Claudia — Page 929

Stella is Out of Here

March 15, 2017 at 8:48 am by Claudia

I see Spring Home Tours sprouting up all over the Internet.

Here’s mine:

The car on the right, completely buried under the snow, is mine. When we moved some snow away from the kitchen door so we could fully open it, I grabbed the tape measure.

22 inches. Just under two feet.

All day long the winds blew, the snow fell – sometimes at a rate of 3-4 inches per hour – and it covered our windows so completely that we couldn’t see outside.

We have a heck of a lot of cleanup to do today.

The good news: the aforementioned delivery of heating oil and…we never lost power. At one point in the late morning, the lights started to blink. Don was in the shower, so I shouted that he’d better finish quickly. (Since the water pump is electric, if we lose power, we lose water.) Amazingly, that was the only scare we had.

I know some places – NYC for instance – didn’t get quite as much snow as expected. Trust me, we did, and then some. Toward the end of the week, the temperature is going to hit 40 degrees and it will start melting, but it’s going to take a while for all of this to disappear.

Don’s thinking he’ll leave on Saturday. We need a couple of days to get him ready since we lost two days this week.

In the meantime, I added a few items to the gallery wall:

I read, I went online. I looked out the window repeatedly. I ate: apple pie for Pi Day.

And I finally did some hand quilting:

Since the quilt design is very linear, I’m quilting interlocking circles of varying sizes. Nothing plotted out, just whatever I want to do at the moment. It’s taking me a bit of time to get back into that hand quilting rhythm. I like my stitches to be fairly even, but it takes a while to get there. I don’t know how long it’s been since I worked on this, but I know that at the very least, it’s been since last year. When I opened up the quilt, my ‘memory’ of having done a fair amount proved to be untrue. I have a lot to do! A good project when I get back from NYC and have to fill my evenings without Don.

Okay. Have to eat some oatmeal and suit up for shoveling.

I have some gardening books that I’m going to review over the next week. First up: tomorrow.

Happy Wednesday.

Waiting Out the Blizzard

March 14, 2017 at 9:34 am by Claudia

Late in the evening, the weather forecast changed to a blizzard warning. Needless to say, that wasn’t welcome news.

When I got up around 7 a.m. this morning, I’d say there was already more than 6 inches of snow on the ground and, by now, there’s at least 8. It’s falling heavily and the winds are blowing and I can’t see the house across the road.

Digging out of this mess is going to take a whole day. A day that, frankly, Don could have used to run errands and prepare for his trip. The whole thing is a pain in the tush.

But, the good – so far: Our oil company came through and heating oil was delivered mid-afternoon yesterday. Since I had turned our heat way down in case we had to make a go of it for the next 48 hours, I was wearing a winter hat and a crocheted throw was enveloping my body as the truck pulled up in the driveway. What a relief to see them!

So far: we have power. That could change but I’m praying that it doesn’t.

We’re waiting it out. That’s all we can do. Millions of people are being impacted by this storm, so I try to see the bigger picture.

My first thought upon waking this morning was that Don was leaving in a few days. For some reason, it’s so much harder for me to deal with this time around. I’m not sure why, but it is. We’re doing our best to stay positive, but I will admit to crying this morning.

Maybe because everything is in a state of flux; weather, the world, our country? Maybe, too, because this will be the first time I’ve not had the companionship of a dog when Don is away. I’m missing my girl. And my Riley. And my Winston. A separation was more bearable when I was blessed with their company.

Anyway. We’ll get through it. We always do. It’s always harder for the person left behind. We know this. We’ve done it countless times in our 23 years together. Don has had to cope with my absence a few times since Scoutie left us. It’s my turn. Only fair.

I’m not sure what I’m going to do today. Read, of course. Maybe a little hand quilting. Eat a piece of the apple pie we bought yesterday in preparation for hunkering down in the cottage. Make biscuits for tonight’s dinner. Watch Rachel Maddow (power, please stay on!).

Tomorrow? Snow blowing, shoveling (I can already see the snow drifts forming outside), shoveling some more, snow blowing again. That will be our day. Then we can run errands on Thursday. I want to make sure that Don gets all the help he needs in preparation for his trip.

Okay. Wish us luck!

Happy Tuesday.

Bracing for the Storm

March 13, 2017 at 9:22 am by Claudia

I’ll be very happy when I can take pictures of my garden again. As it is, with this relentless winter, I run around the house at the last minute and snap a picture for the blog, hoping that it will do. You can bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow’s picture will be of snow and blizzard-like conditions.

Over a foot of snow expected and…wait for it…high winds.

Don is out getting salt and last minute stuff. I’m running to the store after finishing this post. We just discovered we have less heating oil than we thought, so we called our supplier in a panic. He has hundreds of deliveries today, so we’re praying he makes it here. In the meantime, Don is buying a space heater. Of course, there’s always the possibility that we could lose power. Fingers crossed that we stay plugged in here at the cottage.

Don has so much to do before he leaves at the end of the week and the combination of feeling under the weather and this storm is not helping. Poor guy. He’d like to get on the road by Friday, but I’m wondering if that will be possible.

I wrote about this on Instagram and I’ll write about it here – I went to my tiny local library yesterday afternoon to check out a couple of books. You know that I donate books to the library a couple of times a year, right? Since I have so many books and many of them are new review copies, I like to pass them on to the library because they have an annual book sale. We all know that libraries are just keeping it together financially, so anything we can do to help them is a good thing.

So I walked over to the ‘new fiction and nonfiction’ table and realized that three of the books were donated by me. They were new books, just out this year. I opened each book to make sure I was right and, sure enough, each had the word ‘donated’ inside the cover. That made me so happy – happy that I can contribute to their collection, happy that others can check out these books and enjoy them. Maybe this has happened before, but this is the first time I’ve seen books that I’ve donated become part of the library’s collection.

Well, friends, I have to get going. Time for a quick shower and then errands.

Wish us luck. Everyone who is in the path of this storm, please stay safe.

Happy Monday.

Stella is Out of Here

Waiting Out the Blizzard

Bracing for the Storm

Lambs Like to Party

A Note

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