Predictable Anticipation

The doorbell rang. Cursing because she had to run downstairs to answer it. She had just settled down with her laptop, her blog, Facebook and the comforting  red jeweled glass of Merlot.

The day had been wound up from the moment she launched out of bed realizing the alarm had critically failed to wake her. Adrenalin setting her onto that course your brain and body know by heart when you have “alarm clock failure”. The routine was put on auto-pilot and she found herself walking out the door 20 minutes later showered, dressed and adequately beautified albeit, with wet hair pulled into a ponytail.

The damn weatherman was predicting snow and so much had to be accomplish. There was no way to know when it would actually start since forecasts are as reliable as asking the neighbors Pomeranian to predict it. The grocery store was wide-spread chaos with the “Oh my gosh I’m going to get snowed in crowd” panicking in the milk and meat aisles. She fought her way through the pandemonium and found a carton of organic milk, a can of frozen orange juice and whooped when she grabbed the last ham. With a few more necessities for dinner she flew to the checkstand, only to wait with the other shoppers who chatted manically about the impending storm.

Thankful for the training her momma had provided, she put out all the “fires” and tidied up the house then contemplated the view outside. The horizon, heavy and gray with the load it bore, rolled in like an ocean swell and she wondered why she bothered and dragged herself to her chair.

Aggravated by the bell, she pattered down the stairs to the entry, opened the door to the smile, the flowers and that face, and the snow began to fall.

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I’m linking up with Write On Edge for Red Writing Hood’s prompt:

We’d like you to craft a piece of fiction or creative non-fiction around the holiday season, keeping in mind that for some people “the holiday season” begins around Halloween and doesn’t end until well after the New Year is underway.

The piece should begin with “The doorbell rang” and end with “snow began to fall.

How’s the Weather?

For those who live in Wyoming or have experienced Wyoming on a long-term, intimate level, you know the expression “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes” most certainly was coined by a Wyomingite (yes Wyoming-“ite” not Wyoming-“an”/”ian” which just sounds too silly).

A story shared by my hubby “Captain my Captain” help put the weather we have into bold perspective. On the computers at work they have an intranet which utilized sanitized, scanned and guaranteed virus free widgets and gadgets; one being for the weather. A visitor to the office wondered aloud what how the weather was so one of the “administrative assistants” (a secretary in my old-fashioned world) checked her computer screen and sees the weather widget says “F & Cloudy” and tells the visitor just that, “It’s F ‘n Cloudy”. All had a good chuckle.

As Captain my Captain tells me the story I think, this is Wyoming weather forecasting at it’s best. To the untrained non-Wyomingite “F &” equals “Fair and”. In the language of Wyoming, it’s”F___ ‘n”, so when it F & Cloudy, or F & Breezy, well you get the picture. It brilliantly describes Wyoming weather and the forecasters and weather geniuses inability to correctly portray it. Only in Wyoming can the weather gods say “fair and breezy” (as it does at this exact moment)

and have the wind blowing at 23 MPH and gusting 38 MPH. Yes a wind that will knock over a petite gal (such as me) is classified as a breeze.

It’s all relative in the grand scheme of things. My best weather predictor is to stick my finger in my mouth and hold it up and say “yep! It’s a bit breezy” and then look at that stack of black clouds looming over the horizon in an angry wave and say

“looks like it’s gonna rain !” Meteorologist smeteorologist! Who needs ’em! They think “F” means fair.