Snow Blowers and other thoughts
Today is Wednesday, tomorrow I head home. I have been here in western Massachusetts for almost two weeks. It has been a totally different experience then the ones I had last year. Little A is five years old and as determined and stubborn as ever. Little L is now one and crawling to beat the band. He is inquisitive and challenging. He loves music and bounces on his knees and waves his arms in the air or claps his hands even for a short silly tune played by one of his toys. L has been working and I have to admit that I finally understand her difficulty in walking away from her children to go to work while they are crying. It only took me five years. It is not unlike how upset I get about any of my anxieties and people want me to just pull myself up and get over them. Understanding helps a lot in trying to help her deal with the situation. Little L has had a cold and a cough. I suppose I may as well admit that I now have said cold and cough, or at least the drainage and subsequent complications from that. I am not coughing much, but I am dripping and my throat is getting sore. Last night I took a decongestant before I went to sleep. I slept great, but this morning I was still groggy. I actually took my night pills, after I carefully separated them from my day pills and put my day pills back in the container. When I sat down for my second cup of tea (after rocking little L to sleep) there were my day pills so I took them. Sigh.
It has been a good visit. Little A had her fifth birthday party at historic Deerfield which was a great experience. The kids got to play dressup in Colonial clothes and play in Colonial settings (a school, a tent, a spinning wheel). They also made a sachet with dried herbs and flowers. Of course they had cake and were silly but it was in a controlled environment and I think everyone, including the adults, had a good time. I saw fireworks on the first Friday night I was here as part of the local Winter Fair. There were also ice sculptures all over town, lighted at night. Then we had "the blizzard." Friday school was called off because the weather guessers did not know when it might arrive, so we went out to lunch at a nice tavern in Turners Falls. I had a burger and roasted potatoes and a coke, special treats. It started to snow Friday afternoon and continued in that lovely snow globe sort of mode throughout the day. When we went to sleep we might have had about 6-8 inches accumulation but sometime during the night things changed and we woke up to 18-24 inches with drifts from the wind. This is where the snow blowers come in. In Florida you see these guys driving around with trailers full of lawn equipment. It is a common sight. I had never seen guys driving around with trailers full of snow removal equipment. In semi-rural northeast Ohio it is mostly snowplows but then we don't have sidewalks and the places where we do have sidewalks the cities seem to have these little sidewalk sized snow plows. Well, here most everyone uses a snow blower or a shovel. I suppose it makes more sense, you can throw the snow where you want instead of having to just push it. The snow blowers fired up around 8 or 9 and the sound continued most of the day. A and L have a neighbor who does their sidewalk for them and helped with the driveway. It still took them two hours to get things all clear so they could get their cars out and the dog had a space to go to the bathroom in the back yard. At some point Little A went out to play with the neighbors and it was quite fun to watch her crawl/swim across the snow to get to where the kids were playing. I went for a walk later in the day and it was quite strange to be walking on sidewalks with snow on either side up to my hips. Then, of course, it warmed up, but thankfully, so far, we have not gotten the rain and wintry mix that was predicted. We went to Springfield on Sunday for church where parking was an interesting experience and had a family birthday party at L's parents house.
So tomorrow I head home. I take with me fond memories of snuggling with little L, reading to little A, and just being in the heart of part of my family. B and I are planning to move here and it will be interesting to see how that works out. It will definitely be a new adventure for us all. TTFN.
It has been a good visit. Little A had her fifth birthday party at historic Deerfield which was a great experience. The kids got to play dressup in Colonial clothes and play in Colonial settings (a school, a tent, a spinning wheel). They also made a sachet with dried herbs and flowers. Of course they had cake and were silly but it was in a controlled environment and I think everyone, including the adults, had a good time. I saw fireworks on the first Friday night I was here as part of the local Winter Fair. There were also ice sculptures all over town, lighted at night. Then we had "the blizzard." Friday school was called off because the weather guessers did not know when it might arrive, so we went out to lunch at a nice tavern in Turners Falls. I had a burger and roasted potatoes and a coke, special treats. It started to snow Friday afternoon and continued in that lovely snow globe sort of mode throughout the day. When we went to sleep we might have had about 6-8 inches accumulation but sometime during the night things changed and we woke up to 18-24 inches with drifts from the wind. This is where the snow blowers come in. In Florida you see these guys driving around with trailers full of lawn equipment. It is a common sight. I had never seen guys driving around with trailers full of snow removal equipment. In semi-rural northeast Ohio it is mostly snowplows but then we don't have sidewalks and the places where we do have sidewalks the cities seem to have these little sidewalk sized snow plows. Well, here most everyone uses a snow blower or a shovel. I suppose it makes more sense, you can throw the snow where you want instead of having to just push it. The snow blowers fired up around 8 or 9 and the sound continued most of the day. A and L have a neighbor who does their sidewalk for them and helped with the driveway. It still took them two hours to get things all clear so they could get their cars out and the dog had a space to go to the bathroom in the back yard. At some point Little A went out to play with the neighbors and it was quite fun to watch her crawl/swim across the snow to get to where the kids were playing. I went for a walk later in the day and it was quite strange to be walking on sidewalks with snow on either side up to my hips. Then, of course, it warmed up, but thankfully, so far, we have not gotten the rain and wintry mix that was predicted. We went to Springfield on Sunday for church where parking was an interesting experience and had a family birthday party at L's parents house.
So tomorrow I head home. I take with me fond memories of snuggling with little L, reading to little A, and just being in the heart of part of my family. B and I are planning to move here and it will be interesting to see how that works out. It will definitely be a new adventure for us all. TTFN.