Even though it is 80 degrees outside today, when I was looking through pictures this one caught my eye. This winter we had 1 snowstorm where the snow was over a foot deep, evidenced by the imprint of my back door. It made me remember the "great blizzard of '78". My daughter was 3 and my husband was determined to prove his manhood by reciting his favorite winter saying, "this is nothing, I grew up in Minnesota." This sometimes extended into, "we walked to school no matter what, uphill both ways, yada, yada, yada." Well, the forecast was for 20 some inches of blowing snow. Please do not go out, etc.etc. He had some event to go to and was determined that no little snowstorm would stop him. He and a friend drove off in our small Datsun pickup truck (white, of course), leaving me home with a three year old wondering if we would ever see him again. Well, about 2 or 3 in the morning, while I was doing my usual productive searching the windows for signs of life, I saw two images move by the window. A couple minutes later they were inside, laughing, shaking and talking all at once. The truck had gotten stuck a mile away(not to be seen for quite a while, remember it was white) and they had trudged through the snow to get home. The other guy left soon to finish his three or four mile trek home and my husband listened politely while I ranted and raved about the danger, risk, what if , what if, etc. His theory always was that if he was hurt or dead or something, someone would notify me, so if I heard nothing I should know he was fine. Somehow, I never found this particularly comforting. Looking back I know that one of his best qualities was his willingness to take risks and enjoy every moment. I often wish I'd had the same attitude and simply enjoyed more simple moments.
Unlike many people who must drive their car everyday, I am among the retired that can most often chose when and how far I want to take my car. Since I had a doctor appointment, I choreographed several errands around that stop.
First stop was Flag's Unlimited since we have needed a new flag for sometime. Originally I would put the flag out for National Holidays but when the war in Iraq began, I decided to let the flag wave day and night until the war was over. The flag wore out before the war! Now we have a new flag and the old one will be given to a scout whose Eagle Project is to collect old flags that need to be retired in a ceremony suitable for the US Flag. I only hope that one day I can take the flag down and put it up the next day just because I'm proud of the US and not to remind me of a current war and the people impacted by that war.
My next stop was to purchase a teeny tiny sandisk for my new phone. Yes both of us have new phones once again from Verizon. We aren't going the iphone route, although they sure are neat, but compared to what I did have, the new phone is a real high. I ended up with an LG chocolate in black cherry (good color) and now I can listen to music or take photos to save. With this tiny chip (about the size of one of my fingernails) I can save hundreds of songs and photos and an occasional video and then pop it in a printer or other device. I'm not sure how much I would use the music aspect, but the photo part is new and exciting for me.
We have electricity. There are still 70,000 or so waiting until tomorrow, but we are back in business. Now there is clean-up, but no major damage. I enjoyed seeing the foxglove had bloomed during the stormy weather and didn't get blown over. On the other side of my path was a tree with the roots showing that looks like firewood to me.
Some people died when their cars were washed away during a road collapse and others when hit by falling trees. The midwest is covered with flood water from rising rivers. There were videos from Wisconsin that showed houses falling into the river.
Tonight the storms are supposed to go south of us which isn't going to help Indiana. They already had several flooded areas from a storm on Friday I think.
Tomorrow will be a good weather day for us I've heard. That means I can get busy picking up branches and leaves as well as maybe pulling some weeds that grew 6 inches with all the rain. I was just so happy to see the new blooms on the foxglove and maybe by tomorrow the lilies buds will open. It's always better after the storm.
Have my computer, have my coffee, what could be better? Actually I'm in the camper with the generator going so I have electricity. But I am getting very tired of the noise the gen makes. We've had 3 days of storms and it's still raining, with severe storms forcast for yet another day. I know some of you reading this are probably in the same boat (or camper) because the midwest has taken quite a hit lately with bad weather.
When our power is out we have no water and since we heat with oil and there is no gas pumped out where we live, all our cooking is electric too - except in the camper with propane tanks we are set. Took most of the frig stuff out to the camper frig and hoping the freezer will keep stuff frozen if we don't open it.
Right now they are saying the power will be back tomorrow afternoon, but the list of people without power keeps growing so who knows. Maybe this will be a good day for reading and blogging. Right now I'm going to have my bowl of cereal for breakfast. Glad we have a camper!
Yesterday Chris drove up to Interlochen and picked up our first pop up trailer! After waking up in a pond of water last summer while sleeping in our tent in the midst of a thunderstorm Chris decided we were ready to move up in style.
We opened it up last night just to take a quick look and it looks really nice. Of course we can't have the camper up for an extended period of time or else we will be written up by our association! This may take some time getting used to as you have to put up the darn thing to load and unload it. I spent a couple of hours at Walmart today picking up some odds and ends and trying to figure out how to organize the limited storage space in the camper. (I'm very envious of my parents abundant amount of space in their camper)
Friday we will take our maiden voyage to the local camp ground. Chris figures if the kids are that terrible we can just bring it home and put a 4 sale sign on it. There are 4 different beds in the camper and 2 separate tables, so I am hopeful that they can all get along. I'll try to post after our weekend and share pictures of our fun time. (trying to be optimistic!)
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