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The short version: Drama Update

Well hellloooooooo everyone.

I'm here to give a short update. It's bedtime here and I'm tired, so this will be short.

We took Logan out of school almost two weeks ago.

Yep. Homeschooling is going well so far.

It's pretty much all that I've been doing lately, and trying to settle back into life along with having Logan home all day.

That's it.

Toodles.

Don't faint, I'm posting again. Two days in a row!!!

Today we drove to the house in town,  or the TOWN HOUSE as we sometimes call it, to check on our new lakes and waterfall.

Since we were there last and dug out as much snow as we could, things have changed.

The garage has turned into an ice skating rink. Yes. Everything is now frozen in place.

The dumpster miraculously was dumped finally, and is now precariously perched on top of a pile of snow.

The water in the basement is mostly gone, except for one small patch of ice. The water outside the basement windows has turned into solid blocks of ice.

I am so thankful!! Everything is looking up! We've got to get those blocks of ice outside the basement windows out of there, but everything else is just going to have to be.

Tomorrow is one of the last demo days we will have to work on plaster, maybe even the last. Hopefully the last.

The ceiling is almost gone. I'm excited.

I am so over this weather. So so over it.

Let me pick up the story with where I left off, but I'll just give the highlighted version.

I have now been stuck in our driveway more times than I care to count.

Ice melt is a wonderful invention.

Replacing tires with ripped holes in them can be expensive.

Tires are important.

Garages are not meant to be swimming pools, nor are basements.

It's not a good idea to plug in any tools that are sitting in water.

Snow can be very heavy.

Relying on the trash man to come can be so very frustrating when he is not reliable.

Snow boots are a good idea. Real snow boots.

Drive slowly and carefully over flooded roads.

It is futile to try to stop water. It's impossible.

If it's not warm enough for water to evaporate, it just hangs around.

The end.

Have a lovely day.

We had some nasty weather this past week and weekend, you guys! School was cancelled Wednesday and Thursday, but then my kids were back in school on Friday. And on Friday night my mom was calling worried about what weather the weekend would bring. So I looked it up and yeah, it looked bad. So on Saturday I planned on going grocery shopping before the storm hit, but it kept getting put off and I took a shower and fed the baby, and it was 2:00pm before I left. It had been snowing all day and the wind was terrible.

The first clue that I shouldn't have gone was the snow drifts in our driveway and around the car making it almost impossible to get in the car, but not all the way impossible.  I opened the car door, pushing the snow away with the bottom of the door, and hopped inside. I made at least five different attempts to leave the driveway before I finally made it out to the street.

I made it to town just fine, even though the roads were covered in ice and snow and snow drifts were everywhere. The wind was blowing the snow sideways and it was hard to see. I had taken Samantha with me, so once we got to the grocery store, we ran inside and got what we needed and ran back outside to find that the storm had gotten worse. The car was covered in snow and the wind was pelting us with a mixture of snow and ice pellets.

We had to stop at the other grocery store in town to buy Carter's bread which the first store was out of, so I left the car running and Sami in the car and ran inside for a minute. While I was inside Trevor called. Sami answered and he told her he was worried and we needed to get home now. I got back in the car and Sami told me what Trevor had said. We had been gone at that point for 45 minutes.

I was honestly super worried too. The wipers kept getting iced up. The wind kept bringing giant packs of snow across the road to where I couldn't see diddly-squat, and the snow drifts were getting deep.

At this point I was back on the road and called my mom who had asked me to call her on my way home. We almost got stuck on the railroad crossing which had turned into a deep drift. We started down the highway towards home. My conversation with my mom was her asking why we hadn't gone shopping the night before and me exclaiming every few seconds that "I can't see!!!! Oh wait, I can now.". And then about a mile from the turn off to our house this really weird thing happened. I'm going to attempt to explain it.

You know when you go to the car wash and it has those big fluffy mop looking things? When those touch your car,  you know the sound that it makes? It's not loud, but like a soft boom sound? Okay. So I'm driving down the road, and this big gust of wind comes and I hear that soft boom sound and am literally engulfed in white. I have just literally been buried by a giant snow drift that the wind was carrying across the highway. It stopped my car dead in its tracks. I got off the phone with my mom and got out. I couldn't see any cars coming. I was buried in snow on the passenger side. I got back in the car and tried reverse. Nothing. Tried drive. Nothing. Literally stuck in the middle of a highway with the possibility of being run over any moment by a car. Joy. I was panicked and yelled at Samantha to call dad and tell him what happened and to come right away. She was bawling by the way. She called him while I was running around the car trying to assess the situation. What the crap was I going to do? A car passed coming the opposite direction. They galked but didn't stop. Then a miracle. A car coming slowly. I waved my arms. It stopped. Two males got out.

I'll make this next part short and spare all the details. It took about 10 minutes and a backhoe and one of the guys driving my car, but they got me out. So back on the road I went. Trevor had been on the phone with Samantha that whole time and he was waiting to come. I'm so grateful to those guys! Then down our road I went, dodging all the snow drifts I could and feeling the car bottoming out on the ones I couldn't.

Finally I made it home, and I could see Trevor outside waiting for me. I turned into our driveway and heard the familiar bottoming out sound. This time the car stopped moving. I was half-way in the street and half-way out of the street.

Again the fast-forward version: Two more guys stopped to help. 15 minutes and three shovels and three boards later and I was parked in the driveway.

Inside the house we discovered that Sami and I had whiplash.

And that is the story of how I decided that I will never drive in the snow again.