February 13, 2006

• Snow Day

   

  
  

  

  
  

   

  
  

  Snow Day!

  
  

   

  
  

  Remember how exciting those two words used to be?  As you get older, they definitely lose their charm. 

  
  

  It was a really awesome storm — a nor’easter.  Because the air was so unstable, we experienced the rare phenomenon of “thundersnow” — just like a thunderstorm, but with snow instead of rain.  The lightning was the same, but the snow in the air sorta muffles the thunder so it has a different sound.  The wind was pretty strong, too, leaving some nice drifts, and making a lot of noise during the night.  A couple of times I looked outside, and there were whiteout conditions — you couldn’t see more than a few feet.  The official total here for the snowfall was just short of 18 inches.  It is really pretty, as long as you don’t have to do anything with it.  Trying to shovel the walk today was fun — it was just warm enough to make this the kind of damp snow that sticks to the shovel — and seems to weigh a ton. 

  
  

  Fortunately I had taken care of all errands yesterday, so I didn’t have to go anywhere. As sick as Bernie has been, he insisted on getting dressed and going out to clean the snow off the Jeep and start it up. I think it was a combination of cabin fever, the call of his inner child (who wanted to go play in the snow, Im sure)  and his worry of my report that I had trouble starting the Jeep yesterday, and then couldn’t get the gearshift out of park.  I ended up doing my pre-storm errands in the truck — no problem, I love the truck, but we prefer the Jeep in the snow — it’s smaller and easier to maneuver out of tight situations.  Costs less to fix if it gets a dent, too.  Well, when Bernie tried, it started right up today and went in gear with no trouble. I guess it was just a temporary glitch on my part yesterday.  Just going out and doing that took all Bernie’s energy, though, which I suspected.  It is so hard to do anything when your lungs aren’t working right.  He is just getting a taste of what it is like all the time for me with my asthma!

  
  

  For the first time ever — I had to shovel the patio before I shoveled the steps and sidewalk to the driveway.  Pearl woke me up this morning wanting to go out and potty.  She is finally starting to prefer outside over her papers in the hallway, and is much better than Dolly at letting me know when she needs the door opened.  Such a smart little whip, when she figures things out.  Well, I opened the door for her, she tried to go out — you couldn’t even see the steps, she had to kind of jump up on the snow at the doorway, and then just floundered around like she was swimming.  Poor thing looked me with those sad eyes, so forlorn, and flopped back into the house.  So we went to the breezeway and tried there — I got the snowshovel and cleared off the 2 steps there, but she refused to go out and try again. 

  
  

  When I came back in the house with the snowshovel to go shovel from the hallway door to the patio, Pearl was just finishing her business on her papers inside.  Meanwhile, Dolly slept through this whole process.  I think she knew that eventually she was going to have to go out and squat in that cold white stuff, because it was there the night before.  I cleared the 3 steps from the hall door to the patio, and called Dolly to go out and potty. She went down the 2 steps, looked at the wall of snow, and then looked at me as if to say “no thanks, I’ll hold it”. I guess she didn’t have to go bad enough to just go on the steps.  So I went and piled some warmer clothes on, and cleared about a 5 foot squarish space on the patio at the base of the steps.  Only then did Princess Dolly come out and piddle, followed closely by Missy Pearl, as usual.

  
  

  I guess tomorrow I will shovel off a bigger space so they can get a little more exercise out there.  We called a friend to arrange for plowing the driveway tomorrow morning, and the county has done a really good job with the road, so we should be perfectly mobile by the time we want to go anywhere.  Not a big deal, as far as snowstorms go, but I think people made such an issue about it because we have had such unusually warm weather this winter and everyone got spoiled. 

  
  

  I’ll try to get some photos tomorrow, too.

  
  

  

  
  

   

  • 12:59 am
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