Well, posting will be even lighter than usual. Less than two days after everyone left after B-Fest (thank the Lord for that), we got smacked here in Chicago. I live by O’Hare, where it’s been especially good; we’ve gotten about 21 inches of snow, and it all drifted in front of my house trailer. I was able to keep the door clear by getting up every hour last night and clearing the porch in the raging blizzard (fun!), but instead of the porch rising high above the ground, it (and my car) is now surrounded by literally four feet of snow. I dug out about three feet out earlier–although with the snow four feet to the side, and getting higher as I threw more snow on top, well, do the math–and will try to get out every couple of hours to continue to do so, and maybe through a long day of work actually get my car free.
Not that it matters in the short term; there are literally no roads here in the trailer park. Now I have to wonder if they have a plow small enough to do only one lane, and powerful enough to deal with the no doubt tens of tons of snow in the roads. Even so, the only reason I’m worrying about clearing my land out today is that (fun!) the temps are due to fall tonight, from somewhere between minus four to minus twenty degrees. Windchills could knock it down to minus 40.
In the end, I’m fine IF the power doesn’t go out, or the furnace quits, or the pipes freeze. With temps that low the latter is a good bet, although ironically the super high snow may insulate the bottom of the trailer enough to keep that from happening.
Assuming those three things hold for another 24 hours or so, I should be fine until they come dig us out. I should have gotten more real food, but while I didn’t, I have tons of snacks left over from B-Fest, and more importantly, lots and lots of bottled water. I’m sure there are people in the park even less prepared than I am.
So…how’s your day?
UPDATE: So I finally took a nap (having, again, been up all night on the hour to keep my porch clear so I could actually someday hope to exit the house). I woke up about 3:30 in the afternoon, and found to my surprise that they had indeed managed to plow the middle lane of the road. Of course, this of necessity resulted in huge, thick berms of compacts ice against the cars. I figured I had days ahead of me clearing up, mostly because I am grossly obese and out of shape and only wanted to work twenty minutes at a shot do I didn’t die of a heart attack.
The kids next door–mostly the older brother, maybe 14, although his ten year old sibling stayed in there–offered to help. Needless to say, I took them up on their offer. Eventually I had to stop working because I’m a big fat ass who just ran out of juice, which was really lame, because they (and eventually their dad) were clearing my land for me while I stood there like a very, very big lump. For what it’s worth, I gave them a pretty sizable amount of money for their efforts. It was well worth the price, though. Although half my parking is now taken up with a gigantic amount of snow (and probably will be for the next month, given what temps in February are like), I can, if my power and/or furnace goes out tonight during the coming deep freeze snap, actually hop in my car and drive to a motel, if nothing else. Otherwise it would have easily taken me through the weekend to dig out by myself, and then I would have been working in the bitter cold for the next couple of days.
Man, how did people do this stuff a hundred years ago?
Hope everyone is doing well, and BC and Liz, I hope you feel better soon. Me, I’m heading back for another nap. Have a good night, everyone.
