Let It Snow.

It's snowing in Houston. Cross my holiday season heart and hope to run out of hot chocolate. It's snowing. I received a text message this afternoon - around 4:30, asking me if it was snowing at my place. It wasn't...yet. I'd had an extraordinarily lazy day. I'd enjoyed a massage and I'd taken a nap. I'd only been paged twice and had dispatched the inquiries with ease. (I love my Wednesdays.) I continued my leisurely pace, finished getting dressed and pulled on my wool cap, leather jacket and boots and headed downstairs to my car. I needed to do a little shopping.

Tiny orbs of sleet greeted me. They bounced off the cars and the parking lot with pings! and tings! and I laughed out loud. "Really? Sleet?"

The pavement was wet but wasn't icy, so I continued out onto the city streets. Oh. My. God.

Houston drivers need to just stop and - well GO! Gridlock met me in the Med Center. The streets weren't slick, but people were driving 20 miles per hour. Why? I haven't a clue. To make matters worse, the traffic light at Kirby and Main was out of sync and wasn't letting drivers make a left onto Main every other cycle.

I started getting texts about the "snow". It wasn't snowing where I was. It was okay that I was looking at my cell phone. I wasn't going anywhere. Fast. This weather occurrence was getting a lot of play in cellular land. I finally pulled into Target, spent about 15 minutes and 40 dollars, and made my way to the exit. I was almost knocked over by a checker who was running toward the store with his cell phone open, arm extended and yelling back over his shoulder, "I'm going to take video of it. It's awesome!"

I walked out of the door, thinking, "Right, sleet." I was met with the most beautiful sight. Giant, fat, fluffy, overfed, white snowflakes whirled and spun from the sky. It was an incredible sight. People stood in the parking lot of Target with their faces turned toward the heavens. I saw one family who had pulled into the lot and the teenaged kids were dancing around the car with their arms spread almost as wide as the smiles on their faces. It was snowing in Houston.

By then the traffic had cleared a bit. I drove to a nearby Tex-Mex place to place an order for dinner, since the snow had put a whammy on any possibility of seeing my sweetie. I sat at the bar as I'm known to do. I'm not shy about starting up conversations with people and there was a basketball game coming on, anyway. Snow has a way of giving people something to talk about and soon we were talking. The man to my right was a 25 year old from Austin who is trying to break into the music industry in Houston. He's a fan of Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson. That gives me hope for the upcoming generation, when I hear that they are reading those writers. We also talked about Austin music. The man to my left was a 61 year old who commutes between Houston and Tulsa. He knew some of the doctors I used to work for, back when I was cutting my teeth in the Med Center. Interesting conversations from both. By the time I drove home, there was a light blanket on the grass near Reliant Center.

I'm not sure what tomorrow morning will bring. I suppose I will set my alarm an extra hour early tomorrow. I've switched my car over to 4-wheel-drive, just in case. It's a rare thing when we get real snow in Houston. I'm glad I was able to see it.