January 8, 2005

At least 6-8 more inches of snow.  It is so amazing what the weather can do to change things over night.  The trees are white again, the fence is white and the things that managed to tentative poked their heads out yesterday after a day of rain are again buried. We are still going to go to Sacramento after the snow plow runs, but the snow is still falling.  We'll see how it goes.  As of now, I'm getting down that mountain one way or another. 

Delena wants to see her father, Dylan and Nathan want to see their brother, David, I want to see my sons and grandchildren and I want that time alone with Eric!  We still easily have 3 hours before we have to leave, so we'll see if anything changes when the sun comes up more!  :)

Have a great weekend.

Love,
K

January 7, 2005

We got a smattering of time snow last night, so the school buses went to "main pick up only," which means that my kids' bus stop is now about a half mile down the road, down one giant hill, the biggest one in the town and up another one, the second biggest one in the town.  I wouldn't walk that if it was a beautiful spring day and the birds were chirping, much less in snow and ice.  I definitely won't send my kids walking on their own that far.  If I had a vehicle, I'd take them, but in these circumstances, my kids get a day off.  I hope this is the extent of the "big storm" that was predicted for last night.  I knocked the ice off the outside unit for our central heating system, threw the broom at the satellite dish a few times to restore the signal and managed to get a fire started in the wood stove. 

Nothing outside looks much different, although there was a good bit of snow on the jeep this morning when Eric left.  Maybe once you get a certain amount of snow, it just all looks the same.  The trees and fence are still exposed, so that's a good thing at least.  All I can see now is the dripping of water from the trees and roof as what little snow is left is melting.  The sun isn't even up well yet.  The forecast is for wind, rain and showers (not to be confused with showers, mind you) until Tuesday.  Maybe if we can stay above freezing, the rain will cause some of the snow to slush away.  Let's consult Mr Thermometer... 30 degrees... 8:15am... there's hope.  :)

The weekend will be very busy.  Tomorrow, Delena is meeting her bio dad, grandfather and stepmother, supposedly for mini-golf, but we may have to go for a Plan B if it is still raining in Sacramento.  While she's doing that, David is going to watch the little boys at Chuck E. Cheese while Eric and I (brace yourself here) go out to eat together!!  I'm so excited about that prospect.  It's been since November and prior to that, was September.. both of our birthdays.  I miss being with him alone very much.

Sunday, I will take Nathan down to town on his "Mom Day."  We'll eat lunch together, shop at Wal-mart and Albertsons and then head back up the hill.  Sunday is New Moon, so Jennifer, one of our coven gals, is coming up to celebrate if the weather is OK.  It will be lovely to spend time with her.  We haven't had a meeting in 3 weeks.

WOW!  My life certainly did change quickly!  The phone rang while I was writing at 8:25 and it was the secretary of the boys' school telling me that buses would be running for them, even though they didn't for Delena.  I rushed to get them ready and they were cooperative little beavers.  They love school and were excited to be going.  They are in mid-snow-fort-construction with some of the other guys and wanted to get it finished before any pending melt started.  When the boys got on the bus (ready a full 5 minutes before it arrived, I might add), Mark, our Wonderful Bus Driver (capital letters are required by all Grizzly Pines Parents when we discuss Mark) offered to pick up Delena and take her to school as well on his drive back down the hill... provided she could be ready in about 12 minutes when he'd be back from taking the Grizzly Pines kids to school (which tells you how close the school is to us).  She was just waking up, so I got her moving.  She wasn't thrilled about it, especially since evidently she had an essay due that wasn't ready (first I heard of it), but she was gracious about it and Mark was waiting when we got out the door.  So here I sit alone again after being prepared first to have all kids home, then just Delena (which also would have been nice), then just me.   Just goes to show how life can turn around in nothing flat.

The weather is considerably different than when I got up this morning.  The wind is howling through the trees and rain is now falling, thinking about freezing but is still on the fence about it.  The snow is much looser than it was before, likely from the rain.  The skies are still gray, but the temperature is in the low thirties and this early on, there is always hope it will climb. 

This is day #2 after the appraisal and no word yet.  We completely the loan package last night and Eric will be getting that turned in.  Funny they would order an appraisal with no paperwork, but I am convinced Real Estate is little more than a big political game of who is in bed with whom.  That being the case, it's so far out of my hands that I'm not even going to worry about it.  I hope it goes through and the energy is there for it to happen, especially with New Moon on Sunday (new beginnings), so I've done what I can do.

Just went outside again and the rain has done a LOT. Pictures, of course:

That red strip in the middle of the picture is a red wagon.  This was last weekend, I think.

This is today, after the snow feel from the roof of the shed

The chair is still fairly buried.

As are the bamboo torches.

Yayyy!  I have back steps again!  I didn't this morning at dawn!

Eric, prepared to go into the icy tundra.

Delena cuddling Tuffy, her kitty.

A nice picture of Nathan (5)

:(  I think God is sick... or trying to hibernate.  She's been
doing this all day, every day and only stirs when I touch her shell.
I read once that it takes turtles a long, long time to die when they
are sick.  I have no turtle doctors here.  She doesn't eat either.

The thermometer 10 minutes ago.

This was all under snowfall (fall from my roof) yesterday.

Hurray!  The bikes and trash cans are melted free.

The carport was previously caked with about 20" of snow on top.

Our driveway.  That's the escape route Eric dug out on Sunday.

Is that... is that... GROUND that I see??

These two cats cuddle constantly.  We
had to take a picture of it.

One of my favorite 8x10's of Delena
when she was 2 1/2.  She took a
photo of the photo.

Tuffy

I thought the Green Man needed
more... green.  What do you think, Hope?

Today is the last day of my first week alone during the day.  It has been an amazing success.  Even though I was fairly sure of how I would feel, I still had a sniggling of a concern that I might get all teary and weird, but I didn't.  The process and change felt really good and positive.  They're happy, I'm happy, it's all good.  I'm calling it a success.

The house is still nice.  As usual in the morning, there are a few things to clean up before it's perfect again.  I still have a good bit of laundry to do, so that will be my focus for today.  I think Eric is meeting with one of his electrician friends to discuss a job, so it might be a long day.

Our main phone line is out (computer line works, under threat of death, I mean, if I had to pick).  It was working up until around a few minutes ago, but now is out again after being out all last night.  Our phones are weird here anyway.  In fact, when my sons' teacher built her house up here (she commuted for 8 years), she got the last phone number available for Grizzly Flats.  Since there are no more phone numbers, the system gets really jammed up and frequently, the phones don't work any more.  A few of the numbers (including my computer line, just not my main line) have been switched to a fiber optic system, but the rest are all on old copper lines. (That may not be right.  I am terrible with tech talk.  Too much right brain activity eating up my left brain juice) Regardless, our phones go out a lot and lately (past 2 days) a lot more of the time.  Mayberry in the Mountains will do that to yas.

Watched "Dreamcatcher" a few nights ago and was wholly unimpressed.  I wanted to be impressed because my dear friend, Carol, is totally lust ridded for Damian Lewis.  No go.  Also watched about 3/4 of "The Blue Collar Comedy Tour Rides Again."  Like most sequels, although it has some good moments, it's not as good as the first.  Joe tells me that "Medium" was great, but I missed it. 

My daytime TV is jacked up again.  "Chicago Hope" has been moved from 9am to 6am and 3pm, which knocks out my Dr Phil time since I'm busy getting Delena out the door in the morning.  I'm being forced to watch old episodes of "Judging Amy."

Hope you have a wonderful day.  I'll be folding... maybe.  I dunno.  Not feeling foldy today.  I'm feeling more layish.  ;)

Love,
K

January 6, 2005

So before, I had the picture of my house with a snowy applet on it that made a fine layer of snow fall all over it.  Ever since I posted that, we keep getting a fine layer of snow on our house.  On the off chance that I channeled some manifestation juice into the pain-in-the-ass playing it took to get that snowy picture to happen, I have instead graced us with my very, very favorite fictional character (excepting Ulysses Everett McGill), Edward Bloom from Big Fish.  In fact, both of my favorite fictional characters are very similar to one another.  Both are "bigger than life" men. Both live life to its fullest and don't give up easily.  Both are handsome and charming.  My guy, Eric, is a lot like them.  :)  So if I am manifesting anything other than friends through this journal, it might as well be Edward Bloom.  Ahhh.  Worst case scenario is I look at him as I write instead of my house getting snowed on, which I've seen more than enough of lately.

The snow is still asshole deep out there.  We've had melting from the trees, which are all green again, but the packed snow on the ground is still really deep and tight.  Remember how those snowmen don't melt even though the rest of the yard is snowless?  I've got one big snow man spread all over my yard. 

I walked to the post office today to get our mail, which we haven't gotten since Friday.  The mail ladies are boycotting our whole road until they can get to the mailboxes without getting out of the car (wussies).  Since I'm trying to lose weight, I told myself that I would accept any ride I was offered, but if I was offered none, it meant that I was mean to get that degree of exercise.  The walk there wasn't as bad as I thought it would be (a mile) and is much easier than it was in the heat.  The roads are slippery, so they were difficult to navigate in places.  Although I wasn't able to overexert myself much without slipping and falling, I did manage to have a bit of a sweat by the time I got to the post office and there were several times I had to stop and catch my breath when my heart was pounding as it only does for old fat women like myself.  The walk felt good, better than a treadmill or Walk Away the Pounds.  By the time I got there and picked up the mail, I had two offers for a ride home, so I happily accepted one.  I'll probably go a couple of times a week until they start delivering again... like March or so.  It has to get easier and easier, right?  Provided the snow doesn't get worse and this is only the first part of January, so we've got a couple of months of snowish stuff likely to hit.  We're supposed to have another huge storm coming so I am doing my best to pray that sucker away.  I want to get some really good melting going on before it snows again.  Evidently, this amount of snow is not common up here, so it's shouldn't be something we have to deal with all of the time... this was just a special little surprise.

The appraiser finally made it up yesterday.  No less than three people wrote to tell me to bake bread just before she got there, so I had Eric pick up some frozen bread dough (Rich's and Bridgeford are the best I've found) and I baked away.  As it turned out, she had a terrible cold and likely couldn't smell anything.  As most of you know, appraisals are fairly uneventful. They come in, poke around, ask a few questions, take a few pictures and leave.  There was one other step I wasn't expecting.  Our broker told Eric he was taking care of the appraisal fee, but evidently, he failed to tell the appraiser that because I had to unass $375 on the spot.  Eeep!  I just went with the flow because the amount of spellwork and praying I did before this moment was enough to convince me that whatever happened was supposed to happen.  Que Sera Sera.  After she left, I collapsed into a heap and ate one of the loaves of bread.  Well, half of it.  Not all of it.  It was nummy.  It was also pretty much all I ate yesterday.  I'm surprised I didn't go into a coma after spending a day without protein.  The Starch Away I ate through the day must have helped. 

I woke up feeling well this morning.  The house was still fairly clean from the scrubbing I gave it Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday in anticipation of the appraisal, so it only really took about 20 minutes to go through and clean after the kids left.  One of the joys of being here on my own is that the house stays clean all day.  Yes indeed, I'm loving it. I love everything about staying home on my own through the week.  Dylan absolutely loves his school and Nathan loves having Dylan there. By the time they get home at 3:45, I am sated and ready to see them, enjoying hearing them tell me about their day.  They ride the same bus home as Delena, so all three come home at the same time.  This is just blissful. 

Today, with a perfectly clean house around me, I am spending the rest of the afternoon filling out our loan package and looking for old bank statements, mortgage statements and such.  Wish me luck!

Love,
K