A Bowl Cut, a Boggin, and Barney

I laughed. The giggles kept me warm against the unfamiliar cold snap that invaded our typically mild Southern winter. Mama also kept me warm, her arms and legs pulled tight around me as we situated ourselves on the red plastic sled.

Our normally gravelly street was slick with fresh ice, and a sled that rarely saw the light of day was dragged from underneath the house and given a chance to reveal its true purpose. I had never seen so much snow. Later, the snow fall would earn its own name: The Blizzard of '93. But to me, a ten-year old with a bowl cut and a boggin, it was simply paradise.

Daddy tested the sled first, slipping down the hill fast and laughing like a little boy. Barney, our Basset Hound, was right behind him the whole way, baying at the top of his lungs. Looking back, I guess Barney was just laughing along with us, but it was us who got the last laugh when poor Barney couldn't make it back up the slippery hill. Daddy had to carry him back up, and after that initial sled launch, we learned that someone had to hold Barney's collar while the sled glided its way down the hill or else we'd be stuck carrying eighty pounds of Basset Hound up and down the hill all afternoon.

I laughed then. At the joy of sledding, the silliness of a family dog, the simple happiness of an afternoon with my family.

I laugh now. At my Mama and my sister's matching perms, my puffy lavender coat and ugly white boots, the memory of my Daddy carrying Barney up that hill.

I treasure the laughter and the memories of that Southern snow, now frozen in time forever.

Author's Note: This was written in response to the following prompt from Write on Edge. 

Everyone has a favorite photo of themself, whether it’s a childhood snapshot, a professional graduation or wedding photograph, or a close-up taken amongst friends.

Some say a photograph steals the soul. This week, show us yours: take us into the moment that photograph was taken. Show us who you were then and what the photograph means–in 300 words.

What memories do you have of sledding?

Why I Could Never be a Housewife

Why could I never be a housewife? That's easy: 1) I'm lazy. 2) I get bored EASILY. Having spent the last three days iced/snowed in, I have been SO completely and utterly lazy and bored it's not even funny. Don't get me wrong, I've done housework and cooked meals. I've been on top of all that like never before, and I've enjoyed being on top of it. But I don't want to do that every day for the rest of my life. And when left with no other options but doing housework and sitting around, I do the housework, and then I sit around. Not being able to go outside (or anywhere for that matter) has left me feeling stir crazy and bored out of my mind. Perhaps if I could get out and actually accomplish things, I wouldn't feel this way, but I'm pretty sure I'm just not cut out to be a housewife.

Now, I could definitely be a stay at home writer. The problem this week has been a complete lack of inspiration. Yeah, it turns out that LIVING and EXPERIENCES provide the fodder and motivation for my tales, and without being able to get out and live and experience anything (aside from the snow which got boring after the second trip out in it), I haven't been able to write. Call it writer's block or what you will, but I am most definitely at a complete loss for words and that makes me mad. Really, really mad.

The source of my frustration.

So, as bad as I can hate going to work day after day, I'm realizing that work actually inspires me in a lot of ways. If nothing else, it provides me with the motivation to fulfill my dream of becoming a professional writer. Every day that I spend working towards that goal (even if it is working in a field that I don't always want to be in) brings me one step closer to reaching it. So, I can honestly say I'm looking forward to going back to work tomorrow and, hopefully, putting a stop to this writer's block.

In the meantime, as a housewife this week, I cooked at least one good (and simple) meal.

Spicy Chicken Tenders (modified by Jeremy Ross)

1 lb chicken strips/tenderloin
2 tablespoons peanut oil (enough to cover the bottom of a large fryer)
1/2 cup milk
a few dashes of hot sauce
1/4 cup flour
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/8 teaspoon garlic powder
1/8 teaspoon onion powder
1/4 teaspoon cajun seasoning
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
salt to taste

Soak chicken strips in milk and hot sauce in refrigerator for at least 30 minutes prior to cooking. Combine flour and spices on plate or in bowl. Dredge each soaked chicken strip in flour mixture, coat well. Heat peanut oil (which doesn't burn as easily as vegetable oil) over medium-high heat. Place dredged chicken strips in oil. Cook for 5 to 7 minutes on each side or until crispy and brown. Serve with wing sauce.

Oven-Roasted Potatoes

5 to 6 medium potatoes (I used russet, I've seen a lot of recipes that use red potatoes)
1/2 to 1 envelope onion soup mix (you can over-do this depending on the size of our potatoes)
1/3 cup olive oil

Preheat oven to 450 degrees. Cut potatoes into small, uniformed cubes. Combine potatoes in bowl with onion soup mix and olive oil. Mix to coat well. Place in greased medium-sized casserole. Bake 40 minutes.

Milk and Bread

Well, according to Chief Meteorologist Glenn Burns aka minor god in the Southern weather world, snow is headed to Georgia. Mr. Burns and the other lower ranked meteorologists (with a little m) are throwing around words like "significant" and phrases like "WINTER STORM," and we are all supposed to panic and shudder with fear in response. You gotta love a Southern "snow event" (another phrase coined by the meteorology gods). It sends everything into upheaval and causes the most interesting reactions imaginable.

But to give us Southerners the benefit of the doubt here, we're honestly just not used to this kind of weather, so how can anyone expect us to have a normal reaction to it? Oh, yeah, Yankees and Mid-westerners can sit up on their high horses and laugh at how we in Dixieland flinch at the tiniest flake, but let's see y'all deal with smoldering temperatures and a little something called HUMIDITY. Try having it so hot that you lose your breath when you walk outside, or that your makeup melts off your face as you sweat from pores you didn't even know you had. That's right, who's laughing now, America?

The benefit of the doubt aside, however, I do have one very important thing to ask my fellow Southerners. A question that has been nagging at my mind since I was a little girl, and now, as a full grown (while not necessarily grown up) woman, I'm more curious than ever. Why, sweet Southland, why milk and bread?

Anytime any kind of winter weather "event" hits the South all I hear is milk and bread. Milk and bread! Milk and bread! We've got to stock up on milk and bread. No doubt, even as I type, the milk and bread is flying off store shelves as if it were cast in gold. Like these two food stores will hold off an encroaching snow storm, a zombie apocalypse, and my neighbor's viscous German Shepherd without even breaking a sweat. Like these two mystical, magical items hold all the answers to our weather woes. As soon as snow is forecasted, we migrate en masse to the grocery stores and relieve the shelves of their milky and bready burden, settling on them like locusts on a farmer's crops. Oh, the snowmanity!

In all seriousness, why are milk and bread the two items we immediately think to stock up on when snow is looming? What do we think we're going to do with the milk and bread? I guess if all else fails we will have bread to eat and milk to drink, but wouldn't that work just as well with, let's say, chips and water? The mystery is too much for me to solve here, that's for sure.

Less than half of a half-gallon of milk and moldy bread: the Ross version of being prepared.

When I was stocking up on my own items for Snow-pocalypse 2011, I got dry goods, like cereal, chips and salsa, and crackers. If we do indeed get snowed-in, as predicted, and the power goes off, I'm pretty sure milk will spoil, as would anything we'd put on bread to make a sandwich; therefore, my logical conclusion was to not worry with milk and bread and to instead stock up on junk food and soft drinks...the food which is sure to save us all in the end.