Jar of Goodness 1.19.25: Sunshine Warmth, Real and Fake

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for sunshine, real and “fake.”

A long time ago, when we lived in Montana (where the winters were longer, colder, and snowier than here) we figured out how to rig plain, clip-on incandescent shop lights, with a 75-watt bulb, over our kitty beds.

Turns out that cats love, love, love the dry warmth. They just soak it in.

We’ve had about two whole weeks of remarkably cold weather. We still have snow and ice on the ground from the “snowpocalypse” of January 4 and 5. It was impossible to get the inch of ice off our sidewalks when it fell, and wherever it’s shaded, there is still ice and snow on the ground. The lower layer was sleet that got frozen together, then topped with white, reflective snow. We’ve had a few afternoons sporadically when it got above freezing, but not enough to really melt it. If anything I think it’s been sublimating. Cold, grim weather.

Here and there, we’ve also had some cold days when it was quite windy, and our house loses heat quickly on those days. Stucco, brick, and plaster. And the windows leak. The farther you are from the middle of the house or from a heat register, the colder you are.

We wear sweaters and wrap ourselves in blankets. My office, on the third floor, is cold storage for my carcass. I’m too cheap to heat it full-time, and there’s only one heat register up there, anyway. Heat goes up, so it’s bad enough that it gets as warm as it does. And when I go up there, it’s not so bad at first, but when the sun starts going down, I realize I’m shivering, rubbing my nose, wiggling my toes to keep them warm, and when I stand up, my knees ache as if they’ve been frozen.

And the cats try to stay warm, too. They curl into balls and just look . . . tight. Lois is lucky to have a long, fluffy tail that functions as a fuzzy muffler.

Brenda has a layer of blubber, and I guess that helps her. (Funny, my layers of blubber don’t seem to keep me warm.)

But . . . fake sunshine to the rescue!

It’s fun to watch the cats seek the fake-sunshine beds. And it’s gratifying to watch them uncurl after about half an hour, once the warmth has soaked into them. They lay on their sides and let their feet hang out. It’s like a little trip to Phoenix.

I have a shop light rigged up in my office, but although it keeps my head warm, it doesn’t help my toes much. I occasionally get up, walk over to the front dormer, and stand in the sunshine on afternoons when it’s bright.

This time of year, it can really make a difference.

I hope you’re staying warm!

For the record, in addition to Lois, Brenda, and the picture of Mackie's feet, I'm including some old photos of cats that have crossed the Rainbow Bridge. All loved their sunshine, real and fake. From top to bottom: Nikki, Genji, Lois, Brenda, Patches (the original Opulent Opossum kitty), Mackie (feet and tail), and Earl.

Jar of Goodness 1.5.25: Snow Plows and Such

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.” Yup, I’m doing that again. Mainly so I don’t go bananas and go on a rampage or something. Or, more likely, drive my car in a straight line away from wherever I am, and not turn back. (Wouldn’t that be nice? So many directions to travel.)

This week, I’m expressing thanks for snow plows and such.

Though the picture above is from Sunday afternoon, this was actually written on Saturday night, January 4, 2025, as our snow begins. A huge swath of the United States is getting a bunch of winter weather: several inches of snow, more than a foot of snow in some places; sleet, freezing rain in other places; in many places (like, apparently, us), it’ll be a mix of snow and sleet and snow and freezing rain, and more snow. Like a layer cake of mayhem. Farther south, they’ll get thunderstorms and maybe tornadoes.

Here's the temperatures as I write this, Saturday night, January 4, 8:15:

Then, on top of the crusty, hard-to-shovel, slip-and-fall-and-break-your-ankle stuff (or wreck-your-car-stuff), we’re supposed to get, like a week or more of super-freezing cold weather. The kind that can kill. Ugh. It’s one of those bad scenarios where the freezing rain, topped with snow weighs down branches, then it gets windy, and the trees break like crazy and strum down power lines. Then ya don’t have electricity, and you wish you’d sprung for the gas water heater last time you replaced it.

As of Saturday evening, 8:15:

I’ve blogged about this kind of nonsense before, because I’ve been there, I’ve done that. I truly don’t like having bad snow and ice, because I truly don’t like the power to go out when it’s freezing cold. You never know when it’ll come back on. It just sucks. And this year I’ve got my parents to worry about.

There will be a fine line between who gets freezing rain, sleet, snow, and total mayhem—and those who simply get a ton of snow. The weather people seem to think the “line” is basically right where we live. Or where my parents live. The weather people give their predictions in terms of highways being dividing lines. Most people basically live in highways, that is, cities. Anyway, it will turn out however it turns out.

Hopefully, my parents will get mostly snow, and their kind neighbor with a snow blower will clear their drive and sidewalk, but also hopefully my parents won’t have to go anywhere until everything is cleared out. Hopefully, they won’t experience power outages. (What a nightmare that would be: could I even make it to Columbia if I had to help them move somewhere?)

Then there’s our own status. It’s entirely possible our power could go out for twelve hours or more.

But here’s the Jar of Goodness: fortunately, we live near the center of town, just a few blocks from the state capitol building, and we’re quite likely to be high on the list for restoring power, as well as for street clearing.

Here's how the roads are looking, as this begins on Saturday night: Kansas City's getting socked! Central Missouri and the eastern Ozarks are next:

Which is to say, that for all the annoyances of living near the center of Jefferson City, or any town, one of the perks is that your utilities generally get fixed quickly. Sure, you have plenty of idiot, noisy neighbors, and you have all kinds of cars tearing up and down the street in front of your house, and every emergency vehicle screaming by with its sirens on, but you also get snowplows rumbling through as soon as the first snowflake falls.

So for however uncertain this bad weather feels, at least I know we’re not isolated. If we lived out in nowhere (where I so often wish we were—it would be so nice and quiet! . . . and beautiful, and relaxing, and private), we could be snowed in for days, maybe a week. We’d have to find someone to plow us out, because we’d have a long private drive from the paved road to our house. If our power went out, too-bad-so-sad. We’d have to have our own emergency generator. Self-reliance is for the strong, the handy, and/or the rich, and face it, we’re none of these.

So, hooray for the public works snowplows! The emergency crews at the power utility. The EMT people. The cops. All the emergency workers who’ll be out there working their butts off in the freezing cold, damn dangerous road conditions.

Glad I don’t have to go out there.

As of Sunday morning, 8:45:

As of Sunday afternoon, 2:00:

Changes

The first snow of the winter of 2024–2025 came today.

I awakened at five and sensed something was wrong. As I grew more conscious, I realized I was smelling smoke. That’s never a good thing, unless you’re sitting near a campfire, or burning incense. And it was ugly-smelling smoke—not the pretty scent of someone’s fireplace or woodstove, wafting in the chilly air. No. It smelled like plastic, vinyl—acrid—nothing anyone should be burning, although we’ve had our share of neighbors who burn their trash in their backyards, in the early hours of the morning, trusting that no one will care about the smoldering dioxins and other toxins they inhale while asleep. Most of our neighbors smoke, anyway, so how would they even notice it?

But I was concerned. I tiptoed around our chilly house in my bare feet, making sure that all rooms on all floors were free of an obvious problem. I mean, we do have smoke detectors, but . . . Then I stepped onto the sunporch, which was colder still, and the attached “screen” porch (now with storm windows, of course, but still fairly open to the outdoor air, since we haven’t yet chinked the windows with insulation). And the smoke odor out there was much stronger. I moved back indoors and down the stairs to the front door, and stuck my face outside: again, smoky. Ugh. Whew.

This information led to another round of the second and third floors, this time with my glasses on, squinting more carefully out the windows. Is one of our neighbors’ houses on fire, or billowing smoke? Or is someone actually burning trash covertly? If the latter, I knew the fire might already be done with, even though the heavy, still air can let the stench linger for hours after the deed. But all I saw was a diffuse haziness in the direction of the motel on the expressway. (Hmm. And we need to clean our windows. Kind of late in the season for that, now.) Somehow, I managed not to awaken Sue with all this traipsing around at 5 a.m. (I also managed not to stub my toes on anything. Huzzah!)

Well, it turned out that around 2:45 a house had blown up on the east side of town. They haven’t yet announced a cause, but my money’s on a natural gas appliance or exhaust malfunction, possibly combined with electric space heaters or some such. It’s the first time this season that people’s heaters are running full-bore, and heating systems in poor repair are getting their dangerous shakedown this weekend. Yeah, while everyone’s observing Thanksgiving and Black Friday, and all that. Happy holidays.

And yes, if you know me, you know I’m too appalled about the results of the presidential election to feel very “thankful” this year. I live in a red state that was a purple state not long ago, before a Republican supermajority and gerrymandering, and toxic fundamentalist misinformation bubbles. I’m literally surrounded and ruled over by crazy, het, right-wing Trump-Jesus-gun worshippers. . . . And Thanksgiving? Are you kidding me?

Also, my parents are a grim situation all by themselves: it’s the inevitable collision between my mom’s unbending and increasingly unrealistic notion that she and Dad can continue forever to live in their home, with its staircases, and Dad’s flat-out exhaustion and increasing disability. He is her caregiver: he staggers and stumbles around their house; he fixes all her meals and carries them to her on a platter, brings her beverages and begs her to drink them, launders her clothes and bed sheets, supplies her with Depends and Poise pads, dispenses and tracks her (and his) medications, deals with all the house upkeep, pays the bills, everything. He exercises, does PT, walks, to stay in shape (“to keep myself physically fit . . .”). As she has for years, she sits in her puffy recliner and does nothing, not even the tiny amount of walking the doctors have been telling her for years that she must do if she wants to stay at home . . . and he’s simply exhausted. And so am I.

In retrospect, my brother and I should have talked them into moving a decade ago, and if they’d done nothing, at that time, we should have done it for them then. Too late for that now.

Mom, psychologically increasingly like a toddler, expects me to quit my job and move in with them until they both are gone, which, given my mom’s genetics and lack of serious chronic illness, could be another decade, in her case. Well, actually, I don’t think she knows I have a job, because I’ve been so generous with my time with them. As a freelancer, I’ve been able to skip some hours of work in the past five years to drive them to their haircuts and doctors’ appointments, to pick up groceries, computer supplies, and what-not, but those demands have exploded in the past few years, with Mom being taken to the hospital, often with rehab, six times in the past two years, and Dad twice.

Dad had a stroke, and he needed outpatient PT after it, and he needed me to drive him there a few times a week. And there’s always the questions about the computer. Or, Why isn’t the phone working? Or, I think we might need a new water heater. Your Mom needs more Depends: this size, overnight, super absorbency. . . .

Wash, rinse, repeat. I know Dad remembers I have a job, but I’m pretty sure Mom doesn’t realize it—or if she does, she doesn’t respect it.

Talk about pushing my buttons. I try to just see it, acknowledge it, know that it’s old, old material, breathe, and move on without, like, yelling. Of course I’m not respected. And I don’t need her validation anymore.

When I tell her she can’t expect me to come take care of them at their house 24/7 for the next decade or so, she tells me that she and Dad will simply have an elevator added to their house, or they will just hire 24-hour in-home assistance. I recently sketched out the math for her: $30 an hour, times 24 hours in a day, is $720 a day; multiply that by 365 days in a year, and you’re paying $262,800 annually just for someone (some person or persons—who?) to be there to help you, in a home that’s not going to accommodate a wheelchair, which she will soon need to be in—it does not count food or food preparation, transportation, incontinence supplies, heating and cooling bills, water, house maintenance and property taxes, medical copays and drug costs, and the ever-loving cable TV and landline/internet bills. It’s just fantasyland.

In our family, the dynamic has always been to go along with Mom’s ideas, because she’s always been “the practical one.” The one good with finances. The one who takes care of the house, the bills, the do list. Balances the checkbooks. (Kind of like the myth about Republicans being good about the economy.) She was always the one to deal with the plumbers, electricians, and handymen. She used to be sharp as a tack, “on top of” everything. But those days are long gone, as she becomes more confused and lives increasingly in the past. Actually, they both are.

So it’s past time for independent living; it may already be too late for assisted living, for Mom. She’s hurtling toward skilled nursing; she doesn’t want to drink, so she gets dehydrated and gets UTIs, she doesn’t move around, she’s weak, her blood pressure tanks when she merely stands up. The idea of getting her up the staircases is a horror for me. She’s been hospitalized three times in the past six months. But she still expects us to treat her as if she knows best, and we all still tend to twirl around trying to make her happy. Of course, that is impossible. People like her will never be happy; this is how ninety years of untreated depression and anxiety disorder, with a little side order of NPD, ends up. And so we are moving ahead with plans for senior living for them both. Dad is ready. We simply leave her out of our conversations, which is easy to do since she only ever sits in her living room chair and has grown pretty hard of hearing.

So we’re in a race to get them moved into a good place where they can be safe, clean, fed, comfortable and hopefully find things to be happy about, to be entertained with; to have people to talk with; to maybe even find ways to still contribute to the world (Dad would like that, I think).

You know, I started this blog in a state of deep stress and depression. Hopelessness. Things that used to cheer me only made me feel like I’d been slapped. I was repeatedly contemplating suicide. I thought that starting a blog about the things—the few little things—that I can unequivocally claim as good would help me regain a sense that there is something still to enjoy, even when my life seems in shambles, when my career—hell, my whole life—seems a big fat joke, when I see myself as the center of all my problems. Even when I’m almost convinced that I don’t belong here, that I have no place or purpose.

I truly don’t have any goddamn time to be fucking around with a blog, or anything, anything, that is not related to my job, or with the needs of my parents. I’m not going to fuck around with Christmas cookies this year. (Well . . . maybe I’ll make a few kinds. To give to the elders who remain.) Christmas tree? Bah, humbug. I’m down on Christianity, too—all the white Christian nationalists have turned me off of religion entirely—in America and globally, the trouble, the evil, that religion causes far outweigh its so-called blessings. Overall, religion is still, always, eternally a way that greedy, mean, power-hungry people convince other people into doing horrible, selfish, mean-spirited things. I’m sick of it. Grow the fuck up and learn how to be a good person without having the imaginary threat of eternal damnation hanging over your head, okay?

But yeah, I think I’m gonna attempt another year of “Jar of Goodness.” Because I kind of need it. At least, let’s give it try before I call my doctor and ask to “up my dosage.” I’ve been doing a lot of journaling the past few years, and I have a lot I’d like to say about that. And there are several other half-baked posts I can complete and upload. Let’s keep a-goin’.

Jar of Goodness 2.20.22: The Katy Trail

. . . The weekly virtual “gratitude jar.”

This week, I’m expressing thanks for Missouri’s Katy Trail.

Because even though it was really slushy, it was also really sunny . . . and great to be outside, walking.

We Can Always Talk About the Weather

We really haven't had much precipitation this winter. Hardly any snow to speak of. I guess today Columbia, half an hour's drive north of us, has had some accumulation, but so far in Jeff City, all we've had is freezing rain.

Which I hate.

But at least I don't have to go anywhere, and we have plenty to eat here at home. And as long as I have Internet, I can communicate with you! Whoever you are.

Here are some pictures I took out of our top windows only about a half hour ago.

First, a view out of our top dormer looking north along Broadway toward the 50/63 Expressway and the capitol. (Well, we call it "north" here in Jeff City, because the river is "north." But let's not get into all that.) In the distance, the big building on the left, with the horizontal pattern to the windows, is the Truman State Office Building. The next building to the right of it, is the Broadway State Office Building. The next one to the right (red brick; in front of the capitol) is the Missouri State Supreme Court building:



Next, a view "west" along West Elm. Apart from our dear neighbor's house (happy birthday, Kay!), there's not a lot you might recognize here. The large rectangular building in the background is the newly former St. Mary's Hospital. The bright "light" almost in the center of the picture is the Dulle mansion:



Looking out our front dormer window, we see Broadway heading south. The former salon is in the foreground. The Schaeffer House (gift shop) is about halfway down the block, on the opposite side of the street. The green light is the traffic light at the intersection with Dunklin.

And no, that's not snow along the edges of the sidewalks, and that's not rain making the sidewalks shiny--it's ice:



Finally, here's the view along West Elm, to the east. That big tree two houses away from us is a real, genuine American elm tree, which somehow survived the dreaded Dutch elm disease. Also, you can't see it very well in this picture, but the one landmark a Jefferson Citian might know is the Coca-Cola Building. The "Coke Room" community room is at the end of the block. The famous Coke signboard is a bright spot with a small pointy projection at the top, roughly between the elm's trunk and the bright orange streetlight in the center. It's shaped like a candle because we're seeing it at an angle. (There's a picture of it on this post.)



Plus, a bonus picture: My car, with ice falling on it! I'm so glad I don't have to go out anywhere tonight or tomorrow!



Wherever you are, be careful driving (and walking!) in whatever foul weather you might be having. Take care!

Today, There Are Only Hungry Birds

Boy, we’re having a genuine winter this year, aren’t we. Sue and I just got in from shoveling our six or so inches of snow, which, thankfully, was fluffy stuff and easy to toss away from our sidewalks with my trusty lightweight aluminum coal shovel (which came with the house).

While the sun was out, and while we were getting our workout, it actually didn’t feel that cold. But now that we’re inside with damp hair, and not moving anymore, now that the sun has gone behind a cloud, it’s starting to feel like that zero-degree weather we’re supposed to be having.

A look out our bathroom window, and I noticed more and more starlings perching on the small length of horizontal drain pipe connecting one section of gutter to another, in a place that’s sheltered by the eaves and out of the wind.

At one point, I counted fifteen of them, huddling together.

Now: I’m far from being in love with European starlings—they are exotic, invasive, noxious weeds of the bird world—but when it’s this cold, this bitter, this deadly, things are different. I’m on the side of life.



It reminded me of something my hero Edwin Way Teale wrote in his book A Walk Through the Year (New York: Dodd, Mead, 1978), for his entry for “January 4” (p. 326):

When we put out bird food these winter days we are as impartial as nature. The varied species compete, as they compete in the wild, for seeds scattered on the stone wall under the hickories and along the lane, for suet hanging in mesh bags from the apple tree, for food filling our different feeders. Bluejays share the sunflower seeds with chickadees and evening grosbeaks. Cowbirds feed among the tree sparrows. In these bitter winds of January, there are no “good” or “bad,” “beneficial” or “harmful” birds for us. There are only hungry birds.

Aside from the gray squirrels that we see coming in from the woods, bounding across the glitter of the ice crust, the birds, in their varied shapes and colors, are the most evident form of warm-blooded life today. And they will remain so all during the rest of the weeks of cold. The “dead of winter”—how much more dead it would be each year without the birds!

Birds can survive winter, provided they have enough food to stoke the fires of their metabolism. When there’s snow on the ground, birds can’t find food very easily. If you haven’t done so yet, go get yourself a bird feeder and some seed.

Because today, there are only hungry birds.

First Snowfall of the Winter

It’s suddenly seeming very Christmassy here in Central Missouri, hallelujah! Naturally, I can be happy about it, since I don’t have to drive anywhere today—but I think a lot of us have felt creeped-out by the lack of snow both this year (we usually get our first dustings of snow around mid-November) and, well, all of last winter. (Climate change, you all—deeply disturbing.)

Anyway, this one or two inches we’re getting today helps give us the feeling that things are set to rights. At least today, when I look out our windows, anyway. (By the way, for similar views during a bigger snowfall, click here.)

It’s remarkably windy today, with 45 mph gusts, which make the snow blow almost horizontally, and stick it to the screens of our storm windows.

The wind and the snow sticking on the windows makes it seem incredibly cold “out there.” But having the Christmas tree up and glowing helps our drafty ol’ house seem a lot warmer. Yeah, the windows are rattling.

I’ve never lived in a house with a fireplace, and for me, the Christmas tree supplies that kind of visual-psychological warmth. (If you don’t know about my family’s Christmas tree/Weihnachtspyramide, click here for the back story.)

This year, especially, the familiarity of that dear ol’ thing is especially welcome, “grounding” me in my place in time, giving me a sense that I somehow can comprehend history and immortality, or eternity. And it feels like a comfort, and it’s especially welcome on a cold day like this, at the end of this solar year, and upon this first blast of snow.

Out Like a Lion

Sue--a native Ohioan, so she's allowed to be critical--says that in Missouri, March comes in like a lamb, and out like a lion--and this year (again), that seems to be the case.

Wow, all that snow we got yesterday! We got about five inches! Fortunately, most of it melted today, and we (and my foot-cast) made it to the Wurstfest in Hermann. What a great time! But more on that in a bit.

Tonight, I want to share with you some of the photos Sue took yesterday of our pretty spring flowers as it was snowing!

We had big, wet, clumped-up flakes.




Here's a picture of some of the pansies in our front planters. This cracks me up--it looks like someone nailed that purple one right in the face with a snowball!




And then, these peony shoots look like they're getting ready to throw some snowballs!




And our daffodils? When Sue showed me this picture, she put on a funny voice and said, "--Hey, I can't see!"




I wasn't too worried about how these flowers would handle the snow; the forecast wasn't showing much chance of truly nasty-cold weather, and these early spring flowers are surprisingly hardy when it comes to a little spring snow.

The first year I lived in Montana, I was dismayed one morning when the flowers I had planted were inundated with snow. (Realize . . . in Montana, it can snow just about every month of the year! Bad place to try to grow tomatoes!) But a friendly native Montanan reassured me, using a phrase that I've recalled just about every spring since then: "Aww, a little spring snow never hurt anything."

And yeah, she was right.

Well, Boo-Hiss!

Sue says that March in Missouri always comes in like a lamb and goes out like a lion, and here we go. They're predicting up to 5 inches of snow here in Jeff (though as of last night, it wasn't looking like there was much chance at all). So, pooh.

Although I'm not using crutches at this point (I'm "weight-bearing"), and therefore balance on a slippery surface isn't such a problem, I'm still in a cast. Since I'm not allowed to get it wet, and since Hermann is getting just about the same amount of snow we're getting . . . I guess we have to put off our trip to the Wurstfest. Tomorrow the driving will be better. And so will the limping.

I hope there's some sausage left by the time we get there!

But dang, I'm sorry to be missing the Braunschweiger Ball!

. . . Next year.

Friday, February Twenty-Fifth

Doggone it, I’ve never had a computer virus before, but there’s a first time for everything, huh? I guess I should consider myself lucky that I’ve surfed this long, the last few years virtually unprotected, and not “contracted” anything, but there you go: My preferred computer for working on the Op Op is in the shop.

Fortunately, I have two computers; unfortunately, it was my laptop that got sick; fortunately, my desktop is fine; unfortunately, the desktop is upstairs, and with my foot in a cast, getting up there isn’t very convenient. (Hell, with one foot out of commission, nothing can be convenient.) But fortunately, I’ve decided to crutch up and down the steps, anyway.

Unfortunately, I had a number of posts in the works—ready to put online, in fact!—that existed only on the laptop. I have high hopes that they’ll still be there when I get my laptop back. (Knock on wood; touch metal; toss salt over my shoulder.) Meanwhile, you are treated to the lameness of this-here post.

*Sigh.*

More than ever, I have to admit, getting out of the house is becoming extraordinarily exciting. (Yes, I could drive, but I know I had better not—cops and insurance companies wouldn’t think it was very funny.)

Yesterday, for instance, I rode with Sue to Columbia and got my hair cut! Wow! Such excitement! And I spent the morning on campus at the Museum of Art and Archaeology! They’ve got a really good show going on right now, of a summer art colony that existed in Ste. Genevieve during the thirties.

The ride to Columbia, the art museum, the haircut—that was some doin’s, I tell ya, and I would have done more, if the weather hadn’t gotten all crappy on me. (N.b.: Crutching in snow, sleet, and slush is only better than crutching on smooth wet tiles or on ice.)

Saturday was another big outing—Sue got us tickets to see the final performance of a stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility at the Stephens Playhouse, and we met my folks there.

Each time I go to a Stephens performance, I’m impressed and greatly entertained. They do things so well there! And every time, I come away thinking, “We need to go to more of these. This is art; this is real; this is the kind of thing that makes me proud to be human. We should do this more often!”

Okay, let’s make this perfectly clear: I’m not saying that it’s a good thing to be gimped up. But I have to admit that it sure makes you appreciate simple things a whole lot more.

Update on the Snow, 9 p.m.

Just an update on the snow. In my previous post, I showed you pictures taken at around 7 a.m., 10, noon, and 2 p.m.

Here's a picture I took of the same view, at 9 p.m. tonight.

That's my Honda.




The snow's supposed to continue through the night and taper off by tomorrow at noon.

We debated the pros and cons of trying to shovel it today, to "stay ahead" of the accumulation, but we decided against it since it was blowing and drifting so much. So we're going to have a lot of digging out to do, once the wind dies down.

Hey, and don't forget to feed the birds! We've been putting it out, but it gets buried rather quickly. I wish we had one of those feeders with the little roof over it.

We were surprised to get mail today! I know there's that saying about how they deliver it no matter how bad the weather, but considering that the mail nowadays is mostly junky ads and stuff, they could have begged off today. But here the mailman came, early afternoon, and stuck our junk mail (and, alas, a few bills) in our door. Fortunately, I saw him coming, raced for the kitchen, and got down to the front door in time to hand him a baggie full of cookies!

I also have to say that the Jefferson City snowplows have been doing an incredibly good job with Broadway, and even with little old West Elm Street. It's so comforting to hear them rumbling by, to know they're out there, making the roads passable for letter carriers, emergency vehicles, and whatever. Angels in trucks . . .

Snowpocalypse

It’s extremely hard to concentrate on work today, since we’re getting, apparently, the first bona fide official blizzard Central Missouri’s ever had in recorded history.

Naturally, this can easily be seen as a sign of the ongoing effects of global climate change, while those who don’t “believe” that climate change is happening will undoubtedly see this uncharacteristically intensely cold weather as a sign that nothing’s changing.




Anyway, it started snowing here before dawn, and at this point—around noon—the strong winds are blowing the snow sideways—it’s supposed to be sustained winds of 35 mph. There’s at least an inch and a half of accumulation per hour, and visibility’s awful. I can’t see anything beyond a half a block away.

When I lived in Montana, this wouldn’t be any particularly big deal. Yeah, I vaguely recall that.

But then, when I lived in Phoenix, one time we got some below-freezing temperatures and some sleet that collected in the cracks in the sidewalks—and that was remarkable, too. All those tropical and subtropical landscaping plants that could freeze.

Obviously, it’s all “relative,” and our homes, our heaters, our vehicles, our city’s snow-removal equipment, and our bridges, roads, and utility poles are designed to handle the bad weather we usually get. But this weather is definitely worse than usual.

There’s been a lot of nervous chatter and laughter among my Facebook pals. We’ve all known it was coming. For a week, the weather forecasters have been talking about a major snow, and for the last few days, they’ve been saying it’s a sure thing that most parts of Central Missouri will get at least 15 inches.

Which, as I said, is a remarkable amount of snow for us, especially considering we’ve already had several good snowfalls this winter.

A lot of folks (including me) laugh at the urge to go to the store right before the storm and buy “bread and milk.” A Columbia newscast showed pictures of empty bread shelves at one of the local Walmarts. One of my friends called this “overreacting.”

But truly: thank goodness people have enough sense to hit the grocery store before the storm. If bread is on the grocery list for survival purposes, it is understandable: in our culture, bread is the staff of life; it is the bare minimum. It is to us as rice is to the Orient, and corn to the Aztecs.

We certainly went to the store yesterday—not for bread and milk, particularly, but for the items we might have purchased within the next three or four days. We were out of eggs; we needed more cheese; we were almost out of lettuce. So laugh all you want, my friends, but I keep having thoughts of the Grasshopper and the Ant.

I’ve also been thinking a lot about Katrina these past few days, as excitement and dread mounts, and I’ve been wondering how much in denial we all are. They knew the evil weather was coming, and for some reason, too many of them didn’t take it seriously enough.




The ice that’s falling just a few counties south of us is going to cause widespread power outages, right before subzero temps. Remember the freezing rain in early December 2007?

I do. It’s more than a memory—it’s practically post-traumatic stress for me. I had broken my foot the October before and was still in a cast; on December 3, since no healing had occurred, I had surgery to repair that Jones fracture with a screw. The freezing rain came on Saturday, December 8. I wasn’t even in a cast again at that point, I was still in the post-surgical splint. Plenty of swelling and pain, and still (of course) on crutches. And yes, I also had a concert to play that weekend, in Columbia! Sue drove us on ice-covered roads, and we ended up staying in Columbia that night.

(By the way, in case you were wondering, trying to walk on crutches on ice is flat-out impossible.)

So, that Saturday night was the night we had no power at our house—it went off after we’d driven to Columbia, and fortunately we weren’t home to shiver all night with the kitties. By the time we got back home Sunday evening (because there was a concert Sunday afternoon, too), the power was back on and the house was getting warm again.

But the power went off again on Monday night, when a tree on our street collapsed and strummed down a set of powerlines. It was a cold night, and a dark morning, and we were grateful for every bit of insulation our house has.

It’s hard enough to bathe with a splint on, much less in the dark in a very cold house. Fortunately, we have our old percolator, and it, with our gas stove, meant that we could have hot coffee that morning.

Our power came on again sometime that day, and life was relatively dandy after that. We decided that when it comes to power outages, we’re very happy to be living in the center of town, just a few blocks from the state capitol, and not way out in the country somewhere and low on the list of priorities. For some of those people, the power was out for a week, and they had to seek shelter elsewhere.

Okay, and so that was just a fraction of an inch of ice that weekend—and I don’t recall any serious winds or additional snowfall with that, either.

But with this snowfall, now, they’re saying that counties southeast of us may receive up to an inch of ice, with additional inches of snow on top, plus 35 mph winds. They will have power outages galore. Then, to have this followed immediately by subzero temps? I feel for them, I worry for them.




How long will anyone’s power be out? Who knows? How do you “prepare” for that, when the roads will be impassable? We here in Jeff City and Columbia can Twitter and text about how exciting our big snow is, we can crack wry jokes about “waiting for the roof to cave in.” We can make up clever, hyperbolic names for this situation, calling it a “snowacane,” and a “snowpocalypse.” And we can warm our attitudes by telling each other about our Crock Pots of beef stew and chili, our Kahlúa-spiked coffee, our split pea soup and our homemade bread. We can afford to grin and share, feel warm and cozy, because we know we’re just very lucky this time.

But when I look out the window, I can’t tell if I’m shivering, or shuddering.

And the Snow Continues

Hi! I continued to take pictures off and on through the night. Same view, same evening as before. These take us up through about 11 a.m., January 20.

As I write this, more snow has started--just about the time we've got our sidewalks tolerably clear! Oh well. The snow is pretty, and I love how quiet make makes the nights.

Lots I want to tell you about--the upcoming sauerbraten shindig, our orchids (such as they are), and our furniture! But unfortunately I'm behind on a work project. Soon, I promise, I'll have more.