waiting for spring

waiting for spring
Originally uploaded by Julep67

I look at this photo and think about how it was overflowing with beautiful impatiens last summer. Summer feels like a million years ago right now.

We've been in the storm zone for over 24 hours now. Last night, on the way home from work, we did a couple of errands, banking, gassing the van, a couple of things at the grocery store. While we were putting the groceries in the back of the van, it started to snow a little bit. By the time we were finished dinner, I could hardly see the neighbours across the street and the dog was going a little bonkers.

The forecast had called for some snow overnight and then a break this morning. It was to start up again this afternoon. When I got up, it had stopped snowing but there was a lot of it on the ground. Our deck railings had been clean yesterday but today they had about 4 inches of snow on them. Around mid-coffee time, it had started snowing again. This sucked in a huge way because we had to go out. Had to. See, a good friend of mine is turning 40 on Monday. He lives out of town and his girlfriend planned a surprise party for him, for tonight. I can talk about it here right now because it's past the surprise part. Anyway, I'd offered to get a cake, I'd ordered it last week and needed to pick it up and deliver it to the venue today.

We took a chance on a window of no snowing at around 11:30 and went out to get the cake (and some beer for our snow plowing neighbour). Literally, we had just enough time to do what we needed to do. As we were dropping the cake off, the freezing rain started. I could see it bouncing off of the cake box.

At the moment, we're not at the party. The bottom of driveway was filled in by the plow and it's a frozen mess. Our neighbour did our driveway this morning and will do it again tomorrow morning but there has been a lot of accumulation and it's pounding ice pellets right now so we're stuck in the driveway. Hell, the dog wouldn't go outside to pee until I put boots on and a coat and stood out on the deck. It's that bad outside!!

I feel terrible about not being at the party but the cake is there. I know that the honouree and his family made it into town safely and I'm sure that they are staying in the hotel next door to the party venue so they should be okay tonight while it's storming.

Surely to goodness this is the last big storm of the season. It seems so strange to me that it's snowing like crazy outside and the time is changing tonight. But no worries, there is no such thing as climate change, right?