Aftermath

Neighbor's Field, 2007, Oil on Panel, 24x36

Well, things are still a bit of a mess around here. We never did have any luck getting someone to plow our driveway, so Doug and the boys have been chipping away at it and there is a path just big enough for one car to get through. Doug missed his trip to Florida, but will be driving down to the city tomorrow and so of course it would be nice for me to have the option to leave the house. Not that I want to. I am in full hibernation, not having gone anywhere since Tuesday, actually I don't think I went anywhere on Tuesday either, so I guess it's been since Monday. huh. Anyway, the roads are still crappy, it's really windy, incredibly cold and we still have plenty of food. I think we will stay in for a few more days. This is the third snow day for the kids and then next week is their week long winter break. How appropriate. Thanks to tv, game boys and the computer, I have actually been able to get a bit of work done and have finished up a few more pieces that have been in progress. Tomorrow I think we will pull out the board games and a few beading projects, perfect opportunity for the cats to bat small beads around until they disappear into the spaces between our old wood floor boards.

I have left the house in order to take care of the chickens though. Each and every time it is a new adventure. Yesterday morning I tried to climb over the snowbank (six feet high). Going there was ok but coming back out proved to be impossible. Each time I tried to step up, I would sink into the snow up to my waist. Finally I got about halfway up, crossed my arms and did a sideways half tuck flip over the top and down the other side to the road, landing on my bottom. Naturally, because I had just did the most ridiculous move ever, our neighbor just happened to be walking on the road towards me. Gah! I hadn't seen another human being for three days and the minute I did an intentional, but very clumsy flip over a snowbank, a neighbor witnessed it. Typical. So now I know that the path through the snowbank has to be shoveled out everyday, to save my dignity at the very least. Later on in the day, I found that the plastic food bins had cracked open so I had to dig them out and get those into the garage. Now I have to take a bag of scratch out along with the bucket of water every morning. Another time, after having to shovel snow out of the hen house, that had blown in through the drafty door, I decided that I had to find something to cover the doorway with. In the garage I found and old door and Doug and I dragged that out though the snow and propped it up in front of the existing door. Things seemed a bit more toasty in there this morning so I think it did the trick. The chickens are totally fine considering they have been stuck in a poopy, cold, rather dark little room for weeks now. Egg production is down a bit, I only had six eggs yesterday, but we have three dozen eggs in the fridge, so I think we're good.

Plus the sun is out and the power has not gone out through all of this. Sure appreciating all of that!
Sorry, couldn't resist putting one more! Had to show off the hand shoveled driveway. Unfortunately, the garbage cans are buried under the snow on the right. This would be a problem if the garbage trucks might come by soon (the regular day is Thursday and they did not come), but that doesn't seem likely. We'll get them out someday.