Weather Drama

The view out my window is a study in black and white, with the neighbors little red barn the exception.   We were supposed to get six to thirteen inches of snow.  People battened down the hatches.  They called it Snowmageddon on the news.  It's hard to find milk and bread at the grocery stores.  Overnight, we got almost an inch of snow.  Since then, we've had five inches more.  Ha!  I just love watching the weather people around here.  There's so much drama. 

I do like that both Mike and Nick are home today.  It has felt like a mini-vacation with all of this expectation of snow and everyone at home.  Yet, I can remember at least one snow day each year when the kids have been home all day without even a dusting of snow.  Really?  After living in this area for twenty-two years, you'd think I'd be used to this.

I moved here in late August of 1990.  Within a month, I had a job with a good avionics company as a technical writer.  That November, we had a snowfall of about eight inches.  I put on my boots, threw a blanket into the truck and drove to work.  I couldn't figure out why there were abandoned cars strewn about as if it was a war zone.  When I got to work, the building was locked up and the security system was on.  I could look through the window and see it blinking.  I couldn't get in.  Oh man, I thought I was I going to lose my job for not showing up at work.  I couldn't remember my boss's phone number.  I didn't want to leave.  I'd gotten there ten minutes early just in case it took me extra time on the road.  I waited at that door until the snow started melting down into to tops of my boots.  I waited in my truck. There were no cell phones back then or at least I didn't have one.  Do you remember those old cell phones that were the size of a brick?   Rather than get hyperthermia, I scratched out a note on a scrap of paper I found in my purse and jammed it as far as I could into the crack of the door frame.  I put down what time I'd come, what time I'd left, and the date.  Then I drove home.  After that, I got out my cross-country skiis and skated down the middle of the empdy road looking at all those abandoned cars.  I almost skiied out to my new office.  I was tempted.  I still wasn't certain I would have a job in the morning.  No one showed up to work for three days and they laughed at all the notes that I had left. 

When Mike got home from work that first day, we both laughed as we watched the weather report.  It was 27 degrees outside and they were calling it an arctic blast.   These people have never seen an arctic blast.  I remember complaining about the weather at my college being down below zero for a month.  My friends who went to school in Minnesota laughed at me.  They wore shorts and played ultimate frisbee when the temperatures got up to zero.  Zero degrees Farenheit, that is. 
I remember this one guy at my college who used to wear shorts every day, throughout that whole cold month.  I finally gathered up my courage, approached him, and asked.  He told me he was from Nome, Alaska and that this weather felt downright balmy to him.  Okay, I was a lightweight.  That was okay with me.  Over the years, I learned that my body could learn to tolerate the cold and that good gear went a long way toward protecting me.

So now, I've lived in the Pacific Northwest for twenty-two years.  I have never once seen a woman wearing one of those long puffy coats out here and yet I hear them complain about the frigid weather.  My weather gear this season has been a fleece vest, a hoodie, and a rain jacket.  I have a real winter coat, but I haven't needed it in a while.  After all these years, it's still funny when the weather dips below freezing and the news people warn about an arctic snap and caution people not to go anywhere if they don't have to.  I will concede that there are a number of steep hills around here that complicate driving.  Plus, the roads are never slicker as when water on them is just hovering at freezing.  I'll also admit that my skills at driving in snow have lapsed a bit.  I'm out of practice. 

Beyond that, I just don't understand the complaints about the weather.  The snow is beautiful, great for packing into snowballs and building forts and snowmen.  The puppy loves when we throw snowballs for him.  The kids are enjoying the sledding hill/driveway.  And I have my whole family with me here at home.

Thank you for listening, jb

Through That Dark Tunnel

I hate trying to blog when I'm tired.  I'm tired now.  I did sleep last night, but I walked the dog, shopped for groceries, played with boys, listened for unhappy yelling, yelled a couple of warnings, made hot cocoa and beef stroganoff, served snacks, took pictures, and refereed a sword fight.  Some people go to work and have children.  I don't know how they do it.  I get tired by this time in the day.  I didn't get a nap in.  Oh, whine, whine, whine.  I need someone to rub my feet and draw a bath for me.  Maybe a glass of wine instead.   

The boys had a snow day.  They slept late, but not late enough.  They screamed around the house, played games, pretended to be warriors, played with action figures, played 'funny falls' on a camping mattress, careened down the driveway on sleds, and played video games for just a little while. 

It didn't even snow here today.  There wasn't even a half an inch of snow left after the mist slushed it away this afternoon, but two miles away and a few hundred feet higher in elevation, they got seven inches of snow last night.  I love that about this area.  I can have wilder weather than one of my best friends three miles down the road, mostly because of the gradual climb to my house.  Nick's school, four miles away in the other direction, can have wilder weather than we have because they are just that much higher than we are.  One night, I was driving home from Fall City in a driving snowstorm and could barely discern a line across the road ahead of me and an unnerving darkness beyond it.  It was as if the world ended beyond that point.  I was already moving slowly, so I crept toward it and was suddenly out in an ordinary night before I realized I'd abruptly left the storm.  There was actually a line where the snow on the road suddenly ended.
So today, when I left Adrian and Nick by themselves so I could walk Teddy and pick up some groceries, I told them to call me if the traffic slowed down on the highway or if it began to snow and looked serious outside.  Of course, I was just getting warmed up on the trail with Teddy when Nick called.  He sounded a little worried.

"Mom! It's hailing," he said, "really hard."

"Well, are the cars slowing down outside?"
"Wait a minute," he said.  It always feels strange to hear phone silence.  It was a long silence.  Teddy came leaping back to where I stood on the trail.  I stood with my iPhone to my ear, my finger over the hole in the top of the phone to keep out drips.  I looked at the display to see if I'd lost Nick. somehow.

"Mom?"

"Yup, I'm here," I said.

"They're going fast out there," he said.

"Okay, that's good.  Call me in fifteen minutes if it's still hailing super hard," I said. "Wait, no, call me in twenty minutes.  The roads can't get that bad in the next twenty minutes that I couldn't get home to you."  Actually, that isn't true.  Just at freezing, the roads can go from slushy to treacherous in minutes, but I wasn't going to tell Nick that right now.  He sounded worried that he'd be stuck alone there with just Adrian for the next week if the weather turned.  I knew he'd be good for the rest of the night if he had to, but he wasn't sure of it.  I figured I had time to enjoy my walk and take that risk.  It might be good for him to be on his own for a little longer.  Eleven is such a funny age, so full of confidences and insecurities all blended together. One minute, he's acting like a man and the next, he's my little boy again.

So I walked, kick up the snow, thought of my boy, and watched Teddy romping around.  Teddy danced circles around me, got into a muddy trench to darken his ankles, then ran through two tunnels, coming out the other side all proud of himself and dirty.  We had a nice walk, but when the snow really started coming down, I turned back, ready to reenter the noise of happy boys playing in my house.  I made it home to them with no problem, but I sort of look forward to the day when Nick goes off on his own, through a dark tunnel, and comes out the other side, dirty and proud of himself for having survived.

Thank you for listening, jb

Snow and Hot Cocoa

I am happy to announce that we finally retired the ghetto box, the cardboard box from Christmas 2010 that Buddy the cat adopted when noone was willing to save him a lap.  Neither of the cats seem to be missing it.  There's no circling around that spot, no crying while looking there, no lashing out at the puppy.  They don't even seem to have noticed.  Somehow, I expected to keep that stupid box until Buddy really did reach his expiration date.  The sweet guy is still going strong.  I've tried to give him more lap time, but walking a dog has dug into it.  I like resilience and determination in a cat. 

I'm looking out on the front lawn where the boys seemed to have dug up every inch of snow in an attempt to built a snow fort.  It takes a lot of snow to build a fort, but I can tell you, this snow is perfect for building.  It packs tight and holds onto other snow.  We're all hoping that it will snow some more and the kids will be off from school for another day.  A minute ago, I wished we were all still outside playing because the trees joined in the game and began to drop great snowballs from their boughs.  It is a wet snow, so each branch is outlined in white.  It's pretty, but I'm glad it's dropping off since it's supposed to snow again later and the branches are already weighed down pretty well.  There's another big snowball fight happening outside.  The trees play even when we've quit and come inside for hot cocoa. 

I've been making homemade cocoa for Nick and Adrian, using milk, half-n-half, stevia, and unsweetened cocoa warmed on the stove.  Then I have them whip up some cream to top it.  My mother used to make hot chocolate that way.  My mother did some good things.

She also made snow ice cream after it had snowed long enough.  My dad used to say that the act of snowing cleaned the air so that after six or seven inches of snow two or three days in a row and finally he'd declare that it was clean enough to eat.  I've read that there is no place in the world left where it's safe to eat the snow.  That stinks.  My mother would have us get a stockpot full of the cleanest snow we could find.  Then she quickly added sugar, vanilla, and a little milk and stirred it up and served it before it melted.  It was so different from regular ice cream, more strongly vanilla flavored and grainy from the sugar.  We loved it.  It's funny how we could come in from playing in the snow, our skin still cold inside our clothes, and we'd sit down to eat a bowl of snow ice cream. 

You can see why I'm insulin-resistant, don't you?  I have eaten enough sugar in my lifetime so far for two whole lifetimes.  Sometimes I wonder if I ate more sugar because I was insulin-resistant or if I was insulin-resistant because I ate more sugar?  I know I had the same trouble with low blood-sugar when I was a kid.  I couldn't think.  I got really shaky and sweaty and would often feel nauseous if I had to wait too long between meals.  Now, I know that if I feel that way during a normal interval, I'm eating too much sugar and need to cut back.  I carry food with me everywhere, tomato juice, corn nuts, apple sauce, and turkey jerky.  Protein is the safest way for me to take care of that feeling, but I can't tell you how tired I am of eating jerky.

I'm starting to get warmed up after being pummeled with snow balls.  The boys teamed up against me and, though I got them pretty good a couple of times, they really got going and I was done for.  Now, we're back inside.  They played out in the snow from 8:00 am until about 1:30 pm, coming in to warm up and eat before they went back out.  I think they're done for now since Adrian fell and bruised his knee.  I might make popcorn later.  Oh man, my mother used to make popcorn balls too.  Basically, you make popcorn and roll it in Karo syrup and butter.  All of those winter foods have so much sugar in them.  I was thinking of making cookies later too, but that's just sad without sugar.  It's sad and hard but we've lost so many of those traditions.  How can I justify it when Nick has the same problem that I do with sugar? 

So after the boys came inside, I made up salads with romaine lettuce, cheese curds, fresh pineapple, chunks of summer sausage, and raspberry viniagrette dressing.  It was delicious!  I could have made soup, but I'm kind of tired of my cheesy brocoli soup and haven't been otherwise inspired. 

The boys are lost in a video game.  The skies are heavy with unshed snow.  I'm going to head into my kitchen, turn on my audio book, 'Historian,' by Elizabeth Kostova, and see if I can gather the ingredients for chili.  It's a good night for chili.  Now that's a winter tradition I can keep.

Thank you for listening, jb