By Jennifer Savage
It usually takes until the end of January for the Montana winter to freeze my Southern soul. And, well, here we are. This is usually when I start threatening to move, to fly south for the rest of the winter. I start thinking it must be nice in New Mexico this time of year and I tell Seth, over and over again, that’s where I’m headed.
We saw an old friend this weekend who now lives in Texas.
“Y’all should come on down,” he said. “There’s a lot of work. You could live in Austin for six months.”
That got me thinking about the Lone Star state and I even dreamed about walking around in a tank top in the middle of winter there. I don’t actually know if that’s possible in Texas but from where I’m sitting layered and wrapped in fleece, I like to think it is.
Last week we got a bazillion inches of snow over a few short days. Seth had to dig our Subaru out and park it at the end of our long driveway so it didn’t get really stuck. As the snow was falling, I was enamored with the quiet beauty of it. Schools in Missoula declared rare snow days so we stayed home, trenched our way across the yard to the wood-fire hot tub and soaked. Eliza and Lucille dressed as pirates and built forts out of couch cushions. They buried each other in the snow and slid around on the frozen ditch. We cooked, made pot after pot of hot chocolate and snuggled up on the top bunk for marathon reading sessions of the Magic Treehouse series. And magical it was, until it wasn’t.
By mid-afternoon on the third day of all this winter wonderland whimsy, the snow had turned to slippery walkways and knee-deep crustiness. I was enamored no more. My children were ricocheting off each other so I pulled them down our quarter-mile driveway in a sled with a backpack full of essentials for a few days strapped to my back. I raked off the mountain of snow that had engulfed our car and pulled onto our dirt road that, thankfully, had been plowed. I took the chains off the car, threw them in back in a frozen heap and headed down the hill toward a play date in town. Inside the car it was oddly humid. Everything we were all wearing was wet and melting snow clung to our boots, the sled in back, our gloves and hats. As I looked at the stuff crammed in the front seat, in between Eliza and Lucille’s car seats, in the way back of our hatchback, the Virgo in me started dying a slow death. All I could think was how did I get here?
Did I mention I’m an alumni of Alpha Delta Pi sorority? That I grew up in South Carolina? That it’s warm there almost all of the time? I’m sure my sorority sisters are still wondering why in the world I traded the Carolinas, where it will be spring next month, for this frosted existence. Well, to be honest, I was wondering the same thing that afternoon.
That’s about the time I started seeing some interesting pictures popping on my Facebook newsfeed. Missoulians, nearly naked, posing outside like it was a sunny day in July. These “frosters” as they’ve come to known posted pictures of mowing the lawn in their underwear, hanging the laundry in sundresses, barbequing with nothing on but an apron and reading the newspaper in lawn chairs all with at least a foot of snow on the ground. I found myself laughing out loud several times that night after the kids were tucked in bed, exhausted from their sledding date with friends.
The next morning I checked the Frosters Anonymous Facebook page again and found even more hilarious pictures. I kept calling Seth over to the computer to show him another picture of someone we knew “frosting.” This phenomenon was Missoula at its best. We’re snowed in. We’re getting a little bored. Let’s go outside in our skivvies, post a picture to Facebook and watch it go viral. Why the hell not?
Oh, how I love this town.
It didn’t take long before I decided to take off my cranky pants, put on my bikini and join in. Even though my backside was numb after climbing up on our old 1964 Ford, I didn’t care because I got a good laugh out of it. The whole experience cracked wide the January post-snow storm blahs and made me remember why I chose this town in the first place. It reminded me why I don’t want to live anywhere else.
Check out Frosters Anonymous on Facebook.
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Jennifer Savage is a writer and mama of Eliza and Lucille. Lately, she's learning to be a city girl. She writes from her home in Missoula, Montana. She is also one of Mamalode's favorite writers and you can fall in love with her too at Jennifer-Savage.com Read more of Jennifer's mamalode articles here.
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Love it, Savage!
The Frosters Page was my one highlight of the week during the storm. Your picture is one of my fav!
Thanks Jen. Loved the uni-frosting picture too!
you go girl! LOL! Love this! That who love it til ya hate it idea is experienced here as well. Although not so much yet this year with this wacky winter we’re having in Ohio. Shane’s out golfing in 60 degree weather one day and the next we’ve got a blizzard and 5 inches of snow.
Love that FB page on frosters, how FUN!
Thanks! It was so much fun!