For the first winter that I can EVER remember, New Englanders are uniformly complaining about the weather. The more usual head-shaking about changeability of the sky or stoic shrugs have given way to groaning.
Snow has relentlessly fallen every few days – or at least it feels that way. With each accumulation comes heavy lifting, re-arranged schedules, worry about roads and rooves. I have been living on my heating pad.
A friend of my brother-in-law died of a heart attack shoveling. Last night, there was news about two calamitous building collapses. Up in Salem, my sister’s building keeps producing lethal icicles, four feet long, two stories up, directly above her walkway.
This week found both K and me out on the roof, chipping, sweeping, scraping, and chiseling. The guy at the hardware store joked about using an acetylene blow torch. I laughed, but kind of wondered whether it might work — water was coming in through our kitchen ceiling, and nothing to that point had yet stopped it. Thankfully, the ice melt that I bought worked. I flung an entire box up into the valley where two parts of our house meet. Within hours, I could put away the pots that had been on the floor catching water.
I took comfort in knowing that were the ceiling to cave in, it would invariably happen when my husband was in Korea or Russia, and he was home (though he was NOT here when that awful slush and frozen rock-like stuff had to be moved around).
And, now it is supposed to rain and I find myself wondering, “What will THAT do?!” I am driving to Maine today to help celebrate a friend’s birthday. Wish me luck!! I hope the freezing rain has come, melted, and gone. In the meantime, I am loving the squirrels who visit our deck.
Wow! what a winter you all are having up there Dee!
Thank you so much for not gloating Mo! It’s bad enough listening to my brother who lives in LA talking about the sun!!
i am seriously sick of snow.
See? Do you usually say that? Of course, this year, you are actually sick, too.
My god it’s awful there! I am in awe of your Yankee ingenuity, strength, skill and… Enjoying squirrels 🙂 I was gonna start complaining along with all my NJ neighbors about the shoveling and the ice, but we got nuthin’ compared to you!
Oh Dee…it DOES sound like too much! My son and a friend in the Boston area too…so much snow this year! You can see my son on the news here: http://www.wggb.com/2014/02/17/snow-in-northampton-spills-over-rooftops/
Please, please take care and be safe!
I’m enjoying the small little flurry we are having at the moment, mostly ’cause I know it will be gone in a couple days. We’ve had snow storms here that make roofs fall in, boat sink. We go winters with no snow and then “Hello” 3 weeks of it. So I get this. Hoping that if all clears away for you soon.
Someone here in PA wrote that it is like living in a Swedish Film Festival….