Spring Blizzard 2011

I was awakened this morning by music. My husband's alarm is the TV coming alive at 5 am with music from Sirrus. He usually gets up and goes to the living room and turns the music down to softer tones that won't wake me. Not this morning.

This morning the music alerted me to the fact my husband was not home. He had called me yesterday, shortly after he was due home from work, to tell me he wouldn't be home for an undetermined amount of time as a nearby town was out of lights. I went to sleep last night listening to the howling wind and wondering how long my husband would be called out. I would find out later in the morning that he tried to come home around midnight but got stuck in 8 foot drift at beginning of drive. After digging himself out, he returned to catnap at his office before getting called out again. Some jobs suck when the weather is poopy.

The early morning light was just dawning. And by 6 am the dawning day reveals a heavy, wet, covering of snow and a wind so strong that it can still move that wet snow into billowing drifts, some near 8 foot high.

Mom's car, that I had left parked outside the garage in the beautiful spring weather just days before, was drifted in. This left no doubt that I was snowed in and, no doubt, my husband was snowed out. I reconfirmed this when I looked out to the highway that runs by our home and couldn't see the highway through the blowing snow.

I couldn't see the highway but I could see the headlights of a semi and the warning blinkers AND the fact the truck was not moving. Stalled? Stuck? Later it would be joined by five pick-ups, a white SUV, three more semi's and a snow plow. A traffic jam just outside my big picture window, on a rural highway, with blinding, blowing snow making it difficult to see if they were all stuck or just stalled.

It is now nearly seven hours later and snow is melting everywhere. The highway has been cleared of it's traffic jam and there are even a few cars trying to travel it now. Why don't they just take a snow day instead of fighting the wind, possible white outs, and risk getting stuck in remaining drifts?

What started yesterday, after I got home from a cleaning job and picking up grandson, as a beautiful, large flaked, snow quickly turned in to a blowing, blinding snow/rain blizzard that won out over spring during the night. Now ... sun is shining, blindingly so, and snow is melting faster than it can blow away. Spring is strutting her stuff again and I applaud her effort!

Yesterday, I listened to thunder amid the blizzard and today I listen to the heavy clumps of snow/ice slide off the roof and PLOP with a loud thud. I should go take some pictures and put em up. ... or just wrap my blanket more securely around me, and savor my hot chocolate with the day off that this spring blizzard has offered me.

No picture? Guess you know what I did instead, huh?

Please Take The Gloom Away!

I'm ready for spring. Days of sunshine and evenings of thunderstorms. I look forward to all the brown being consumed in various shades of green and the splashes of color as the earliest spring buds bloom. Spring usually hales a brighter outlook and I can pack away the blues. But not this spring ...

The 9.0 magnitude earthquake and following Tsunami that hit Japan was heartbreaking to watch unfold and difficult to witness. The resulting nuclear impact is still being felt and will haunt the world for years to come. A mix of awe for the honorable way the Japanese people have tried to cope with such devastation and anger for the foolish faith in nuclear power and it's 'I told you so' danger. I can't imagine what horrors and strife the people of Japan are experiencing right now. It appears the rest of us may share some of the burden in the wake of this ongoing disaster. Only time will tell.

It seems the world news is full of crisis. So much angst.

Our government is in political chaos over our overwhelming budget woes and those of us who don't really get any say, have predictable fears that all the financial burden will fall square on the middle class, poor, elderly and less fortunate. What's the answer? I'm a peon ... a nothing, except for my ability to work so that my wage can be raped. No answers from me ... only pain.

So how does one find some sunshine when clouds abound?
With no plane to rise above the clouds,
And gas to search out the sun,
Is not worth the trade for food to feed my sons.

Turned on all the lights I could find,
But shadows are deeper than clouds,
And the light is nothing like the sun,
And not worth the trade for the health of my sons.

Even when the sun breaks out,
Here I sit in self made clouds,
Afraid of all made known in the sun,
And not worth the sacrifice felt by my son.

No one wants to believe in sunshine.
All faith is much like a cloud.
Here today but gone with the sun,
And then no reason to remember the Real Son.