January 08, 2010

Baby, it's COLD outside!




Rainbows.....Optimism!

If I didn't love winter this would be more than aggravating.  Thankfully I do love winter so I want to share the serious, comical night we had here in Peculiar last night.

The snow here is just gorgeous!  I've always loved winter and snow.  Snow makes things so... uniform and neat, everyone's yard is equal in beauty especially out in the country.  Yes, snow is a pain in the neck when you have to shovel it, drive in it, all the normal complaints but somehow I am able to overlook the hassle and appreciate the beauty.

Living out in the country .... we only live 3 miles from the booming metropolis of Peculiar, MO population around 2,800.  Obviously we don't get the "city" perks but we also don't have the "city" hassles either.  For example electricity..... we get our electricity from a co-op, the rates are truly a bit cheaper and when there's a problem we do get someone here much more quickly than the "city folk".

All that said..... we had a rather eventful night last night.

The weather is cold, cold, cold.... Did I mention cold?  Temp was around -4 with a wind chill factor that made it -15,  brrrrrrr!  The hubby and I were happily working/playing on our respective computers.  I was in the Critique Lab which was about half over... when suddenly POOF! No electricity!  We keep flashlights and candles available and where we can find them in the dark and usually the electricity comes back on within minutes.  It's 9:30 pm and the warmest place was going to be in bed.... asleep so we can ignore the falling temperature in the house.

We went to bed, stacked the down blankets on the bed, the dog came up and kept our feet warm, the cat came up and kept my chest and Allen's back warm... just as we were falling asleep the smoke alarm went off! Both dogs ran around worried in the dark, the cat ran downstairs and hid in my desk. We got up and looked for smoke by flashlight - nope no smoke, no fire. Allen climbed the step ladder, removed the smoke detector. (We have like 5 detectors upstairs so we weren't worried about not being warned of a fire.), He disconnected the noise maker and came back to bed.  I suppressed a giggle because all that I could think of was the "Friends" episode when Phoebe murdered her smoke detector because it would NOT turn off.  It took him 5 minutes to shut the darn thing off!

After he shut the smoke detector up he crawled back under the covers shivering.  We were both just falling asleep and another smoke detector went off! So..... we got up, looked for smoke, no smoke, no fire.  Al climbed the ladder and disconnected the smoke detector, tripped over a dog, cursed and bounced back into bed. We actually fell asleep and AGAIN another smoke detector went off! We got up...... by now you know the routine geeze!  It was around 4 am before we finally got to actually sleep... yup at 5:30 EVERYTHING came on LOL.

Craving coffee, I made my way downstairs to the kitchen to brew a pot of coffee.  I dumped the old coffee down the drain, got the coffee grounds into the basket, turned on the water.............no water!!!!  The pipes had frozen.  All I could think of was the 2 cups of coffee that I had just dumped down the drain!  My husband, grumbling, went to the basement and somehow worked magic and we had water again..... yaaaay coffee!

It ain't over yet......Allen just came in and told me that he couldn't get his car out of the driveway because of 3' snow drifts intermittently up the driveway. So..... he took my car that has all wheel drive. The good thing about that is HE gets to fill the tank with gas because I only had about 30 miles of gas in my car LOL! BTW with the wind chill - it's a cool -18 here including wind-chill.

Being the optimist that I am, my favorite quote comes to mind. I have no clue who originated this but.... "Aside from that, Mrs. Lincoln, how did you like the play?"

Now I am ready to start the day!  Y'all have a good day too!

5 comments:

  1. Hi! I'm Thumbly (can you remember?). I laughed a lot while reading this post, and I think that your attitude to life is the right one. I try to be optimist too :)

    If you google the last sentence you can find results on who said that (I'm not able to paste the result here, I don't know why). I'm italian and I don't know the background, but I understand the sense :)

    I hope I could be soon able to tell you the url of my new blog, so you'll be my first american reader!

    My best

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  2. That is too hilarious!

    It reminds me of the time when my last car, a 2004 Dodge Neon, blew fuses every 200 miles. The last straw was when a fuse blew in the middle of a busy intersection during rush hour on a Friday!

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  3. I want to be in the picture. I hate winter, I hate the cold! Man what a night you two had. Did you find why the smoke alarms kept going off? I always have my coffee ready for the morning, so I just have to hit the button when I get up.

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  4. You're an excellent writer, Karen! To us here in LA, with a cool 65 degrees outside, the country, snow life sounds so romantic!
    Happy crafting!

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  5. That is so funny Karen. I love your attitude and this was a great story. Thanks for sharing it.

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