Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts
Showing posts with label winter. Show all posts

Friday, January 20, 2012

Winter Survival Kit

Isn't this the best way to survive winter??  Our darling little neighbor went sledding for the first time in her life and loved it!!  Winter, however, is the bane of my existence.  Living in Wisconsin, there are few choices other than enjoying it or coping with it, and as hard as I try to choose the first option, it never seems to work.

Winter arrived a little later this year, thank goodness, and that gave me time to develop a new approach.  I'm...chronicling my days until spring (which to me means no more snow and high temps at least in the 40's) to see if they really are as bad as I think at the time.  I hope to be pleasantly surprised!

Today really did start out rather nicely.  David let me sleep until almost 7:00, just in time check email and to slip into some very warm clothes (it was below zero at the time) and head out for the weekly breakfast with three other couples.  As we tend to have a great deal of fun at these events, we choose different restaurants so the same place doesn't have to put up with our nonsense week after week.

This morning the conversations ran from the frustrating to the hilarious.  The frustrating was hearing that the Sheboygan middle school teachers are each going to have to pay $50.00 of their own money to insure the I Pads that the school system has purchased and mandated for every student.  Because all of us are retired teachers or spouses of retired teachers, that was hard to swallow.

Good thing that breakfast was not!  This particular restaurant serves Swedish pancakes with lingonberries which is one of my favs and the hilarious conversations covered everything from different types of honey produced by bees who pollinate different flowers to remodeled bathrooms.   I'll leave it to your imagination to imagine the on and off color jokes that followed.

Then we tackled one of our least favorite chores, the semi-monthly trip to Wal-Mart to pick up items that are definitely less expensive there  I'm pleased to say we survived without David getting too impatient when I can't find things.


Then it was back home to put items away, sweep the sidewalk salt away that we had been tracking in the last couple of days, do a load of laundry, unload the dishwasher and check our mail and Mom's mail.  That left me an hour to continue my new book, In the Garden of Beasts, by Erik Larson the author of The Devil in the White City.  It deals with the Ambassador to Germany in the early 1930's at the time of Hitler's rise to power.  I'm finding it fascinating and a great review of that period of history.  Also it provided great dinner time conversation!

Good thing dinner was quickly prepared (we eat our big meal between noon and one) thanks to great leftover enchiladas.  Even clean up was a breeze.  That left time for playing a few internet games and read more before my afternoon nap.  Now let me do a little explaining here.  I do get a little more than 8 hours sleep a day, but I do it in shifts....about 6 1/2 hours at night and almost 2 most afternoons, a great pattern for someone almost 70 years old.  Even more reading was on the docket while David cleaned up the snow that had fallen this afternoon.

After a quick supper, which I have to admit included some great blueberry pie, we got comfy in the den and watched a little mindless TV,   The only crafting today was making seven scrubbies completed at this time.  Guess it's really time to get cracking on my crafts and Etsy shop which has been in the doldrums after the holiday.  Perhaps tomorrow will bring more inspiration!

If you've lasted this long through a rather personal and uneventful day, I have the feeling you are thinking,  "That's a pretty good life", and I must admit it is!  Even writing this has made my winter mood more mellow!

So I'll post this blog, finish my book, and as Samuel Pepys would say, "And So to Bed"!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

A..........lmost Wordless Wednesday 3

Not to be outdone by her "brother", Katydid shows how she copes with the Wisconsin winter!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

A..........lmost Wordless Wednesday 2

How Kirby copes with the long Wisconsin winter:

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

A..........lmost Wordless Wednesday

If our neighbor's birdhouse and storage shed don't say "Wisconsin", I don't know what does!


Sunday, February 7, 2010

F.........ebruary Experiment: Day 7

As winter rages on in our part of the country as well as others, it's even more important to keep our little ones warm. This sweet panda afghan was cross stitched on a "canvas" of single crochet so it's extra warm. It also took about twice as long to do, but I think it's worth it. It comes from a pattern by J.A.M.I.

The February Experiment is still going strong. Of course, every time I do one thing a couple more seem to pop up saying, "take care of me next"! It's never boring!

Friday, January 8, 2010

R....aisin Bran Morning

"Wake up, honey; it's a Raisin Bran Morning!" I groan; not because I've been wakened from a sound sleep, not because it's 5:45 am, not even because I can hear the north wind howling, but because "Raisin Bran" is a code, a code that means, "We've had so much snow that to get down to pavement, you will need to take at least 'two scoops' with the shovel!"

So I grudgingly force myself to leave the soft, warm comforter and splash my face with cold water to prepare myself for the first task of the day...getting dressed. Complete with long underwear, heavy socks, heavy jeans and sweatshirt, I waddle down the stairs, a la The Michelin Man. There I add boots, an extra heavy jacket, my warmest hat (the one that makes me look like a character out of the pages of a Dr. Seuss book), tie a scarf around it and my neck, and pull on my warmest mittens. All set! Oops, you guessed it; I have to go to the bathroom! So almost everything has to come off and then be re donned for the occasion.

Now it's dawn and out I go with my handy, dandy shovel to do my part of the daunting task: the front porch and walk. Meanwhile, my dear husband, who was responsible for reveille this morning, is already hard at work on the back porch with his shovel, and then the long driveway with his snowblower. About an hour later, we're both back in the house ready for a huge breakfast and a nap. That's right, our "two scoop" morning, has turned into a two nap day! Isn't retirement in Wisconsin wonderful?

Monday, January 26, 2009

W.........inter parking, anyone?

Even though our village makes a superb snow plowing effort, this year after removing truckloads of snow, they had to resort to temporary No Parking rules so that emergency vehicles could get through. This is the first time in the 12 years that we've lived here that this has occurred! The only reason you see the car behind me is that the owner is a volunteer fireman, and needs to get out quickly! When my husband snapped this photo it was also 20 below zero. Such fun!!

Monday, December 29, 2008

W.........e love snow.........NOT!

There have been several reasons for my lack of blogging lately...and these pictures show one of them! The first 24 days of December brought us more than 50" of snow, and although the majority of the work entailed fell to my husband, I helped some, and we even enlisted the help of my son-in-law who needed to use snow shoes to get around the side of the house to clean the snow away from the furnace vent! Sorry for the quality of the pictures, but I opted to stay inside and shot through the windows and the screens. These were taken on Christmas Eve Day, when it was still snowing. And we still have three months of winter to go!
Nevertheless, we had a wonderful holiday, and we hope you all did, too!

Friday, February 8, 2008

W........inter in Wisconsin



Ahhhh.....Winter in Wisconsin! Two days ago more than 16" of white fell on Kohler and it took David seven times to clear the mess. He is over six feet tall, so the snow depth is obvious! It is starkly beautiful if you don't have to drive on it, as we discovered this morning when only through a great driving maneuver were we able to avaid a car that slid through a stopsign! Of course, that didn't stop us from joining friends for breakfast, and after a great deal of discussion and laughter on many topics, I was able to feel calm again. More snow is due tonight! Guess I should have cross stitched a polar bear instead of a panda on the new baby afghan! (shown on the right)