Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Finding the Blog Button

It's been another gap in time since I've posted. At times lots has been going on, and at other times it's been blissfully serene and quiet. I'll admit to enjoying both and only really feeling guilty about not updating this during the serene times. Of course, during those times, I'm crafting away and can justify the blog silence by thinking, "I'm creating blog posts for the future." As I've used this excuse all year, and have never really gotten everything posted, I'll have to think of another excuse for next year. ;)

Awhile ago (and no, I can't really tell you exactly how long ago) it snowed. This caused the personal life to go into a bit of a holding pattern as the work life for both of us ramped up into high gear and we were really busy. Hubby works in the automotive parts field and I work in a farm/garden/hardware type store. A little snow around here doesn't change much but more than a little causes a frenzy of panic shopping like you wouldn't believe. All of it's for the good, and I truly believe that most people were doing what they should and could to prepare for the worst. It's not normal for our area of Western Washington to get deluged with snow for weeks on end this early in the season. That's more like January weather for us, if we get it at all. Well this time we got a whopper of a snow system in, and while I truly enjoyed it, it caused a mess for a lot of people I know. When this type of weather comes in, Don has to park the motorcycle and fire up Tuckers truck. When the snowfall is as deep as we had, my Saturn gets left in the driveway and we share the truck. Some days he takes me to work on his way in and then picks me up and other days I take him in on my way. (We work in opposite directions of each other, but ya do what ya gotta do. Even if it means sitting at work after the day is done and waiting on your ride.) I'm just thankful that we were always able to get out and get to work. My neighbor has been home from work for two weeks as of today and gets no pay if she doesn't go into work. Sucky!) So much of our personal life during the snow storms were spent getting each other to work, taking care of the animals, shoveling snow off of roofs that were potential danger points and just getting through. I still own up to loving the snowfall and thinking it beautiful. For the first week we also contended with the power going out pretty much every day, but thankfully that subsided (for now) and we're pretty prepared for that eventuality. For us, being on a well system, if the power goes out we also loose water. Thankfully we had some water stored and we were able to work through that hurdle without too many difficulties. It all went well. The only true hiccup with this storm system for us was that it messed up my plans for getting Christmas gifts and cards out. Thankfully my friends and family know I'm erratic at best with special day gifts and cards and not only do they understand (or pretend to) but they're pretty used to it. ;)

With the roads being so crappy even after the snow stopped falling, Christmas Eve with Mom was canceled, to be rescheduled when the hills to her house were safer, and Christmas with Don's parents was canceled to be rescheduled when the threat of getting stuck on their road passes. So Christmas Eve was a quiet affair with us at home. Me bathing dogs and cleaning carpets and doing basic household chores and Don taking a nap. ;) ( To be fair, he'd put in some grueling hours the week previous and I didn't begrudge him. I clean the carpets all the time so it's not a huge chore...just a must with the old dog living here.) We were invited to the neighbors for Christmas dinner and after a morning of knitting for me and another nap for Don we headed over. We all had a great time and agreed we needed to get together more often.
I am trying to upload pictures of the snow at this point but Blogger is having none of it. Just keeps saving my draft and not bringing up the "add a picture box." Hmmm.....do I still have my Wordpress account? I think at this point I'll save this and try to reopen it to add pictures.

Whaddya know! It worked. Ok, so here's some pictures from two weeks ago. ;)
This first one is of the icicle that formed in the downspout on my garden shed. The water normally drops from the down spout and hits a plastic planter with rocks in it below. (One day I hope to have water barrels at the bottom of this for watering in the garden area.) The icicles that formed on both the front and back of the shed are the largest we've ever had.
I took this picture during a break from shoveling snow. Don was cleaning off the deck covers and I was digging out a pathway around the gates and to the garbage cans. (Glamorous, I know. It was quite the workout though and I'm glad we did it as you'll find out why later.) I took a few pictures of the branches covered with snow before I started shaking the snow off all the trees. Last spring we lost a few branches off this tree due to a late snow. It's a good thing we did this work that Sunday as we got about another 8 inches that night.
This is the roof line of the front shed. This shed houses my motorcycle on one side, Dons on another, as well as housing a whole bunch of crap that needs to be gone through and disposed of. It's a summer project that I dream of completing but never get to. Something to do with the weather being too good to work in and much better for riding. VBG! I thought it was cool that you could see how much snow was building up on the lower roof line, and the icicles forming from the top roof line.
This one is of THE Pooch running at us in the snow. That blob of snow on the left is my car. There is a fair bit of snow on the ground and he's loving it!
OK that's it for this post. I've got a picture heavy post of Tucker in the snow planned for the next one, so it's time to wrap this one up. :) Read on.

2 comments:

Cindy said...

I keep praying that we have had our winter (December was icey all month). But, I know better and it's gonna be here next week.

April said...

Hang in there girlie! I think that this winter thing is not over yet for any of us. We've had rain and warmer temps but most of our snow is still here. Our true "winter" isn't even here yet! Ugg!