Weekly Winners

We still have a decent amount of snow from the snow falls on the 6th and 12th and 15th of this month. We were finally able to buy a new sled for the boys yesterday. 5 dinos worth of snow and nothing to sled with! Now there is barely half a dino’s worth of snow out there but it’s still good sledding

We found some pear flavored sake while shopping this week

I bought some groceries

Made a sock dog

And dealt with computer hackers

For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom. Thanks for stopping by!

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Needle & thread

I haven’t done much sewing lately and I am fairly hopeless at following sewing patterns but Lizzy at Lizziemade posted this tutorial for making a sock rabbit last week and the idea has been floating around in my head ever since.

Mayhem has been on my case about a crochet dog he’s been wanting & I’m just not up for the time investment right now. A sock dog though could be managed.

Challenge #1 – Finding socks

I failed to notice where Lizzie said she used a baby sock and instead went to 3 different stores in search of women’s socks that would make a neat looking dog. Apparently women only want ankle length socks these days. Socks with cuffs, that don’t say “HANES” on the bottom, and are not all shamrocked are hard to come by. Which I already knew sort of because I like socks with cuffs that are not white and don’t have shamrocks (or Xmas trees or whatever cutesie seasonal decor) on them and you just can’t find them, except as the near hosiery style trouser socks. Plain cotton cuffed socks in something other than white. How hard can it be?

Impossible actually, in this area anyway.

I did end up finding black/grey striped knee highs in Target and some blue spotted knee highs also, so I bought them and used the stripes for the dog and am working on a spotted blue brachiosaurus now.

Challenge #2 – Turning this stuff into a sock with out injury to myself

I know what you are thinking. it’s just glue. How can you hurt yourself with glue?

I am someone who super glued my pants to my leg back in June.

Also, not pictured, scissors (the bane of my existence), pins, a needle and an iron.

Yes, AN IRON! Disaster looms!

Yet despite the dull scissors, the black thread on a black background of unraveling fabric, the pins holding it in place and the hot iron pressing a thin seam I did manage to make a fairly credible sock dog.

And I didn’t glue anything to myself.

I’m working on the dinosaur now. I didn’t take a photo because it’s rather obscene shaped at the moment

No sock porn on the blog

Artwork

During our 2 week hiatus from school the boys spent a lot of time talking about battles and war. Havoc is fascinated by WWII and we have a couple DK Illustrated books about it out from the library. They also took the opportunity, when outside, to refight the battle of Hoth. The clones and the dinos fought many battles with one another and the plastic army men.

But their favorite battle was the Pumpkin War.

The Pumpkin War is illustrated.

Havoc drew this. Pumpkins from the blue side dropped from planes onto the red side ship to fight there. The red side is currently being reinforced from the air as well. They are mostly very happy about it, except for that on in the sea.

Mayhem drew a picture of that one’s fate

These are the pumpkins clinging to a life raft, with their ships off in the distance. Notice only the one green one on the right is smiling. The rest look concerned or unhappy. There is a reason for this.

For those of you that can’t read Mayhem it says

“EEWWWW a pumpkin farted”

Guess which one farted?

Yeah.

Boys.

Check in on the goals

This past weekend, finally having a few hours of peace, I took some time to revist the goals I set for myself at the beginning of the year and see how I am doing at meeting them.

My primary goal this year is to take control of my photo processing workflow by using Lightroom, makings sure to tag new photos & delete the bad ones as I go. I’m doing great on this one. I may not tag them immediately as I import them, but I do tag them as I rename or edit them. All the fuzzy, too dark, and weirdly chopped photos are deleted as I go. So far so good on goal number one.

Goal number two was more commenting on blogs, layout and photos. I’ve discovered that I have to pick & choose to make this work. Last week I was good about blogs and photos but commented on no layouts, the week before that was photos and layouts but not many blogs. Goal number two still needs work but is coming along.

My last goal was to accept in my heart & mind that veggies are not just a side dish.

Yeah.

Maybe they are just a side dish actually.

I’ve done ok for the most part adding one veggie meal a week or at least one mostly veggie meal. These are usually frittatas with veggie filling or veggie soup and occasionally pasta with added veg, like replacing a layer of lasagna noodles with zucchini and using roasted pureed eggplant along with the tomato sauce. I have discovered a few things though. My kids will at least try most vegetables if they are raw or total mush (as in have been in a crock pot for 8 hours), but not at any cooked stage in between. They particularly hate the texture of frozen veggies that are then microwaved, except peas & corn. I get that. I have texture issues as well with food. So instead of coming up with cooked dishes I have been serving raw veggie assortments at meals, getting them used to just eating the things regularly. The few cooked vegetable dishes I make have the vegetables cooked very very soft. Goal three has not had much progress but I do have a better understanding of what I need to do to advance.

How is everyone else doing with their resolutions and goals, assuming you set any?

Weekly Winners

A few from this past week

Valentine’s day roses

My to be read pile

The source of drama this week

Monthly self-portrait

For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom.

Thanks for stopping by!

Scrapbook Saturday

I’ve been so busy printing layouts and photos I have not done much scrapping lately.  Simply Scrapbooks had a sale superbowl weekend and that was when I realized I have not printed a darn thing, except my 365 photo books, since early 2007.

But I have done a few layouts I’ve done in the past month.

Some new photos

Some photos I found while sorting them for printing

Some photos I have been scanning

Purification

So the stove….

The ick factor of the stove Tuesday morning cannot be overstated.

I cleaned up the pee. Pulled out the burner pans & burners, scrubbed them with Lysol disinfectant & surface cleaner, scrubbed the stove top and the stove wells with disinfectant then wiped it all down with vinegar & water.

I still felt the ick though so I hit it all again with Clorox kitchen cleaner & another rinse of vinegar & water.

That lasted about 30 minutes before the ick got to me again

It had been cleaned & disinfected but I was thinking it needed more.

So I loaded the burner pans in the dishwasher & ran it on sanitize. Then I scrubbed the burners and the stove with bleach. Lots of bleach. And rinsed again with vinegar & water.

I need to buy more white vinegar

When the dishwasher cycle was completed I reassembled the stove and contemplated dinner.

But I could not bring myself to cook on the stove.

It had been cleaned, disinfected and sanitized but it needed more

Purification by fire was called for.

So I turned on the self cleaned cycle which reaches near 800 degrees and heats the stove well area so much the top of the stove is warm to the touch.

And I turned all the burners on high for 10 minutes just for good measure.

Twice.

While the oven was baking the last traces of pee off I priced new stoves online at Lowes.

The stove I really want with the ceramic cooktop and double ovens costs $1100, just slightly more than the flat screen tv we were going to buy with our tax refund.  Would DH accept it as a swap?  An acceptable stove with just the ceramic cooktop was $500. I am not buying another one with burners and wells.

I pitched the idea when DH came home. The stove was still so hot from the self cleaning cycle that the door was still locked & I couldn’t cook even if I wanted too.

He was as grossed out by the situation as I was but he thinks I have performed enough cleansing rituals so that the stove is no longer unclean.

So.

At this point I know it is purely a mental thing…but I’m not going to be using that back burner any time soon.

You have got to be kidding me!!

Disclaimer – this is not about snow or school or parenting

Monday night I was making chicken positano which requires all of my stove burners to be in use, even the back left one, which never gets used. I put a pot of water on it to boil and turned it on high boil then moved on to pounding the chicken breasts out flat.

Soon the burner was smoking a bit. No biggie, my burners sometimes smoke a bit from a bit of food that smeared on them that I didn’t notice & wipe up. Turn the vent on, let it burn off & keep going.

Then the smell started. OMG! THE SMELL!! Gagging in it’s awfulness. I rush over, turn the burner off, move the pot to another one and begin fanning the air with my dishtowel.

It smelled like burning cat pee.

No lie.

BURNING CAT PEE SMELL.

My first thought is ammonia in the stove cleaner. I don’t use that back burner much and it’s possible that last time I cleaned the stove I got some cleaner on the burner & failed to wipe it off and that was causing the god awful smell.

DH came home 20 minutes later and was all “What is that horrible smell? It smells like burning cat pee”. I tell him about the stove cleaner theory & turn on another fan in the room. After dinner we decide to give the stove top a through cleaning baking soda & a vinegar & water rinse. I cleaned the burner pans and stove top and he scrubbed out under the stove top, where the spilled gunk accumulates & then bakes on to the enamel with each use of the burner.

We couldn’t smell the ammonia smell anymore when we took the burners apart so we accepted the cleaner theory as the cause.

Because no one thinks to themselves “One of my cats is climbing up on this stove and peeing in the back burner and I’m not noticing it.”

Because why would you?

Cats don’t pee on stove tops and if they did certainly you would notice the smell as soon as you were near the stove right? You wouldn’t blithely just turn the burner on & not notice the smell of stale cat pee would you?

Late Tuesday morning I am in the kitchen making a batch of bread dough when I smell cat pee. Immediately I consider the little carpet in front of the sink because once one of the old lady cats peed there a few months ago when I had been negligent in my litter box cleaning. But there was no smell on the carpet.  I happen to glance over at the stove as I am getting up and I see it

A puddle of yellow liquid in the far left corner of the stove top. I lean over and sniff.

HOLY CRAP A CAT HAS PEED ON MY STOVE!

I lift up the burner, there is pee in the burner pan. I remove the pan, there is a puddle in the well..

WTF?

I spend a half hour disinfecting the stove, then wiping it down with vinegar & water so I don’t get burned disinfectant smell.

I’ve tossed the likely suspect outside. All our cats are inside/outside cats who come & go as they please, though mostly they like to sleep inside. The suspect cat will be sleeping outside for now. Subsequent cats will be put out should the situation continue. Once the culprit has been positively ID’d they will be let back in. A repeat will mean a trip to the vet to see what the problem is.

I can only assume there is a medical reason for this. The litter box was cleaned and none of the cats has issues with peeing outside the box now that they are out of small kittenhood. Plus the likely suspect is 11 years old.

I want a new stove. This one has been tainted. No matter how much I scrub I have an oogy feeling about cooking on it.

Judgment

I spoke too soon about the kids having a week of school. It started snowing around 2 yesterday (it stopped by 5) and they closed school 45 minutes early. Then they announced a 2 our delay for today and then this morning at 6:30 they cancelled school.

*sigh*

Then I was cruising the interwebs last night and I learned something

It seems that those of us who were and still are hoping that our kids return to school sometime in the near future are, to some people, terrible mothers. Why did we ever have children if we were going to bemoan having them around and talk about how we can’t wait to get them out of the house so we can have 5 minutes to ourselves again. Children are a blessing. What’s the point of being a mother if you are so selfish you want to eat your lunch in peace?

What is one of the biggest pieces of advice mothers are always being given?

TAKE TIME FOR YOURSELF

You read it everywhere. Experts, friends, family, strangers, they all tell moms “you should take some time for yourself. It makes you a better person and a better mother.It recharges you. It gives you some balance”

But woe unto you who have that and dare complain about losing it!

If we were good mothers we would want our children home with us all the time. We would revel in 24/7 togetherness, cherishing every passing second because it will soon be gone.

It will be replaced by something else, maybe even something better as your children mature and you learn to relate to one another on different levels but that is something some people can’t see yet.

The idea that the problem is routines being disrupted with the consequent mess that can bring doesn’t occur to them because that is not where they are in their lives I suppose. I love my children. I enjoy having them at home. But right now is school time, not home time. The pattern of our life calls for education and interaction with others during the day followed by sports a couple nights a week. It’s hard switching gears from having nothing expected of you to having to sit still, pay attention, do work, follow a different organization of events, practice, interact with 15 people instead of 2 and have to do what the group does rather than do what you like when you like.

Planned vacations are natural breaks. Expected, with start and end dates. They are part of the routine. An occasional snow day is a blessing. A holiday. A fun break from that routine.

Nearly 2 and a half weeks of “will we have school or not?” followed by cancellation after cancellation, messes with your head. It breaks up the pattern. My kids had school yesterday and it was drama without end getting them to the bus. Apparently it was fairly chaotic in school as well. 2 weeks had been missed, everything had to be gone back over to remind the kids what they had learned, tests and events rescheduled causing more stuff to be moved.

We are now losing days from Spring break with this and future absences. Which throws a wrench into the families plans for that week. Two days have been added to the school year so far with more to come. It’s messing up the kids plans too. Summer sports camps & VBS have to reschedule.

And yes, I would like a couple hours to myself. I have things to do that I do best when the boys aren’t around distracting me. I have work to do that can't be done with kids coming up to me evry 30 seconds to tattle on their brother.

If that makes me selfish then so be it.

Glory Hallelujah!

They have school today!!!!

For the first time in all of February!

Saturday there was a bio diesel spill near the high school & the emergency warning system said the area would be blocked off for clean up but I guess they got it all cleaned yesterday.

It might snow today but the chances of it are diminishing, so maybe there might be school TOMORROW as well!!!

Dare I even hope that there might a …a….FULL WEEK of school?!?! The first FULL WEEK of school in all of 2010 so far??

The make up days for the two weeks off are today, March 12 and June 9. Yes, they missed 10 days of school  and they only have to make up 3 of them. This is because days 1-2 were ‘built in’. Days 3-5 are what I have mentioned and days 6-10 are ‘banked days’. I don’t know what banked days are but apparently the school system has figured out a way to actually save time from one year to another.

The next time we miss school we lose a day of Spring break, then add another day to the end of the year, repeat.

And we will miss more school. Our county mostly misses school due to flooding, not snow. Over 5 feet of snow have fallen in the area. The ground was still saturated from the 2 feet in December. There is no place for this snow to go and if we should get 2-3 days in the upper 40s we are in trouble. Even if it melts slowly we are still in trouble. We had a big blizzard hit in Jan 1996. It dumped 2 feet of snow on the ground. In early April of that  year most of the bridges in the county washed away in extreme flooding, including major ones on the main road. Those major ones were rebuild at a significant height so they are probably fine but all the rest were rebuilt on the old spots. Half the county could be cut off. I’m ok where I live, but many of the area roads are next to streams & creeks and in low lying areas.

When the spring thaw hits the mountains it is going to be very problematic around here.

Weekly Winners

We were expecting 4-8” more of snow on Tuesday but the storm blew east of us and we only had half a dino’s worth. (Click here for last week's snowpocalypse photos - 5 dinos worth of snow!)

It was this guy’s birthday

The truck’s fuel pump died and we had to tow it out of the driveway, turning it into a muddy quagmire

Havoc making faces

For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom. Thanks for stopping by!

Saturday Scan

My grandfather, in his new service uniform, holding my mom. This was taken in mid 1939.

I’m having trouble with my feed, so if you see this please comment so I know it’s fixed.

Thanks

Recent 365 photos

I’ve been slacking on posting my 365 photos. Some have made it into Weekly Winners or other posts but these haven’t been posted before.

35/365 – I’ve started a cross stitch project

36/365 – Gnocci with beef & sausage ragu

38/365 - Havoc

40/365 – It was his birthday. He wanted brownies instead of muffins.

Musings on being a Woman

(In anticipation of having either no internet or no electricity or gods help me - BOTH - Wed as a result of Snowpocalypse part Deux, I am reposting an entry I originally wrote in June 2006 but was reminded of today in the grocery store. Male readers who don't have women in their homes might want to move along.)

I was in the store the other day, facing the giant "Wall of Feminine Hygine Products", scanning the boxes, when I noticed how desperate their makers actually are to make themselves stand out in the crowd. A quarter of a century ago, when I first faced the Wall, it was not a Wall. Your choices were small. Stayfree, Kotex or Tampex. The pads that stuck to your underwear & did not require a belt were a new innovation. Then one day there were "wings" on the Stayfree and Always joined the brands. Then the pads got thin. Then they started coming in assorted absorbancies and thus a Wall was born. For the majority of those 25 years I stuck with Tampex & failed to really notice just how many different types of pads there are. Tampons themselves were straining my decision making abilities as it was (scented? cardboard applicator, plastic applicator or no applicator? light, heavy, medium or multi pack?). The whole idea of choosing a pad was just too much & so I always bought Always when I needed some. The hospital where my sons were born sends you home with a couple packages of Always and I stuck with it. But the other day I was waiting for a prescription & had time to contemplate the bounty before me. Every brand has a gimick, but one stood out above all others. On the box of Kotex Ultra Thin (with Leak Lock), in bold letters, is written "SHHHH Quietest Packaging"

Is noisy pad packaging a problem?? Did the results of some poll say "Yeah, we'd like to use your product but that wrapper is just so darn *loud*" Are there women out there concerned about the sound their pad wrapper makes when they open it? I imagine a woman, frozen in a public restroom, needing to change her pad but too embarassed to open the new one because the loud rustling will announce to everyone else in the room "SHE HAS HER PERIOD!" Then I began to wonder if I had ever noticed the sound of pad packaging being opened when I was in a public restroom. I cannot recall. I've never thought about it. You hear noises sometimes from other stalls. I, for one, choose not to speculate on what those noises might signify. Perhaps it is time I started.

I bought the Kotex because I just *had* to know if they were that much quieter. Always has a plastic wrapper that is taped down & sealed up the sides & there is a definate ripping noise when you open it. The Kotex wrapper was more cloth like & thinner, not taped but still sealed up the side. It was much quieter when it was opened. But unless Kotex has pointed it out too me I don't think I would have noticed.

I never thought I would one day be in a bathroom comparing the relative loudness of pad wrappers. It's just not something that ever crosses your mind you might be doing. Cooking dinner? Yeah. Weeding the garden? yeah i thought I'd probably do that. Comparing noisy pad wrapping? no, never.

Parenting by Star Wars

The boys are in the living room watching TV. They’ve been inside about 20 minutes.

Mayhem: Where is the hot chocolate Mama?

Me: I’m in the middle of something. I’ll make some if you go outside for an hour.

Havoc: We already went outside for a half hour. You said we’d get hot chocolate if we went outside for a half hour

Me: I’m altering the agreement. Pray I don’t alter it further.

Snowpocalypse –a timeline

Friday Feb 5.

There is already 4-5” still on the ground from the snowfall on Jan 31 and Feb 2. Supplies had been purchased Thursday including a pot roast, gnocci, milk, bread, and 4 kinds of animal crackers

6am – School is cancelled. Shocker! 

7:30 – DH clears the porch of existing snow & ice and salts it then plows the existing snow from the parking area

7:45 – A fine wet snow begins to fall

8: 20 – Havoc outside for a half hour

9:30 – I start eggplant roasting & meat browning for ragu

10:15 – Havoc outside for 20 minutes. Begs Mayhem to join him. Mayhem, the snow hater, is having none of it

11:00 – 5/8ths of an inch of snow have fallen.

1:45pm -  Boys sent outside with bribe of hot chocolate if they will stay out for an hour.

2:30 – 1.25” of snow.

2:45 – Boys back inside

3:00 – Hot chocolate all around. DH calls to say he’ll be leaving the office in a half hour or so

3:30 – 2.75” of snow. So far I am not impressed with this storm

4:45 – 4” of snow. DH arrives home with tales of how very slippery the roads are and a bunch of chips, some vodka, AA batteries and a bottle of honey whiskey. (It will turn out that we actually need AAA and D batteries, but the whiskey does keep you warm)

6:00 – 5.5” of snow

8:00 – 6.125” of snow

10:30 – 9” of snow has accumulated. The build up on the satellite dish is blocking the signal reception. I trudge out to sweep it up. Total amount of snow on the ground reaches the tops of my boots.

Saturday Feb 5

Sometime during the night, later determined to be a bit after 4am – the power goes out.

Sometime after that the boys and 3 cats join us in bed relieving me of any worries about staying warm (or sleeping).

6:30 – Boys decide it is light enough out to play their DSs in the living room. Time is determined by DH stumbling around & finding his cell phone. I have evil thoughts about no coffee and stay in bed,because really, what is the point of getting up?

7:08 – Power comes back on. I remain in bed on general principle.

7:45 - The power goes out again and I curse myself and my damn principles. Had I gotten out of bed I could have had the coffee made & in the thermos.

8:15 - Power comes back on and I dash out to make coffee. Then I measure the snowfall overnight.  We now have about 14” of new snow with over 20” in places where snow already was. The snow is really coming down now

11:00 – 17” of snow. I assemble dinner in the crock pot & put it on high anticipating another power outage & hoping to get it as cooked as possible before that.

1:00pm – 18” of snow. Satellite blocked again by snowfall. DH goes out on the porch and brushes it off with a broom. I think evil thoughts about how I trudged UPHILL in the SNOW and DARK to clear it last night because *I* am not tall enough to reach the dish with a broom from the porch.

 

2:00 – 19” of snow and the internet goes out. More evil thoughts

2:50 – Snow is tapering off to flurries and the power goes out

3:20 – Accept the power is probably going to be out awhile and start a fire in the woodstove. The crock pot is then placed on the stove to continue cooking (yeah me! thinking ahead!) and several large pots full of snow added as well to melt snow so we have water to flush toilets (ok, so I failed to think ahead for that contingency). Think happy positive thoughts about the power returning soon

4:30 – Snow stops and DH begins plowing the porch and parking area.

5:30 – Dinner is served by the light of the setting sun and candles. It feels positively medieval to be eating stew cooked on the fire in the dark. Except it was beef, not mutton and we had forks. (I’m currently reading The Time Travelers Guide to Medieval England as an odd coincidence)

7:00 – We play Clue Carnival with headlamps & take turns reading books aloud. We drag the kids old toddler mattresses into the living room, which is the only room the woodstove heats, so they can sleep. Set up the kerosene heater in the kitchen in the hopes it will warm the kitchen in our bedroom. (It would turn out that the kerosene heater heats the kitchen, the hallway and the boys’ bedroom just fine, but our bedroom, which is off the kitchen, does not really get warm). Thoughts turn evil.

8:15 – Boys go to bed

9:10 – Thank you God! The power is back! We leave the boys in the living room, let the fire in the woodstove die and put the kerosene heater in our room because it is currently 78 degrees in the living room & that is where the thermostat is. The heat won’t come on in the rest of the house until the living room cools to 72. This happens at 1am.

11:30 – Realize we are watching the Eukenuba dog show just to make up for being denied our electronics fix for almost 7 hours and go to bed.

Sunday Feb 7

8:00a – Power is on, coffee is made, internet is back. Life is good.

10:30 – I dig out my car, while DH plows the driveway. Life is sore. Come in after an hour to discover the internet has gone out again. Evil thoughts return.

 

 

11:30 – Go for walk on the road to see how it looks. It’s snowy but passable. That’s DH’s truck by the black mailbox, on the left, under all that snow.

12:30p – DH returns from plowing the driveway to tell me that his truck, parked at the very end of our driveway, on the downhill slope, so he could get out easily, won’t start. It’ll turn over but it won’t catch. Probably it’s a fuel pump problem & eventually will have to be towed to the repair shop. But, it’s completely blocking the driveway so we can’t get my car out either. Evil thoughts continue

1:00 – We begin attempting to tow the truck back up the driveway with the tractor. For the next 3.5 hours the truck will inch up and go back and inch up and go back and come up a whole 8 feet and then go back. The tractor will turn the driveway into a quagmire of mud and slurry as it tries to gain traction. We will shovel all the loose gravel that was plowed off the driveway back into the ruts and holes the tractor makes. We will put firewood in them and large rocks and sheets of plywood and chicken wire. Anything to get traction. When we finally admit defeat that part of the driveway is torn all to hell, ruts and holes and muck everywhere and the truck is only 2 feet further back than where it started. DH, Havoc and I are all covered in mud.

I didn’t know thoughts could get that evil.

4:30 – I call for a tow truck. It will be a $250 if they come today. $50 tomorrow. Evil,evil thoughts indeed.

5:00 – I start a load of muddy outerwear in the washing machine & take a shower. Then I make mac & cheese for dinner.

6:00 – Phone rings with recorded message from school superintendant whose voice sounds like “Oh my god! I am so done with this snow”. Big surprise! School is canceled tomorrow AND Tuesday!

7:00 – Lay down utterly worn out, hoping the truck will start tomorrow and the internet fairy will visit. Spend the evening working on a cross stitch project and rereading The Sacrilege, book 3 of the SPQR series by John M Roberts (book 13 comes out Feb 16 & I always reread series before getting the newest installment). Power flickers ominously.

Monday Feb 8

7:00a – Boys awake & listening to the Phineas & Ferb soundtrack on my speakers in the living room while making Flip videos of themselves dancing. Still no internet. But  we do have power. Some people have no power yet & have been told it might be the 12th before they get power, so Yeah! for power. Sadly the tower I get my internet signal from is in one of those locations.

8:00 – Call for tow truck, along with a couple dozen other people who didn’t want to pay $250 to have their cars towed yesterday. Today is apparently a big “Oh you drove your car into the ditch at the end of your driveway?” day. We didn’t drive our car into a ditch so they will at least have an easy time getting it on the truck, but it’s 4 wheel drive so they need a special truck to tow it. They will call sometime today & let us know when they can get here.

9:00 – DH decides to wrestle with the 75ft eyesore & see if we can point the antenna to another tower, but there is no joy. Tower #2 is also out of power and the signal from the third requires some equipment he returned because we don’t use that tower. I’m too sore from all the shoveling yesterday to work up any decent evil thoughts at this point so they are merely somewhat unpleasant now.

9:30 – Photo editing. 118 photos of snow from Feb 1 to Feb 7. I’ve had lots of practice with ISO & white balance this week.

11:00 – DH had rigged up a kinda sorta internet connection. Immediately checked the weather & discovered we are expecting 4-6” on Tuesday. *sigh*

Weekly WInners – Snowpocalypse!

It all began last weekend with a 4-6” snowfall

Then came the Tuesday 1-3” snowfall

The dinos enjoyed it, once they bundled up warmly

They had a snowball battle

And played king of the mountain. Or maybe Rex of the mountain

How much snow did we have on the ground on Wednesday? About one dino’s worth

Then the storm hit Friday and Saturday

Apparently we had more than 3 dinos worth of new snowfall by 2pm on Saturday, giving us a grand total of almost 5 dinos worth of snow in places and it was still coming down.

For more Weekly Winners please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom. Thanks for stopping by!

Check back tomorrow for an exciting account of 20" accumulation, 7 hours without power and medieval attempts at cooking in the dark on a woodstove!