I can't remember a lot of it.  But here are a few things.

1.  I almost got covered in a lot of jelly at the grocery store and then I saw some cowboys riding horses through downtown Atlanta on my way home.  No, that's not a dream I had one night.  It actually happened.

You see, I was on an aisle where I was looking for a marinade and it was near the jelly.  An employee was stocking jelly and he had boxes of it on a rolling cart.  The cart was right in front of the sauces, marinades, etc. and I was leaning around behind the cart to get the bottle I needed when the employee picked up a box of jelly, the entire bottom of the box fell out and a whole box full of jelly jars crashed to the floor and broke.  There was jelly every freaking where and I was crunching all over broken glass.  Miraculously I had no jelly on me at all even though this all happened approximately 6 inches from my feet.   He looked at me with such a horrid look as though he couldn't believe what had just happened.  I looked back at him with a sad face and said, "Oh no," because I know how to react and make people feel better.  His co-worker simply mumbled under his breath, "I guess I'll go get a mop."  Yes, dude.  I guess you will.  Then I was driving through downtown on my way back home and I saw 3 cowboys riding horses through the middle of Atlanta.  So all in all, that was kind of a weird day.

2.  I used the marinade I got when I almost bathed in sticky jelly to grill out the next evening.  A couple of days after I was outside in a tshirt in spring like weather grilling chicken and vegetables, this happened:

 And I know for those of you who live up north that looks like a light dusting of snow.  That is not snow.  It's solid ice.  I stepped out on my deck with all of my body weight (which is a lot) and it didn't crack, it didn't leave a footprint, etc.  Solid ice. 

Overnight that night is when the snow came and then we had this:

 

Which I know still looks like nothing for those of you up north, but for Atlanta that is a giant mess.  Two days later, it was in the 50s and over the weekend it was in the 60s but I still had ice on my deck until yesterday because it was so solid and thick.

Since I was stuck inside for two days, I decided to get some fun stuff done.  So I did my taxes.

Also, I know those of you not from around here know that when they call for snow down south we all decide we need to make French toast suddenly so we all stampede to the grocery store and fight each other over bread, milk and eggs.  They were telling us this storm was going to be catastrophic and Biblical (yes, they used those words) so I had friends who said they couldn't even find any frozen vegetables by the time they got to the store.

I live alone and buy groceries each Friday evening for the following week because I'm a partier who hangs out at the grocery store on Friday night so I had stocked up way ahead of time before I even knew we were supposed to get snow.

This is where I was the night before the storm:

I stocked up on paint for the two huge commission pieces I needed to work on.  Especially because the guy had just emailed me two days previously wanting to know when they were going to be done and I really had barely started on them.  (It had only been a week or two since we finalized all of the details so it's not like I had been putting him off for months or anything.) 

He wanted abstracts with lots and lots of texture.  Do y'all know what I've never painted before in my life?  Abstracts with lots and lots of texture.  He showed me photos of a painting he wanted me to base the pieces on - not to copy them identically, but he wanted me to use the same colors, same texture, etc.

And I said, "Oh sure!  No problem!  I can do those.  Easy peasy." I said this because I'm a fool.  I'm used to painting not abstract and not textured paintings on canvases that are 16x20".  He wanted 24x48" and he wanted two of them.  That's 8 feet long and 4 feet wide total, y'all. 

So I took the photos he gave me to the art supply store and looked around and found a product I thought would work for the texture (a product I've never used in my life) and consulted with an employee in there and she agreed it would give me the closest look to what he wanted from me.

This is the canvas with the texture stuff.  It looks like the ceiling of the house I grew up in:

And then I started with the 1st of 5 colors:

Y'all try not to be jealous of my gorgeous neon fish tablecloth,  okay?  It was on clearance for $3 somewhere and I knew I would be getting paint all over it so I didn't really care what it looked like. 

TWENTY HOURS later, this is what they look like.  I don't enjoy spending more than about 2 or 3 hours on a painting.  I was ready to stab someone by the time I got done with these.

A close up of the texture if you care:

The next time someone asks me to do humongous abstract paintings with lots of texture I will say this to them:

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Unless they want to pay me about twice what I quoted this guy.

So yes, while my neighbors all walked up to Little 5 Points and hung out together in a 'hood bar to enjoy the ice/snow day, I did my taxes and painted these *^&%$ commission pieces.

3.  The snow ended on Thursday around noon at my house.  On Friday night it rained. 

And oh yeah, we also had an earthquake.

I had just gotten in the bed and about 2 minutes later, my entire house shook.  My bed shook, my windows rattled, the chain on my ceiling fan was bouncing against the lights, and I couldn't figure out what it was.  It lasted for probably 5+ seconds.  I immediately looked at the clock so I would know exactly what time it happened in case I needed to know for some reason.  It was 10:24 p.m. and I was watching the local early news like I'm 85-years-old.  I thought something had fallen on my house.  Or a group of people were running across my wooden deck.  (Because I don't know about y'all, but that shit happens a lot.  I often have groups of people come to my house, open up my front gate, come down the driveway and walk behind my house, and run back and forth across the deck while it's raining outside and the deck is covered in thick ice.)  Then I realized I didn't hear anything fall or anyone running.  All that happened was everything shook.  I thought, "could that have been an earthquake?  Naw.  People will think I'm crazy if I say I felt an earthquake."

About 10 minutes later the anchor on the news said, "We are getting reports of an earthquake hitting a few minutes ago."  And I felt an inkling less crazy than I normally do.

4.  So on Tuesday it had rained almost 24 hours straight.  Between Wednesday and Thursday, we had approximately 34 straight hours of sleet, freezing rain and snow.  On Friday night we had rain and a freaking earthquake.  And on Saturday this was happening in my back yard:

 

The flowers are blooming.  

I have to run now, but I still have to share with y'all about an internet sensation who is coming to my house in April to sell sex toys (oh yes, that is true).  And I injured myself again on Sunday.  Twice. And some weird stuff happened on my drive yesterday.  And my mom had surgery today.  See?  I have a lot to say!

Talk at y'all later!

I had a ridiculous evening and it's no one's fault

Do you know how sometimes you can have a ridiculous day or evening but it's really just a combination of circumstances out of everyone's control so you can't blame anyone for it?  That's the kind of evening I had last night.

My younger brother who lives in Kentucky called me yesterday afternoon as I was sitting in the break room with a couple of friends enjoying lunch.

"Hey, Bev.  I have a huge favor to ask you and you can say no if you want to."

"Okay.  No.  Absolutely not," I replied because I think I'm funny even though I'm really not.

He went on to tell me that his girlfriend/wife's (I've told y'all that story, right?) sister and her husband were flying back from their vacation in Mexico last night and had a connecting flight in Atlanta to get back home to Kentucky.  But a winter storm with possible sleet, freezing rain and snow was forecast in KY.  And they were right on the line of whether it was just going to be rain or whether it was going to be nasty and icy.  And then he asked if they could stay at my house if their flight ended up getting cancelled out of Atlanta.  But he wasn't sure because they might decide to just sleep at the airport or get a hotel but he asked if I could be their stand-by sleeping location.  And then could I help get them to the airport this morning or let them hang out at my house while I came to work if their flight was delayed for a lot longer.

I've never met these people in my life, but because I know my brother's girlfriend/wife really well and I've met her parents and they are all super cool people and don't seem at all to be a family of serial killers, I was totally okay with her sister and the sister's husband staying with me.

"Sure," I told my brother.  "But they need to give me time to clean their bathroom when I get home from work."  My mom and her husband were here for a week last month and I had not gotten around to cleaning it yet.  Don't judge me.  I have 4 bathrooms in my house so I had others to choose from.  Luckily, something had told me to wash the sheets and clean up the guest bedroom this past weekend so that room was good to go.  The bathroom?  Not so much.

I've also been in the process of de-Bailey-ing my house:  I spent a good part of this past weekend steam mopping floors, throwing out her food dishes, water bowls, litter boxes (yes plural even though she only used them occasionally), in between sitting down and sobbing because I was having to throw away all of that stuff.  I also had to prepare a couple of food items to take to a Super Bowl party, go to the Super Bowl party, and I was working on the two commission paintings I need to do so I didn't get all of the cleaning done.

I keep my house fairly clean most of the time.  But you know how it is when you have company coming.  You do extra cleaning.  Especially when everything is covered in a layer of cat hair and my cat had been sick with the never ending poops for over a year.  And I had never met these people in my life.

I got home from work at 7:00 and decided to steam mop the bathroom floor.  I cleaned the toilet (which is my most hated thing to do in all the world), cleaned the sink, and then before I cleaned the bathtub/shower I got sidetracked.  I decided I needed to try and get all of the cat fur off of the chair and ottoman in my reading nook which is right outside of the guest bedroom.  So I started cleaning that.  It took a while.  It still needs work.  Seriously?  How does the fur get so stuck in stuff?  I usually swipe a stack of the envelopes that adhere to Fed Ex packages from the office and use them instead of lint rollers.  They are way bigger and stickier.  (And do you know how many times I've sat in that reading nook and read a book in the over 2 years I've lived in my house?  ZERO.  That's how many times.)  Then I decided to steam mop my dining room, reading nook, and kitchen again.  Even though I just did it 3 days ago and all I've done is walk through the dining room and reading nook.  I haven't done one thing to make a mess.  Then I scrubbed the kitchen sink.  Again. 

The dining room.  It has super clean floors.

 

The reading nook.  It still has a lot of fur in it.

Then I started stressing out because I live alone and am more than happy to live off a bowl of cereal or piece of toast for dinner.  What on earth was I going to feed these people?

Around 8:15 I got a text from my brother's girlfriend/wife that her sister and husband had just boarded their plane and the flight had not been cancelled.

So I sat down from exhaustion and ate a gourmet piece of toast for dinner and was glad I didn't have to do any additional cleaning last night.

Then at 9:00 I got another text that said the plane was still sitting on the runway and they had not taken off yet so they might still need a place to stay because their flight was possibly going to be cancelled after all.

So I jumped back up and started cleaning up the pile of mail that was cluttering my kitchen counter and then I decided I should probably at least clean the toilet and sink in the other bathroom downstairs in case they used that one at some point as well.  No one has used that shower since I last cleaned it so it's good. 

At 9:20 I received a text that their flight had been cancelled, they were disembarking the plane but had to get their thoughts together, figure out where their luggage was, etc. and would let me know what was going on.

I went and ran the Swiffer duster over everything in the living room, ran the dust mop over the floors in there because I was frankly tired of steam mopping at that point, and made sure everything was straightened up.

Then I remembered I had never gotten back to clean the shower in the guest bathroom so I was heading that way and thinking, "How have I just spent almost 2 hours cleaning the downstairs of my house when it really was pretty clean to begin with?" when another text came in around 9:30.

"Hey Bev!  Thanks anyway, but they are really good friends with a coach at (local university here in Atlanta) and they just found out she is in town so they're heading to her house to spend the night."

So I started drinking.  (Not really.)

I did immediately go to bed though.

Thankfully, I won't have much cleaning to do this weekend now.  And I could almost eat off of my floors at this point. 

But I still have to clean that *&^% shower. 

An unforgettable day

This post is going to be more facts/information than fun or entertainment.  

Those of us down here in Atlanta know something.  We know we were the butt of America's jokes last Tuesday when Snowcopalypse 2014 hit us.  Y'all, there was nothing funny about what Atlanta went through last week.  People were in very dire and dangerous situations. 

I get it.  How can less than 3 inches of snow close down a city and cause the chaos that happened here?

It was a combination of things.  I don't think you can blame it on any one person or any one thing. Schools, businesses and government offices all left at the same time and the streets were clogged.  I was surprised the schools were open in the first place.  They normally stay closed if one snow flurry falls or if there is the threat of one snowflake coming.  The few salt/sand trucks we have could not treat the roads because of the massive gridlock.  Some people have asked why they didn't treat the roads ahead of the storm.  I've heard some people say if they had, the cars driving on all of those roads during the morning commute would have blown most of the salt/sand away.  I'm not an expert on that kind of thing so I have no idea.  All of the cars that hit the roads at the same time melted and compacted the snow.  And the temps were falling so it all turned to a solid sheet of ice.  Atlanta is full of hills.  I don't care if you grew up in Alaska - it's impossible to drive on an icy hill without snow tires which we don't have down here.  Well, you can drive down an icy hill fine.  Stopping tends to be a bit of a problem though.  Atlanta has TONS of 18-wheeler traffic.  There are laws that they cannot come inside the perimeter (an interstate that goes around the city) unless they have documentation proving they have deliveries or pickups inside.  But a lot of truckers break that law.  Truckers are required to have chains for their tires when they come here.  But from what I understand, the officials don't enforce them actually putting them on.  So a lot of trucks jack-knifed or got sideways in the roads and no one could get around them.  In other words, there are a number of things you can blame for what happened last week.

However, I will say that (in my opinion) the mayor of the City of Atlanta was getting a ton of the blame that he did not deserve.  I work in the city limits and live in the city limits.  It took me 2 hours to get home for my 8 mile commute.  On an average day it takes me an hour because traffic here sucks on a sunny day with no weather situations occurring.  I spent over 30 minutes just trying to get out of my parking deck because everyone left my building at the same time.  So in reality, it only took me 30 minutes longer than my normal commute time (and that has happened before when there was no bad weather going on).  The people who were in their cars for 12 - 24 hours driving, who sat on the roads stranded, who slept in stranger's homes, in the floors of grocery stores, drug stores or Home Depots, etc. were people trying to get out to the burbs.  I have not personally heard of anyone who works and lives in the actual City of Atlanta who experienced the chaos that we all know was going on outside the city limits.  I'm not saying it didn't happen to anyone, but I have not heard about it if it did.  The only problem I know of personally within the city limits is a friend of mine who has a child that had to spend the night at school.  But her child was safe, she wasn't sitting on a bus, she was fed, she had access to restrooms, they watched movies, etc.  Was it ideal for her child to be away from her overnight sleeping at school?  Of course not.  But she was not in danger like a lot of people were that night. 

There were people stranded without medications.  Babies in cold cars without enough formula, diapers, etc.  Children stuck on school buses with no food, water or restrooms.  People abandoning their cars and walking miles in ice and snow with temperatures in the teens.  A baby was born in a car on the side of the expressway because the parents had been stuck in traffic for hours and emergency vehicles could not get to them.  There was a teenage girl who was trying to push her grandmother's car which was stuck in the ice.  Another car came sliding on the ice and the girl couldn't get out of the way.  Her leg was amputated.  Another woman was killed when her car slid into a ditch.  And we heard on TV and read on the internet about how people around the country were laughing at us.

I realize how blessed I was and you have no idea how grateful I am.  But the mayor of the City of Atlanta should not be taking the entire blame for people who were stranded miles outside the city limits.  He is not responsible for those roads.  And he had his hands full with the City of Atlanta.

What many people around the country don't realize is just how big metropolitan Atlanta is.  Some people say it consists of 10 counties.  Some say it's 28 counties.  There are approximately 160+ cities within those counties in the metropolitan area.  But most people will agree the metro Atlanta area is ginormous and we have a whole bunch of people here.  I've seen articles that say that metro Atlanta is the size of the state of Massachusetts.  In fact, I just Googled "population of Atlanta"  and a box popped up that says the population of our metro area is larger than 24 individual states. 

Metropolitan Atlanta and the City of Atlanta are not the same.  The actual City of Atlanta has a population of less than 500,000 people.  But during the workday, there are over a million people in the city.  And the mayor of the City of Atlanta has nothing to do with the interstates y'all saw pictures of last week.  Yet you would not know that by a lot of the coverage I saw.  Each county has officials.  Each city within those counties has officials.  And no one is in charge of overseeing the entire region.  That is where a lot of the problem came from, I think.  Everyone is doing their own thing and not coordinating anything.  And what that resulted in was the citizens all being left to fend for themselves.

I don't work for the government so I have no inside information, but I read that the last time we had an ice storm back in 2011, the city had 4 snow plows.  Two of them ran into each other as they were pulling out of a parking lot and reduced our snow plows in half.  I've also heard we had 10 plows.  I don't know what the actual number was.  They did purchase more, but it's still not many.  We have tons of streets and roads and interstates here.  Because we don't get this kind of weather on a regular basis, it makes no sense financially to buy tons of equipment that might sit around for years between use and they would not have the personnel on hand to operate them anyway.  So as Atlantans, we have to accept that we might get shut down every few years for a day or more due to ice.  The protocol is that they treat streets in front of fire stations, police stations, and hospitals.  They treat one or two lanes of the interstates (we have interstates that are as many as 8 lanes in each direction in some areas and they are packed on a normal day with no ice or snow).  And next they treat major roads.  Side streets where the majority of people live?  Those are not treated.  In fact, the street I live on is a pretty heavily traveled side street.  It is used a lot by emergency vehicles as a cut through so I thought there was a possibility my street would be treated (this is the first winter weather event we've had since I bought my house 2 years ago so I wasn't sure).  We saw sand/salt trucks going up and down our street last week to treat the major roads on each end of our street.  But they didn't drop a teaspoon of salt/sand on my street.  That's just part of life down here.

As for personal stories of people I know?  I've heard some doozies. 

One of my co-workers had to stay in the office for a client meeting/closing.  By the time it was over, the streets were impassable out towards where she lived because of the ice and gridlock.  Ten people slept in our office.  The clients were from out of town and had previously booked a hotel room across the street and they were lucky.  There was a poultry convention here in town and my co-workers were unable to find a room anywhere.  So they slept in the office.  Ideal?  No.  But they were warm, safe, we have a beer machine, vending machines, the attorney in charge of the closing had ordered a case of wine from a private club located in our building, etc.

Two of my co-workers slept overnight in a restaurant.  One of them decided she was just not going to be able to get home so she pulled into a shopping center and decided to go in the restaurant to warm up a little bit.  She saw another co-worker already in there and they ended up staying all night.  The restaurant fed them for free.  There was a couple in there with a 3-month-old baby named Luke.  Everyone there knew Luke and entertained Luke before the ordeal was over.  My co-workers left our office at noon on Tuesday.  They finally got home around 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday.

Another friend of mine left our office at 12:30 p.m. on Tuesday.  She arrived home at 12:43 a.m. on Wednesday completely stressed and exhausted.

Another friend of mine left our office at noon.  It took her 13 hours to get home.  She came very close to running out of gas but miraculously made it up an exit ramp around many abandoned cars, cars that couldn't get up the ramp because of the ice, cars that had simply run out of gas.  Before she made it to the gas station, she had used a big cup and an old t-shirt in her car in lieu of a restroom.  I heard many similar stories.

One of our partners had been down in Orlando.  The airline emailed him on Tuesday to let him know his flight to Atlanta had been canceled.  They emailed him again and said they were re-routing him to LaGuardia and then to Atlanta.  Then they canceled that.  They emailed him again and said they were sending him from Orlando to Minneapolis to La Guardia to Atlanta.  He decided to rent a car and try to drive.  He got as far as Macon which is south of Atlanta and the state patrol had the roads closed.  They were not allowing anyone to drive into the Atlanta area because things were so awful here.  So he spent the night in Macon and got to Atlanta the next afternoon.

But in the midst of chaos, the beautiful human spirit shined.  People gave total strangers a ride when they needed one.  People let complete strangers spend the night in their homes.  People stood out on the streets handing out sandwiches, hot chocolate, granola bars, bottled water, etc. that they prepared in their homes to people who had been stranded in the cars overnight.  Home Depots opened their doors along with Publix, Kroger, CVS, Walgreens, etc.  Was sleeping on the floor of a grocery store fun?  I would suspect it was fairly miserable but at least they had access to restrooms, food, water, and warmth.  Pharmacists got life saving medications to people who were stuck away from home without them.  Ambulances carried high school students off a school bus to a Kroger grocery store.  The manager allowed them to help themselves to anything they wanted to eat and drink for free.  Some bus drivers spent 16 hours or more trying to get kids safely home.  And then they had long drives to get to their own homes after that.  Neighbors helped neighbors.  Strangers helped strangers.  New friendships were formed.

So yes, we know a lot of the country was laughing at us, shaking their heads, calling us imbeciles and dumbasses.  But I assure you there was nothing funny happening.  People struggled.  People cried.  People suffered.  I was blessed and I know it.  I made it home safely and in a relatively short time. 

It is a day Atlantans will never forget.