Sistah Pat

8:45 am - Here’s a picture I took around 4:00 yesterday afternoon.  Can you believe it?  After all that snow and ice, the storm is over and a beautiful blue sky emerges and the sun turns the ice to diamonds.  For a few minutes, at least.  This morning, it’s gray and overcast again with a light sleet falling.  Looks like a homeless shelter around here.  Scout is in my bed with DH.  Oldest DS is in the guest room.  Youngest DS and DIL are in the living room on an aerobed.  Jake is on the couch in the family room.  Andrew and Steven are upstairs in their room.  One dog is stretched out in the hall, another dog is lying on top of Jake, and the cat is sprawled over the heating vent in the kitchen.  The paper says 500,000 are now without power.  They say we got six inches of snow (not that bad) and 3/4 of an inch of ice.  That was the killer.  An ice coating three quarters of an inch thick on everything is pretty heavy.  The kids watched Kung Fu Panda and loved it and then someone put Tropic Thunder in the DVD player and we watched about 45 seconds of it before I jumped up and turned it off.  Ackkk!  Blood and guts and intestines hangin out!  Super Gross!  My Bad!  I didn’t check the label.  I thought it was a comedy about a bunch of actors supposedly making a movie about a war and they wound up in a real one by mistake.  Didn’t realize the damn thing was rated R.

DH didn’t get home until late and I said, “I’m halfway tempted to just drive down to Florida.  I looked it up and it’s 72 degrees there.”  DH said, “I’m game if you’re game.  I’ll call in sick the rest of the week.” 

“No, you don’t want to do that.  They need you at work and we shouldn’t spend the money right now.”

“Yeah, you’re right.  It does sound good, though.”

So why is he in bed?  He called in sick today.   Gonna have a long talk with him today.  If he’s planning on calling in sick tomorrow, I think we should drive on down to Florida and just let the kids, the grandkids, and the dogs have the house.  Hmmm….let me check the weather…

Looks like it’s going to be in the 60s for the highs and the 40s for the lows.  Rainy tomorrow but lots of sunshine on Saturday.  Not sure it’s worth it.  We wouldn’t get down there until tonight, it would rain all day tomorrow.  Saturday would be nice and then we’d have to drive all day Sunday to get back.

 Here’s a picture to show how thick the ice layer is on everything.

Looking out in the back yard, I see that a very large limb broke last night and fell on the shed.  Good thing it didn’t fall on the pool.  That would have been a huge mess.

I wish it would warm up enough to melt some of the ice off the trees.  It’s still bitterly cold and everything is so brittle.  Here’s a picture of some of the branches hanging over Manny.  Not much I can do about it.  They’re way up there.  I just hope they stay up there and don’t break and fall.

As I thought, I got a lot of oohs and ahs about the soup last night.  DH says it’s a keeper.  Maybe I should try to write down what I did before I forget.  DS says I’m the “Super Soup Master” and I should open a soup kitchen.  Hello!  What is this place?  You’re lookin at one!

3:00 - Poor DS!  The little ones are driving him crazy to go sledding.  He got Scout all bundled up and he went across the street to play in the snow while DS was getting Jake ready.  About the time he got Jake ready, Scout came in, covered with snow, (he’s been making snow angels) and said he had to go to the bathroom.  Jake went out while DS got Scout “undone” and discovered he had a bunch of snow down his pants.  He had to strip him down and start over with all the layers of dry clothes.  He finally got him dressed and asked DH if he could borrow some gloves and a tobogan.  As he was finishing up, Jake came in and says his feet are freezing.  He’s going to have to get his boots off (probably full of snow) and get some more socks on him.

Me?  I’m going to the store.  Can’t talk DH into driving to Florida so I’m making him take me to the store.