Monday, February 8, 2010

Say it Ain't Snow!!

The weather report for Tuesday says 5-10 more inches of snow is on the way. I think the look on Maguire's face on Saturday pretty much says how I'm feeling about it all too.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

My Grasshopper Ways...

You may remember the story of the “Grasshopper and the Ant.” I remember this story not because I read it in a book, but because I saw the Disney cartoon. In the cartoon, the grasshopper fiddles, sings, and eats the leaves off trees while the queen of the ants warn him that he'd better prepare for winter too. But the grasshopper continues fiddling and singing. When winter finally comes, the grasshopper becomes almost frozen from the cold. He can no longer play his fiddle. In desperation, he knocks at the tree where the ants live and begs them to let him in. The queen ant gives her “I told you so” speech and ends with “Take your fiddle...” and after the long pause she says “and play!” So in the end, the grasshopper earns the warmth and food of the ants by playing his fiddle.

I am reminded of this story because Carl and I are like the grasshopper in the story. We are SO unprepared for this winter!! These last 2 snowstorms have really held challenges for us. I had hoped that the lessons learned from the last snowstorm would get us through this one; they really haven't. Our power went out on Saturday afternoon. With almost 3 feet of snow, no firewood and temps below freezing outside, it was getting chilly inside. The dogs however, were great warmers last night--There's nothing like a Golden Retriever or two (or three) to help you to feel cozy!! But with very little food that didn't need to be cooked, no running water, (everything in our house is electric) I have to confess that I was getting a little concerned and we both were a little hungry too. Carl and I worked today and got my van and part of the driveway all shoveled out. About 2 hours later we were wet and pretty cold. I was trying to warm up and feeling pretty discouraged about it all and was just about at rock-bottom when suddenly the power was restored!!!! An answer to a prayer!! We've now had a hot meal, have warmed up and feel like we can again conquer the elements--Who needs the Ants?

Friday, February 5, 2010

Hunkering down again!

Well, here we go again!! The snow is back, and the prediction for this storm is for 2-3 feet before it all ends on Saturday night. I know this may not sound like much to some of you, but for an area that is only used to getting around 17 inches a year it's a big deal--The bottom line, we are real wimps here in Virginia!!

At the start of the winter, I didn't mind the snow because I really enjoy a good snow day and having a good reason to stay home! But I have to admit that with all we've had this year it is starting to lose its novelty because I'm not nearly as excited about this snowfall as I was about the others we've had.

I know you're probably tired of looking at my snow pictures, but it seems to be what my life is all about the last couple of weeks...Below is the view of our road as I was coming home from work this afternoon. You can see that the road was starting to get a glaze on it.

The 22 inches of snow we had in December really caught us off guard and unprepared with a way to "get out." Because we had no one to plow for us, or a snow-blower, we ended up shoveling the entire driveway. Since we've not been able to get a plow for our "lawn-tractor" we decided to park my van close to the bottom of the driveway to make getting out easier--At least that's our hope! This is the "old road" in back of our house that leads up to the open field. It certainly looks different in the snow, doen't it?

Home snowy-home!!! Which is where we'll be for the next couple of days--If the power stays on and we have an internet connection, it's not such a bad place to be snowbound!!!

Hmmmm...There were no pictures of the dogs or mention of them in this post...How'd that happen??

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

A Ground-DOG Day Prediction!

Today was Groundhog Day! The day when thousands of revelers converged on the small Pennsylvania town of Punxsutawney to hear a groundhog named Punxsutawney Phil predict the weather! Apparently the day grew out of a mainly German superstition that if a hibernating animal casts a shadow February 2--the Christian holiday of Candlemas--winter will last another six weeks. If no shadow is seen, legend says spring will be early.

Having a lot of confidence in this scientific method for predicting the weather, but being unable to make it to Punxsutawney, we decided to see for ourselves if spring would come early or late. However, our resident groundhogs are all in hibernation right now. So, we opted to use the next best thing for our own Ground-DOG Day prediction, the dogs. When we had them out this morning, we tried in several different places to see if one of them would cast a shadow. No matter what they did, there was no shadow!! So it was official, spring will come early!!!

However, as we looked out our backdoor tonight it was confirmed that our dogs and Punxsutawney Phil are just as good of weathermen as the ones with two legs--It is definitely NOT looking like an early spring! Oh well...