the blizzard of '10 had more names than eskimos have for 'snow', some of my favorites being:
snowmaggedon, snowtorious B.I.G. aka biggie snows, snOMG!, snoWTF?, snowpocalypse, kaiser snowze, snowbliteration, snowbowl, and the lesser popular but still funny because it's so true, "SnowmygodimnotshovelinganymoreofthiswhitecrapimmovingtoFLA." call it what you will, it was an unreal amount of snow. the storm (part one) dumped easily two feet of snow around our home. usually, i like living here at the end of the court, but after the snow plow came through, pushing all that snow down to the end of our cul-de-sac, i realized there is definitely one downside. (but hey, at least the snow plow came thru! wooo hooo!)
on day two of the blizzard, we finally ventured out, the snow was so high, i had to tamp down a path for the kids to be able to walk over it and snowblowers became the new must have gadget of husbands struggling to shovel up FEET of snow. ozzy would have fallen completely through otherwise and then we'd have to dive into the crevasse after him with a search party in spelunking gear led by a sherpa to rescue him. as it was, it was up over my knees and so there i was flailing in a very uncoordinated way trying to trudge a path for the kids towards to center of the yard. making myself publicly awkward is only something i started to do after i had kids. if the old me could see the me that i am today, she would probably run from the scene screaming and need some serious therapy for years afterwards. and there's my husband nodding his agreement. i think he misses the old me. often.
so, in that little patch of somewhat tamped down front lawn, mimi and i started to build a fortress with plans to make it an igloo but it was slow going. we used a large squarish plastic tub to make bricks and mimi used a toy shovel to 'mortar' the spaces with more snow. we managed to lay a few layers of bricks that day.
the next day, we got dressed to go outside and play in the snow and mimi says, "mom, can we NOT make the igloo today?" i asked her why not? wasn't it fun? and she says, "it doesnt feel like play, it feels more like work." but when we got out there she plugged away at it anyway. (later, after the second blizzard hit, this is what it looked like:
(kind of looks like a moon crater to me)
so, rob just dug out a little cave inside one of the many snow heaps the size of a small mountains around our cul de sac.
these crazy heaps of snow deserve another look see, doncha think?
ozzy came out periodically. can't really say that he played, it was too hard for him to do that because he could barely move in his snow boots, snow bib, and all that snow everywhere. he did enjoy sledding down the small embankment at the end of our street though.
anyway, that was monday when we built the fort. tuesday we braced ourselves for blizzard part 2, calling for an additional 10-20 inches to hit our area (and again the names for phase two start getting tossed around: snowtal recall, snowver it!, snowverkill)
blizzard phase two (call it what you will) came with strong winds, blowing at up to 55 mph, blowing the snow around so hard and fast that there were moments with white outs so complete that when i looked out my back window i could not see anything much further past my deck, leaving me with a very strange unsettling feeling of isolation, of our home perched on the edge of nothingness, or like those illustrations in the Caillou cartoon where only part of the scene is drawn out with lots of white edges that fade into nothingness. the houses and trees that were usually visible from our back deck suddenly obliterated, erased. i was keeping my fingers and toes crossed that we did not lose power as so many homes had from the storms.
rob's parents came back from their cruise the day after the first storm and were not able to get home since their streets had not been plowed. they tried and got stuck not even a few yards into their neighborhood. someone in a big lexus suv got stuck trying to push them out and then two more stuck suvs later, everyone managed to dig themselves back out with shovels and his parents came back to our house to wait until their streets were plowed. which didnt happen until tuesday, when a snow plow from upstate new york came to plow, and apparently got stuck as well. but they got it somewhat cleared, only to have more snow fall the next day, effectively nullifying those efforts. so his parents have been staying with us since sunday. i think they were going crazy not being able to be home. i think that's part of the reason why they cleaned my house for me. if they had to stay any later, i think they would have started to organize all my junk drawers.
i know they were hopeful that they would be able to go home before the end of day 4 with us, but the winds were too strong and the streets were buried under several new inches of snow, enough that rob's dad's rav4 couldnt even make it out of the drive way. while not ideal, it has been better for rob's mom to be here since it's right around the corner from the hospital where she works, otherwise she would have had to stay over night at the hospital (they were told that if they couldnt drive in to work, they had to stay at the hospital). sheesh. remind me to never get in that line of work... teaching may not pay much, but atleast teachers dont have to report to work on snowy days!
except for being stuck at home, with dwindling food supplies, one tree in the front yard down, and patchy satellite t.v., we'd been weathering this storm quite well. even the kids handled it without any issues.
i am very thankful to have made it through without any roof cave-ins (the deck is holding strong), power outtages (there were scary moments, but it held!), trees fallen on houses or cars. and we've luckily had plenty of fresh food here to sustain us (we didnt have to break open any ramen noodles, so i think we were doing well). so all in all, not too bad. i am a little worried about the flooding that will ensue when the snow begins to melt, but we'll deal with that day if and when it comes.
snowmaggedon, snowtorious B.I.G. aka biggie snows, snOMG!, snoWTF?, snowpocalypse, kaiser snowze, snowbliteration, snowbowl, and the lesser popular but still funny because it's so true, "SnowmygodimnotshovelinganymoreofthiswhitecrapimmovingtoFLA." call it what you will, it was an unreal amount of snow. the storm (part one) dumped easily two feet of snow around our home. usually, i like living here at the end of the court, but after the snow plow came through, pushing all that snow down to the end of our cul-de-sac, i realized there is definitely one downside. (but hey, at least the snow plow came thru! wooo hooo!)
on day two of the blizzard, we finally ventured out, the snow was so high, i had to tamp down a path for the kids to be able to walk over it and snowblowers became the new must have gadget of husbands struggling to shovel up FEET of snow. ozzy would have fallen completely through otherwise and then we'd have to dive into the crevasse after him with a search party in spelunking gear led by a sherpa to rescue him. as it was, it was up over my knees and so there i was flailing in a very uncoordinated way trying to trudge a path for the kids towards to center of the yard. making myself publicly awkward is only something i started to do after i had kids. if the old me could see the me that i am today, she would probably run from the scene screaming and need some serious therapy for years afterwards. and there's my husband nodding his agreement. i think he misses the old me. often.
so, in that little patch of somewhat tamped down front lawn, mimi and i started to build a fortress with plans to make it an igloo but it was slow going. we used a large squarish plastic tub to make bricks and mimi used a toy shovel to 'mortar' the spaces with more snow. we managed to lay a few layers of bricks that day.
the next day, we got dressed to go outside and play in the snow and mimi says, "mom, can we NOT make the igloo today?" i asked her why not? wasn't it fun? and she says, "it doesnt feel like play, it feels more like work." but when we got out there she plugged away at it anyway. (later, after the second blizzard hit, this is what it looked like:
(kind of looks like a moon crater to me)so, rob just dug out a little cave inside one of the many snow heaps the size of a small mountains around our cul de sac.
these crazy heaps of snow deserve another look see, doncha think?
ozzy came out periodically. can't really say that he played, it was too hard for him to do that because he could barely move in his snow boots, snow bib, and all that snow everywhere. he did enjoy sledding down the small embankment at the end of our street though.
anyway, that was monday when we built the fort. tuesday we braced ourselves for blizzard part 2, calling for an additional 10-20 inches to hit our area (and again the names for phase two start getting tossed around: snowtal recall, snowver it!, snowverkill)
blizzard phase two (call it what you will) came with strong winds, blowing at up to 55 mph, blowing the snow around so hard and fast that there were moments with white outs so complete that when i looked out my back window i could not see anything much further past my deck, leaving me with a very strange unsettling feeling of isolation, of our home perched on the edge of nothingness, or like those illustrations in the Caillou cartoon where only part of the scene is drawn out with lots of white edges that fade into nothingness. the houses and trees that were usually visible from our back deck suddenly obliterated, erased. i was keeping my fingers and toes crossed that we did not lose power as so many homes had from the storms.
rob's parents came back from their cruise the day after the first storm and were not able to get home since their streets had not been plowed. they tried and got stuck not even a few yards into their neighborhood. someone in a big lexus suv got stuck trying to push them out and then two more stuck suvs later, everyone managed to dig themselves back out with shovels and his parents came back to our house to wait until their streets were plowed. which didnt happen until tuesday, when a snow plow from upstate new york came to plow, and apparently got stuck as well. but they got it somewhat cleared, only to have more snow fall the next day, effectively nullifying those efforts. so his parents have been staying with us since sunday. i think they were going crazy not being able to be home. i think that's part of the reason why they cleaned my house for me. if they had to stay any later, i think they would have started to organize all my junk drawers.
i know they were hopeful that they would be able to go home before the end of day 4 with us, but the winds were too strong and the streets were buried under several new inches of snow, enough that rob's dad's rav4 couldnt even make it out of the drive way. while not ideal, it has been better for rob's mom to be here since it's right around the corner from the hospital where she works, otherwise she would have had to stay over night at the hospital (they were told that if they couldnt drive in to work, they had to stay at the hospital). sheesh. remind me to never get in that line of work... teaching may not pay much, but atleast teachers dont have to report to work on snowy days!
except for being stuck at home, with dwindling food supplies, one tree in the front yard down, and patchy satellite t.v., we'd been weathering this storm quite well. even the kids handled it without any issues.
i am very thankful to have made it through without any roof cave-ins (the deck is holding strong), power outtages (there were scary moments, but it held!), trees fallen on houses or cars. and we've luckily had plenty of fresh food here to sustain us (we didnt have to break open any ramen noodles, so i think we were doing well). so all in all, not too bad. i am a little worried about the flooding that will ensue when the snow begins to melt, but we'll deal with that day if and when it comes.
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