Another Snow Day

Survived another day of snow up on the Hill.

Woke up about 5:30 a.m. "Power's out" said Don. It took a few seconds for the meaning of those words to sink in - but it wasn't long until my mind grasped the situation, so I dragged myself out of the warm bed and poked around in the dark for some clothes to put on so that I wouldn't freeze to death walking down the stairs (in the dark) to reach for the camping lanterns for some light. Then, to get the old phone and plug it into the land line in order to call the power company. It took me a while to see the phone number - though I really don't know why I don't know it by heart by now. 1-800-696-1000. Punched in my answers to the pre-recorded directives, and learned that their were a billion power outages, roughly 750 in our area alone, and that the estimated time for restoration would be 4:00 p.m.

GREAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAATE.

After shutting down my laptop (as so many of my old things, the battery doesn't last very long) I  carried the two camping lanterns back upstairs to the bedroom with me, as Don was just finishing up shutting down his desk top. We crawled back into bed and slept a couple more hours, then we got up and got dressed again. I heated up some bottled water in the tea kettle and set up the mini french press for coffee. Thankfully, we have propane and gas range, so all I have to do is light a match to the burner. We had our coffee and bundled up to get to the car and the driveway. I had promised my friend, who is recovering from major surgery and lives about a mile away, that I'd come down today to feed her four horses lunch and muck out their stalls, so I wanted to be sure I could get out. It took a while to get the snow off the car. We had accumulated almost 6 inches, and the snow was heavy and wet. Don started shoveling. The snow thrower we inherited from the house next door shit the bricks after last week's snow storm.. Hit a rock.. broke a chain. A real pain to fix (he's done it before) - especially in the cold. So, at the moment (and maybe forever), it's useless.

Luckily, our neighbor came by with his tractor and pushed away the snow at the top of the driveway, and even backed down and pushed a big bunch it up across the road from the driveway. That was a huge relief.

We came back in, and I was messaging a bit with my pal Wally, who is a retired line man for CMP. He lives in the city, so he still had power. Don got the wood stove going again, and I brought in some buckets of snow, in case we'd need the water to flush later. 

I had reached my friend by text about the horses, and she said it was cool not to come down, as her husband and kids were home. It was snowing in the morning, then turned to freezing rain for awhile, then turned back to snow - so I really wasn't in the mood to risk taking the car down the ridiculously steep hill.

Miraculously, the power clicked back on around 10 a.m. Hooray! Another relief. Don was able to go to work, and I cleaned up the french press and other morning dishes and reset the electric clocks. I decided to take a puff off of a roach, then got busy and went through the dry goods cabinet. I got it nice and organized. I wiped down the top of the fridge, cleaned the litter boxes, emptied the recycling and swept the floors. I folded up a bunch of sheets and pillow cases that had been sitting in the dryer, and made the bed and tidied up the bedroom clothes.

I went back outside and did a little more shoveling. A lot of pine trees dropped big branches because of the weight of the heavy snow. Those will be there until spring, except for the few in the driveway. Before I knew it, it was 4 p.m. and getting dark again. 

So, here we are again. Making up a batch of split pea soup and watching the local news, as the dish is down. There's more isolated snow showers over night and into tomorrow. I've got to drive over to Fryeburg tomorrow for a teeth cleaning appointment.

The fun never ends, I tell ya.