Living in the Midwest is hard. We get oppressive heat and humidity in the summer, and this nonsense in the winter.
On Tuesday, January 9, it started snowing. We saw about 13 inches of accumulation starting at about 6 pm that night and on into the morning. The next day, Brandy had a hair appointment and needed the car dug out. I went out and started shoveling. It took me about an hour and a half to clear a lane out of our driveway and get as much snow off of the car as I could. By the time I got as far as I could, my arm was absolutely on fire. I hurt so bad that even today, 5 days later, I’m still feeling the effects of it.
More snow was forecasted for Thursday late night into and all day Friday and sure enough, we got another 10 or 11 inches, meaning we were under 2 feet of snow come Saturday morning.
I was not about to try to shovel that out. I got in touch with some people on Facebook offering to shovel and three kids (an old-enough-to-drive late-teenager-young adult and her two younger brothers) and they showed up just as the sun started going down. The got a new lane for the car cleared, the sidewalk in front of our house, the walkway up to the deck from the driveway, and the front deck cleared off in no time.
I asked them to quickly clear the back deck as well, so the two younger boys did that in a hurry. They didn’t do a perfect job, but it was good enough for me.
In the meantime, the wind has kicked up and our already subzero temps are further driven down with wind chills as low as -39 degrees as of 9:00 Sunday morning.
Overnight Sunday night, the hotel unit heater in the living room froze up so as I sit here writing this, there is very little warmth emanating from the small space heater I brought up from the basement. I’m thinking the basement would be a better place for me to hang out at this point- at least it’s HVAC ducted.
At some point, I’m going to have to get the car cleared of snow. Brandy has a flight to Phoenix Monday evening and I want to make sure it’s ready to go by the time we have to leave. That’s a task for future Phil though, not right-now Phil.
Highs are supposed to continue to be below zero for the next couple of days, then it’s supposed to spike to 20 degrees by Wednesday before plummeting to single digits again by the end of this week.
As I suffer through this miserable cold, all I keep repeating to myself is, “happy wife, happy life. happy wife, happy life. happy wife, happy life.”
This weather is doing it’s best to counteract that.
If anyone needs me, I’ll be hibernating until late March.
-Phil