Winter Weather

My hatred of winter is not subsiding - not even a little bit. Due to budget issues, nearly all area road crews have cut back on both plowing and salting roads. In previous years, I had been extremely impressed with the plowing done by our township. We live out here in the boonies and still, the plows started running when the snowflakes began falling and didn't stop until the snow quit drifting. A plow would pass our house at least every couple of hours. This year? Well, lets just say they've done a 180. In fact, we got about 5 inches of snow yesterday. I barely made it home from town yesterday in our Toyota Corolla at around 3:45, and only about 3 inches were on the ground at that time. So far, a plow has still not come through. I couldn't leave the house if I had to. Dave took the old truck, and with the 4-wheel drive, had no problem. However, that leaves me to choose between the Corolla and a Honda Civic. Hmmmm... I think I'll just stay home, thanks. If one of the kids gets sick at school or something, well... I might have to hook a sled to Crumb and go get them I guess. Even in town, the roads are terrible. Two days after snowfall, major intersections were nothing but ice. Hills were ridiculously difficult to drive up. Time to either raise taxes a bit, cut back on something a little less life-threatening, or here's a thought, at least for our township: How 'bout not mowing our ditches every other week in the summer? Put the gas savings towards winter plowing and salting. See, grass in the ditches isn't going to harm or kill anyone, but these icy, snowy roads just might.

Next winter ranting? How about this forecast for tomorrow:

If you can not read it, it says big, nasty, ICE STORM! AGAIN! What is going on around here? Up until the past couple years, I only remember one semi-serious ice storm ever in my lifetime, and I'm quickly approaching the four decade mark. Growing up, I never remember the power being out for more than 24 hours for anything. Lately, we've had these crazy weather events causing outages of several days. Out here, no power means no water, which means no toilet (GROSS!) and worse, no water for the animals. Do you know how much water all these animals drink? In the past, I have had to take several 5 gallon jugs, drive to somewhere that has power, fill them, and then haul them out to the animals. This takes a lot of water and many trips back and forth. Since Dave works for the power company and is usually working during these lovely events, I generally find myself doing this alone. Can you say NOT FUN?! Factor in my bad back and the weight of those 5 gallon jugs, imagine trying to juggle them in ice and snow, then add freezing temps on top of it all and I just want to cry. So, as you might understand, this forecast brought me to near-panic mode. This resulted in the unplanned purchase of this little beauty:

I'm hoping Murphy's Law comes through for us here, and that now that we've spent the money on it, we will never need it. Not the cheapest insurance policy, but if it works, it will be worth every penny!