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Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Submitted entry: It finally came - the snow we’ve been waiting over a year for. It started last night as I was answering email. I could hear the whisper of snow on the trees and yurt roof. This whisper continued through the night and by morning there was 8 inches on the ground and more on the way. Springfield, 90 minutes away and the only place I’ve heard a recent tally of the amount of snowfall reports fourteen inches. And true to form, they were crippled. This morning with only 8 inches on the ground Heard them say on the radio that at one freeway intersection there werefifty tractor trailers in the ditch. Sound unbelievable? I agree,but then they really don’t know how to handle snow here.

We were caught a little off guard ourselves. We’d hoped to get a bunch of water out here so we didn’t have to haul it in the snow. We also wanted to bring a bunch of wood back. Neither got done as Sage was late coming back from picking up the car in town. Instead we got enough wood for the night and a little water. Fortunately, though, we have a sled which makes carrying things almost easier than when there is no snow.

But I did feel pretty overwhelmed when I woke up this morning. There washardly any wood, very little water, the sink drain was frozen shut and I think we’re pretty low on cooking gas (Sage got the car too late to pickup our cylinder from the gas place). What a way to start the morning! But I didn’t despair - and believe me I wanted to. Instead we just dove into what needed to be done. Sage took the wheelbarrow through the snow (we didn’t have the sled yet) and got a bunch of wood at the house and brought it to the ravine. I brought it the rest of the way home in boxes. Then I made coffee - probably should have done that first. And we also stoked up the fire and cleaned up inside. And each thing we didmade a huge difference. By the time 8:00 rolled around, it was no longer a dismal winter day but a lovely snow-filled, magical day. Sage, of course, felt that all along. The cats, however, have yet to come aroundto it. They all stayed inside and whined at the door only to give us a dirty look when we actually opened it. However, as the day warmed I just put them outside. Even Claire seemed to be okay with it. She prefers to be outside, anyway - even if she did go under the yurt. Harriet’s the worst, though. She goes out and yells to come back in. Then when she gets back in she yells as if to gretz about how miserable it is outside and how we should do something about it.

In Paul news, things are going great. The hitting has stopped completely and we’ve found some more fun things to do. Lately his big thing is toplay with the CD player. We have all our CDs in one of those flip-books so we can store them in a small space as opposed to what it’d take were we to keep them all in jewel cases. He loves the arrangement and spendshours (not all at once, but throughout the day several times a day) just putting a CD in, playing it for 10-20 seconds and then putting another in. I can tell what he likes, though, as he’ll actually listen to it for more than that. He loves the Ladysmith Black Mambazo CD that he got as a gift and plays it often. He also is very fond of Mimi and knows what the CD looks like enough to play it when he likes to. He’s also fond of his cousin David’s CDs. It’s obvious from the last two that he really thinks it’s cool to be able to listen to people he knows from real life singing.

The other thing he’s really getting into is reading. I think he’sstarting to understand about words and letters. He knows most of his upper and lower case letters and knows that they read left to right. Lastnight he had the CD player down and started pointing to letters and reading them out to me: “M, A, G, N, A, V, O,X…Music!!&148; Either he hasn’t quite figured out what all the sounds the letters make are or he is working on an ad campaign. One never can be sure with him.

So here we are. We’re looking at probably another week or more before the roads are passable enough for us to get to town. Fortunately we have a fair amount of food. And if we’re really hard up and need to get that propane we can probably catch a ride into town with a neighbor with a four wheel drive.

But fortunately, everything else seems pretty much intact. There’s electricity and phone at the house and net access is still reliable. I think in some ways that feels really odd. It’s odd enough to live without electricity and still be very much on the net and relying on email. But to be physically isolated from the world - unable to actually get to a grocery store, or more accurately we probably could get there, just getting back up the hill might be a pain, but at the same time to be in close contact with lots of people. Very odd. It’s one thing to have television and radio in the midst of a storm but to have two waycontact feels strange. Hey, there’s always mail service. We could just order out for food and supplies and maybe they’d deliver it next day. *grin*

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