We’ve been told by those who spend their time looking at the weather that we’re in for yet another storm. It should begin late this evening, snow through the night accumulating to 4 to 7 inches, and then change to sleet and freezing rain tomorrow morning followed by rain, heavy at times tomorrow afternoon. The winter storm warning will remain until tomorrow night.
The conditions expected in this storm are the worse kind we get. The 4 – 7 inches of snow isn’t bad. That can be easily cleaned up, even with my terrible snow blower. More on that in a moment. But the sleet and freezing rain will form a very heavy crust on top of the snow and ice on trees, poles, wires, and other things outside. The heavy rain will weigh all that down even more causing many power outages and much damage. A few years ago our state suffered through a massive ice storm which literally crippled us for days. That is not expected to be repeated tomorrow, but the heavy snow and ice will probably cause trees to break or be uprooted, wires to be ripped from buildings, and poles to fall.
About my snowblower: I’ve been saying that I have the world’s worse unit and described why I feel that way. I have a friend in Florida. He’s pretty darned knowledgeable in things mechanical. He wrote me that he couldn’t accept all my criticism until some examination could be made. Now he couldn’t do that from 15-hundred miles away, but he did make some suggestions of things I could check on the unit. He gave me directions of what to look for in language this absolutely-non-mechanic could follow. Son of a gun, I found all the items he had suggested and, while looking them over, found something else. It was a tension adjuster. So I’ve adjusted the tension. I had hoped last storm to be able to check to see if my machine now worked as I expected. But the snow quickly became rain and even though we had 2 inches of slush on the driveway, it was so wet I could see the black tar through it. I didn’t even attempt to do anything with my blower. That might change in the morning. If I can get to the snow before the rains come, I’ll be able to test out my friend Richard’s theories. If it doesn’t work, I know he’ll have other ideas for me. It’s great to have a friend, isn’t it?
Back to today. We didn’t go to the supermarket today as we have all we need to survive for a few days if necessary. But my wife who works part-time in a supermarket tells me that days like this one bring out the hordes preparing for a storm. She gets fascinated watching people buy frozen foods, meats and vegetables that need to be cooked, and all kinds of other stuff that require electricity to prepare. From what she observes, not many even consider how they’re going to cook if the electricity is out.
But we did go shopping. We spent about 3 and a half hours looking for curtains. Actually one or two curtains, not a whole houseful. She wanted a new one for her bathroom and in the many years we’ve lived in this house, we’ve never had one for the kitchen window. If I could be cute with words, I describe the whole trip. But I can’t do it justice, so I’ll just say I did what every man wants to do, go shopping with his wife, for curtains. We visited curtain shops. We visited curtain departments in many stores. We visited home improvement stores. We bought no curtains. What a blast this day was!
And now, as the clouds are rolling in and the storm is on the horizon, I’m sitting here thinking about what a very lucky guy I am. We’ve been married for almost a half century, and I’m still amazed at how much pleasure I have just going shopping with her as she puts up with my foolishness over trying to find new curtains.
G.D.
