Yesterday, I was driving south on Route 3 in order to go to Maine.

I drive south first, on my three-hour trip north.

Go figure.

But in Massachusetts, you also drive north when you are really going east and sometimes you drive south when you are really going west-ish.

It happens a lot.

I’ll bet a lot of smaht people are studying this phenomenon.

I think that’s why we’re running a deficit.

But anyway, I was driving south on Route 3 and there are those new fangled highway signs. You know, the ones that flash about road work ahead?

So, I noticed a while ago that they also now flash helpful messages.

Like, “Drunk driving kills” and Amber Alerts and stuff.

One day I started laughing when one of the signs told me, “No texting and driving. Teens cannot use cell phones. It’s the law.”

I didn’t laugh because it’s the law.

I laughed because I was reading it from way before I got to the sign (I was squinting) to just as I was going under the sign (like, I was leaning forward and looking up through my windshield the way you do when you accidentally stop a little too late at an intersection and you can’t see the light any more so you are a little panicked because what if you can’t tell when it turns green!)

By the way, as I mentioned, I spend most of my time in Massachusetts. I’m certain that if I could not tell if the light turned green, the kindly and helpful human being in the car behind me would find some way of letting me know.

But I digress.

So the funniest thing about reading the sign that said “No texting and driving blah blah blah” was that I was completely distracted by the dang sign!

And I’m pretty sure that if I was distracted, then others were probably distracted too.

Including the teenagers who were especially supposed to be paying attention to the road… according to … you know… the sign!

Fine.

FINE.

Wow. Have you noticed that I seem a little pissy about the dang sign? Someone should make a law about how many words can be on a sign like that. Gawd. I’m feeling so… regulatory.

Okay, so as I was heading south on Route 3 yesterday though, the specific sign that I now look forward to seeing (and, hopefully, laughing at) said this:

WINTER STORM WARNING. PLAN AHEAD. WEDNESDAY.

and I thought,

OKAY!

But it was, I think you would agree, a little confusing. Which is not a good thing when you are being told, in all caps, to plan for a winter storm and there is the word, ‘WARNING’ in the mix.

Because I don’t know about you, but when someone uses the word ‘warning’, I can almost hear a little starter pistol going off in my brain and itty bitty adrenalines burst forth like the beginning of the Bawston Marathon (you know, super slow at first because there are so many of them, but later they spread out and really start to move?)

So ‘warning’ is sort of a big deal word.

‘WARNING’ is, like, a catastrophic word.

So the adrenalines are running all over my brain (because there was no time to actually plan a route for them), and I’m feeling somewhat paralyzed.

The sign said, WINTER STORM WARNING. PLAN AHEAD. WEDNESDAY.

Uh.

Do I plan ahead for a winter storm that’s coming on Wednesday?

Or do I do my planning on Wednesday?

I don’t know!

And the second wave of adrenalines join the first.

So then I start to think that teenagers, who are clearly more distractable as drivers than I am, are probably doubly confused and are going to start causing accidents all over the place once they see that sign.

So I check around me and there is a very large truck to one side and a little Yaris on the other and neither has a teenager in it.

Okay, I was guessing about the eighteen-wheeler because I can’t see the driver.

And Doogie Howser could totally have been hauling liquid nitrogen.

So I release a few more adrenalines just in case.

Then I turn on the news station and it turns out that the east coast is going to have a snowstorm on Wednesday and the concerned government officials in the state of Massachusetts have decided that the copious warnings of the weather stations who now name winter storms the way they name hurricanes (most likely to just run drills for all those adrenalines in my head because what else are those little suckers going to do in their down time but prepare)… anyway, 24 hour cable news along with local news, radio, and satellite radio (complete with its own smattering of weather-related channels) isn’t enough to panic the citizens. Now the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is aiming to terrify us on the roads with big signs and messages IN ALL CAPS!

So all the way up to Maine on Tuesday, I was worried about what was going to happen to me on Wednesday. This is because I realized that I was about to experience my very first snowstorm at The Inn (our house in Maine was built in 1830 and its very cool past includes spending time as an inn).

So I went and dropped The Shepherds off at the house and went shopping.

I picked up milk and bread because it made me smile (because that is always what you ‘should’ have during a storm, at least ever since the Blizzard of ’78, when we all found out that Vitamin D and toast were essential for snowstorm survival).

I also picked up peanut butter, a cute little two-pound roast beast for all three of us (me, Blaze, and Marshal Dillon Dingle), potatoes, and the most important winter blizzard item one could possibly have on hand.

Nope, not water.

Coffee.

So here I sit, and it is the morning of my very first snowstorm at The Inn.

And I’m in heaven.

It is hauntingly beautiful here.

I’m going to keep taking photos and I’ll share more in the next day or so as I am here until at least Thursday (I’ve taken The Shepherds away from Dunstable so that Glen-the-painter and his trusty assistant, Elias, can do some repairing and painting without the added benefit of working around two, young German Shepherds who have both decided to blow their coats in February).

So I will share more.

Especially if Mr. Walbridge decides to make himself known.

Again.

Thanks for readin’

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