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*