I hope someone shot that b*stard, Punxatawney Phil, back on the 2nd of the month, fried his ass in lard and served him up with some nice white gravy. Another six weeks of winter. At this rate and with this much snow, it will be August before it all melts!
Oh, and can I just tell you, IT'S EFFING COLD! Not as cold as it's gotten since I moved to Maine, but just the same, it's COLD!
At least it will get up to 25F today. I suppose it could be worse, we could only reach a high of like, 2F above zero...which has happened before.
And it's not like a lot of snow is going to represent a huge problem tomorrow. It's Saturday. The hubby doesn't have to trek into work and Meg doesn't have to shove off to school. Of course, the town snowplows will probably barricade our driveway, which is always so much fun for the hubby when he goes out with the snowblower. Inevitably he ends up having to manually shovel some of the snow off the 5 FOOT snowbank just so the snowblower can handle the remaining 3 feet.
So just what do the good folks at the National Weather Service consider "heavy" snowfall? Well, this time around they are predicting 7 to 18 inches. Not a big deal, we've gotten 26" before and survived...and this was back when the hubby was still in the UK (we had just started the immigration process for him and I had to return to the US to "establish domecile") and I was shoveling out with a shovel...I didn't have the luxury of a snowblower back then. It was a pain in the ass but it didn't kill me. Of course I wasn't petrified of what another fall on icy surfaces was going to do to my back.
You wanna hear something kinda ironically amusing though? When the hubby and I first talked about returning to the US and where we wanted to live, there was no question...coastal Maine. I was the one who sat there and asked the hubby; "are you sure you're going to be able to handle the winters? They can get pretty cold and severe!" He had no doubt that he'd do just fine. And he has. Then again this summer, when Meg was contemplating spending her senior year here with us, I told her that winters could be cold, icy and generally uncomfortable and she was still totally game for the adventure if she decided to come out here. And she has been. She pretty much rolls with the punches when it comes to the winter out here. So who do you think is the one who has done the lion's share of the grumbling? Yours truly. I'm also the one who has ALWAYS wanted to make Maine her home. Always.
But much like Meg, the spring and summer and early autumn more than make up for whatever that old fart, Old Man Winter throws our way. I just have to keep that in mind when I slip on the icy driveway and hear my backbone breaking. And I'll keep the lovely summers here in Maine, in mind, when we get our next heating oil bill which should roughly equal the current national deficit.