Springtime in Wyoming

How do you know when it's Spring in Wyoming?

65 degree temps the day before? Check
Blizzard conditions the day after? Check
60 mph winds? Check
Horizontal, snow, no visibility? Check
No school, no work, no power, no traffic? Check
Any road in and out of the state closed? Check
Snow accumulations over three Corgis in height? Check

Yup, it must be spring.

Let's see, Sunday, pleasantly warm, breezy(really breezy)... Monday, early A.M, cold, blowing, snowing. Nothing like waking up to a foot of snow. Luckily, the school district has a robo caller that let me know schools were closed. Right after that, the power went out. I love sitting in the morning dark listening to the winds howl and snow pile up... On the bright side, no power, no work. Not that I could get out of my driveway anyhow.

Child 2 shoveled the walk during a lull in the storm on Monday. Not that you can tell, much. (View out the front door)

Child 2 went out to shovel the walk on Tuesday, after the storm passed, and did a good job - with appropriate cell phone breaks to whine to friends how mean his mother is, making him do manual labor. (Child 1 is in Arizona in college, laughing at me). Shortly after, Child 2 vanished, leaving me to shovel the driveway on my own. "I'll be back later" he says. I've heard that one before.


So armed with Old Blue, and the Corgis, I set out to tackle the 60 foot driveway.

Circled in red, in the back, my birdfeeder that is 6 feet off the ground, in the front, my birdfeeder that is 3 feet off the ground... now resting on top of the snow. Sorry birdies, hope you pigged out before the storm, I'm not wading out there today.


Of course the Corgis had to make some trails to navigate the yard. (With yellow snow directional markers). Here, Max samples the snow and decides how much to eat.


Merlin, being a good little brother, lets Max break trail through the yard. Once the yard trails were cleared, the Corgis came to stand in the shoveled sections of the driveway, supervise, chase the snow I tossed, and bark.


After an hour I had a donkey trail shoveled out. Not going to get me to work in the morning. I've high centered my car before, not going there again. So trying to blast out is not an option. Oh, and see the nifty sheet of snow hanging off the roof? It fell. Right onto the shoveled out sidewalk. So after I recleared the sidewalk, I went back to the driveway. About four scoops for every shovel width of snow, to get down to pavement. My chain link fence is four feet high, if that gives you any idea.

Heaving shovels of snow up over my head is a workout plan I don't really care for. Oh, and notice the pretty blue skies. Everything close to the pavement was melting... and growing heavier by the minute. Back to the driveway.

3 Hours Later...

Houston, we have driveway! Oh, and the thing under the red arrow? A Monte Carlo. Don't worry, it wasn't going anywhere.

So, does anyone want to predict how long it was before the snowplow came by and buried the end of my driveway after I finished? Anyone? Anyone? Bueller?

19 minutes.

That's got to be a record, last the radio said, they wouldn't get to plowing out the low priority streets until tomorrow. I didn't even have time to unknot my soggy bootlaces and peel all the skin from my blisters. So back out, with Corgi help (Max ended up with more than one shovelful of snow in the face, not that it stopped him) to unblock the end of my drive and give me a fighting chance of getting out of my street, never mind the subdivision.

That's it, I'm done, and I have a sneaking suspicion I won't be lifting my arms over my head tomorrow. The Wyoming spring workout. Yes, I could get a snowblower, but where's the fun in that? Just in case, I left Old Blue on standby alert. With Child 2's name on the handle.

The Grass is Always Greener...

After it rains for three weeks. Of course, after seven years of drought, we need it. So I guess I shouldn't complain about the green mold in my basement and the soggy, just rained on squish of my carpet. But at least the cat no longer has to swim to his litterbox, and I don’t have to hear about it. The drawback to Corgis? They are so low to the ground; they get not only their feet wet, but their entire bottom half.

I even painted the bathroom a nice shade of sage green, but the sink is white, I do have my standards. Apparently I was out at engineering school the day we covered P-traps, because installing a new sink is rapidly becoming more effort than its worth. Since the old sink is tore out, I don’t really have a choice. Learn fast. Thank doG for the Internet, a treasure trove of Do It Yourself videos. What? Read the directions in advance you say? Where's the challenge in that? Not to mention, I usually avoid writing by doing projects, now I am avoiding Operation Remodel Bathroom by writing. So far this weekend I have 500 words on a new history fic short story, two chapters in the Novel That Started in NaNo, and a piece of a speculative fiction short story that has a great beginning, but I have absolutely no idea what happens next.

The gnomes, sensing work and cursing, wisely stayed low, only coming out to hide my basin wrench and pop a key off my laptop. The laptop, unused to such frantic typing, apparently is going down for the third time, making ominous noises and chucking useful keys, like, you know, the one I need to type my name? ("C") I made a half hearted attempt to research laptops. I don’t really want Windows Vista until they are about to the second service pack, I'm happy with XP. I'd like a 17 inch screen to do my Photoshopping on. Macs are too expensive. I should just break down and get another desktop PC, I think the laptop has been out of the house once in the last six months. But I want the option, you know? I have delusions of having a life someday.

I force fed more RAM into this laptop, and it grudgingly runs okay, but it runs too hot, even with a cooling pad. So any suggestions on a decent laptop? I know there are some still out there with XP on them. And yes, things are backed up on my external hard drive. I'm not trusting my stories to any one source, considering MS Word ate an entire chapter last month and never hiccupped it up. I wanted to rewrite it anyhow. Really. (quit laughing) And if I find the gnome that made it disappear... I'm painting him green and installing him on my front lawn as a rain gauge.