I am all about a bargain, which is why I snapped up the two last size seven Yellow Box flip-flops Saturday at Ansley Place.

The youngest girl has monster-sized feed for a 9-year-old and goes through flip-flops like tissues in the summer.

With the weather below freezing, she complained, “It’s going to be forever before I can wear my new shoes.”

Wearing my long johns under my jeans, knee-high socks and gloves against Tuesday’s temperature, which was in the teens mind you that morning, I was inclined to agree with her.

I read a Facebook post from my friend, Nancy, who’s spending her first winter in Arkansas. She’s had to learn how to navigate with snow chains on her mini-van. According to her, driving on a wet, red clay road is one thing. Driving on a mountain covered in ice and snow is a completely different one. I bet.

Scanning the web for news, I came across an al.com story where a reporter randomly called people in Alaska, North Dakota and Minnesota and asked if Alabamians were making too much of a deal out of the cold weather. As I read through “As Alabama suffers through our cold weather, are folks up north laughing?,” I had to giggle.

One Michigan woman said it was negative-22 degrees when she showed up to work that morning.

Another North Dakota woman detailed how the schools finally, and I mean finally, closed. The temp there? “Minus-60-to-65 with the wind chill,” she said.

Now that’s cold, and I would agree, cold enough to close down school.

Not to offend anyone, but I thought it quite funny that parents here were demanding that schools be closed because of the cold. Like our school officials would have our kids show up in unsafe conditions. I know there were a good number of children in class yesterday, and again today, who were much warmer at school than they would’ve been at home.

You know, I think I’ll take a good ol’ hurricane any day over the cold.

At least with a hurricane, and thanks to those wonderful techno people at NOAA and The Weather Channel, we can get notice days in advance to prepare. You may be without power for a few days, have to battle a few downed trees and eat off a grill for a while, but you won’t freeze to death when the power goes out.

Of course, in our case, it’s going to be 70 degrees on Saturday, so we might as well just suck it up.

South Alabama weather – there’s nothing like it.