Chapter 1
The first time I saw him, an amazingly rugged, gorgeous, young Robert Redford of a man, he was covered in snow. Which I'm afraid of.
It didn't bode well.
I admit it: I'm afraid of snow. People have all kinds of crazy phobias, right? Mine just happens to be snow.
Nothing bad has ever happened to me because of snow. I've never been trapped in a snowstorm or lost in a blizzard or caught in an avalanche. I've never been snowed in with no heat or food and the bathroom frozen solid. I've never skidded off a highway into a snow bank and had to await rescue.
It's really not even snow that I'm afraid of. It's what the snow represents. It's a form of claustrophobia. So while other people are exclaiming about how beautiful it looks, all crystalline and catching the light as it falls, all lush and silent and Christmas-like, I'm thinking about not being able to get to the store, or to work, or just out.
It makes me feel trapped.
I don't like feeling trapped.
That's exactly what I was feeling. Because while snow had never done anything to me before, it was doing it now.
I've heard that Georgia is always a bit surprised when a big snowstorm hits. Frankly, I think that's probably true everywhere. Blame it on technology. We think we can control everything because we're so far advanced, but Mother Nature has tricks up her sleeve that there's nothing we can do anything about. And this snowstorm came late in the year. Everyone should have been starting to plan to lose those last few winter pounds and hitting the tanning salon so they weren't all pasty winter white when spring hit. Gardeners were definitely ordering seeds and making plans. Animals were thinking about coming out of hibernation. And the flowering peaches and cherry trees were making initial movements toward their annual showy displays. It was the very end of February, the very start of March. Almost spring, right?
Then, bam! Snow.
I didn't even live here yet. Somehow that made it worse. When the snowstorm that turned the interstate I was traveling into one of the so-called Snow Jams hit, I was still technically a resident of sunny Las Vegas, enjoying my 300 sunny days a year, blithely aware it would never dare snow on Sin City. But the economic rollercoaster of the 21 st century was still rolling and I'd lost my job as an economic development specialist and had flown to Georgia for the last of a series of interviews, this one in person.
If I got there.
As the tall, broad, gorgeous apparition made his way toward my car, one of the many stranded on Interstate 75 in the unanticipated blizzard, I frantically posted to social media and texted friends.
Did anyone order me one rescuer, tall, blond, handsome? Speak up, because he's big and coming my way and I'm worried.
It was taking him a while. The sides of the road and the median were nothing but piles of snow, except where they were piles of snow mixed with road debris from where drivers tried to force their way off the highway by way of the shoulder.
No immediate response from assorted friends. I had friends in Georgia, hence the hope for the new job, in the wilds of Hanlin, north and west of Atlanta up Interstate 75. Pretty place according to all the Google Images, and not supposed to strand motorists on highways under tons of snow.
"It's not that much snow, Mya," my sister Jill would have told me. Though she probably would have called me Michelle, since Jill tends to eschew nicknames. She's very straight laced and reality based. Which is one reason I hadn't called or texted Jill when I got suck along with every other traveler on this road. She thinks she's always right (Curse of the Younger Sister) and she often is (which sucks). She's also happily married at 23, with two kids, a cat, a dog and a Porsche SUV, and I'm still single.
The guy in the sheepskin jacket, hat pulled low, scarf around his throat, gloves making his hands look crazy big, was nearly at my car now. Couple more skidded-out rear-wheel
The first time I saw him, an amazingly rugged, gorgeous, young Robert Redford of a man, he was covered in snow. Which I'm afraid of.
It didn't bode well.
I admit it: I'm afraid of snow. People have all kinds of crazy phobias, right? Mine just happens to be snow.
Nothing bad has ever happened to me because of snow. I've never been trapped in a snowstorm or lost in a blizzard or caught in an avalanche. I've never been snowed in with no heat or food and the bathroom frozen solid. I've never skidded off a highway into a snow bank and had to await rescue.
It's really not even snow that I'm afraid of. It's what the snow represents. It's a form of claustrophobia. So while other people are exclaiming about how beautiful it looks, all crystalline and catching the light as it falls, all lush and silent and Christmas-like, I'm thinking about not being able to get to the store, or to work, or just out.
It makes me feel trapped.
I don't like feeling trapped.
That's exactly what I was feeling. Because while snow had never done anything to me before, it was doing it now.
I've heard that Georgia is always a bit surprised when a big snowstorm hits. Frankly, I think that's probably true everywhere. Blame it on technology. We think we can control everything because we're so far advanced, but Mother Nature has tricks up her sleeve that there's nothing we can do anything about. And this snowstorm came late in the year. Everyone should have been starting to plan to lose those last few winter pounds and hitting the tanning salon so they weren't all pasty winter white when spring hit. Gardeners were definitely ordering seeds and making plans. Animals were thinking about coming out of hibernation. And the flowering peaches and cherry trees were making initial movements toward their annual showy displays. It was the very end of February, the very start of March. Almost spring, right?
Then, bam! Snow.
I didn't even live here yet. Somehow that made it worse. When the snowstorm that turned the interstate I was traveling into one of the so-called Snow Jams hit, I was still technically a resident of sunny Las Vegas, enjoying my 300 sunny days a year, blithely aware it would never dare snow on Sin City. But the economic rollercoaster of the 21 st century was still rolling and I'd lost my job as an economic development specialist and had flown to Georgia for the last of a series of interviews, this one in person.
If I got there.
As the tall, broad, gorgeous apparition made his way toward my car, one of the many stranded on Interstate 75 in the unanticipated blizzard, I frantically posted to social media and texted friends.
Did anyone order me one rescuer, tall, blond, handsome? Speak up, because he's big and coming my way and I'm worried.
It was taking him a while. The sides of the road and the median were nothing but piles of snow, except where they were piles of snow mixed with road debris from where drivers tried to force their way off the highway by way of the shoulder.
No immediate response from assorted friends. I had friends in Georgia, hence the hope for the new job, in the wilds of Hanlin, north and west of Atlanta up Interstate 75. Pretty place according to all the Google Images, and not supposed to strand motorists on highways under tons of snow.
"It's not that much snow, Mya," my sister Jill would have told me. Though she probably would have called me Michelle, since Jill tends to eschew nicknames. She's very straight laced and reality based. Which is one reason I hadn't called or texted Jill when I got suck along with every other traveler on this road. She thinks she's always right (Curse of the Younger Sister) and she often is (which sucks). She's also happily married at 23, with two kids, a cat, a dog and a Porsche SUV, and I'm still single.
The guy in the sheepskin jacket, hat pulled low, scarf around his throat, gloves making his hands look crazy big, was nearly at my car now. Couple more skidded-out rear-wheel
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