Okay, it’s not one of those conquering-beast snowstorms that leaves nothing but the roofs of the cars showing. But the weatherman on the radio yesterday predicted nothing more than “a light dusting.” Well, heck, it must be true, I heard it on the radio.
We got at least six inches–and here’s a hoot for you. We thought we needed a new air conditioner, so Patty ordered one. And now it’s sitting outside because it’s way too heavy for us to move. The delivery guys never knocked on our door, never let us know they’d been here. We are hoping our landlord can find some very strong people to move this thing.
And on top of that, we didn’t need it in the first place! The one we had didn’t work because it was iced up inside. That was from the last Global Warming snowstorm earlier this week. When the ice melted, it started working again. So now we’re stuck with a 600-pound AC that has to go back to where it came from.
I have to clear our cars. Bad leg no excuse. Maybe after I put up the TV listings.
Oh my, it is just one thing after another. Same here and everywhere I have friends. Just glad to see you back with us.
You gotta love these delivery people.
70’s one day here in AR and 30’s the next with strong winds, and our weather people are always getting it wrong.
Musings About the Snow I Left Behind
Since I moved to the Philippines from a climate where freezing temperatures, gray landscapes, and months filled with snow are normal, many ask, do I miss the snow? Yes, I remember it fondly … shoveling our driveway for hours, then spending a few more hours removing the vast pile of snow at the end of the driveway, put there by the city’s snowplow. And then after that was all gone, doing it again when the plow came by for another pass.
I remember one time during a major snowstorm, after working the second shift, barely making it home by midnight after more than an hour’s drive of what normally took twenty minutes. There, blocking my path, was a pile of chest-high, what earlier had been just slush, of now frozen solid, rock-hard ice, needing to be removed from my driveway so I could park my car (The temperature had dropped throughout the day, and now it was close to zero, with gale-force winds.) At 2:30 a.m., just as I finished shoveling that refractory pile, thoughts of Dean Martin singing Memories are Made of This came to mind, as did frostbite on my toes.
When Samuel was a year old, we were able to fly Lilia, my mother-in-law from the Philippines to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. She arrived in January and stayed six months. Though she missed Wisconsin’s seasonal changes from summer to autumn—the leaves in all their glory, the crispness in the air, and winter’s first snowfall—she was there to experience the best elements of winter, spring, and summer. When she arrived on that sunny but bitterly cold day in January, I told her, “Let’s bundle you up good and warm, we’re going for a walk.” I wanted to show her a few things she had never seen before. During our stroll, she asked about mysterious ice formations we encountered on the way. The mystery was soon solved: they were a series of bushes which the sun had turned into gleaming ice sculptures, formed from meltwater dripping from six- to eight-foot-long icicles hanging off the roof. Three months later, in the aftermath of an April snowstorm, the snow was just right for sculpting, and it was a joy helping her make her first snowman.
Those six months seemed to fly by. It was a blessing for Lilia to see her grandson, and for us to host her.
It can’t be denied that snow is a hardship when you have to drive to work. But I never outgrew the sheer delight I felt whenever snow closed the school for a day or two.