The Hits Just Keep On Comin'

Today is my first day at work this week. I've been down with a cold, and had nothing to contribute to the blogosphere.

Saturday I drove to Kent, OH, to attend a technical communications workshop. The weather forecast for Saturday was 4"-8" of snow. I think we got 9". The drive, which should have taken 45 minutes, max, took me an hour and 45 minutes. The drive home took over an hour. The roads were minimally plowed and ducking scary.

On Sunday, I spent the afternoon at the new house, getting things ready to go to Goodwill, sorting, culling, purging. The handyman/painter/family friend came over to see what he needs to do his job. I discovered that one of the pieces of furniture left behind was a Knoll Barcelona stool. I went to Lowe's and spent $200+ on paint and supplies. A busy day. When I laid my head on the pillow at 10:00, I started coughing. Monday, when I got out of the shower, I said, "there's no way" and crawled back into bed. Tuesday I didn't even bother with the shower! That should give you a little clue to how bad I felt.

This morning I scraped about 4" of snow off the car before I set out. As I glance out my window, it is snowing and snowing and snowing. Not a blizzard. Just steadily-falling snow.

The longest I've lived in cold weather before this iteration was the school year of 1971-72, when FOMC got his Master of Music degree in choral conducting at the University of Wisconsin. I don't remember much about that year, except being overwhelmed by the fact that I had made the biggest mistake of my life in marrying this guy. Oh, and I remember the day when the high was 23 below zero and our heat pipes froze. Not fun.

I've fantasized throughout my life about living lots of different places. But I think I never supposed the weather in that locale would be any different than it was on the day I fell in love with it. Boulder, Colorado; Gloucester, Massachusetts; Northeast Harbor, Maine; Chicago, Illinois; …. You get the idea—I have a great real estate fantasy life.

But now here I am, ostensibly for the rest of my life, in northeast Ohio where it's damned cold. When I woke this morning, the temperature was 5 degrees. Okay, so that was above zero, but still. (My friend JW is going to scoff at this post, as he currently resides in Rochester, MN, where it's double-damned cold.) I never dreamed I'd be living in this kind of climate.

The snow is still magical to me. I grew up in Orlando. When I was in second grade, we had snow one day, and the principal rang the fire alarm so we could go out and catch snowflakes in our little mittens. My next experience with snow was my freshman year in college in southern Tennessee. Repeated instances of snow, but nothing like this!

So I close with a shout-out to the hard-working guys from Energy Detectives, who have been laboring for a week to upgrade the level of insulation in the Clark residence. Even thought the outside temperature was 5 degrees this morning, the temperature in my room was 50 degrees! Astonishing!! Thanks, guys.

Post script 1:20 pm: Just ran out to the car to retrieve the cough drops I bought on the way in to work this morning. (They weren't there. How could I have lost an entire bag of cough drops?) It's so white ouside I had to shield my eyes to see where I was going. And damned cold.