Snow shows

Well, this has been a mighty slow computer connection this morning. Could be the Internet's getting weighted down from the snow. Anyway, the saga continues. I took this picture of our front deck yesterday. I'm sure the scene has changed dramatically this morning because we've had about a foot of new snow overnight.

I know that because I had to shovel that much away from the barn door, which would not close all the way last night and which caused me to voice some rather loud G-dammits into the night air as I kept chipping away at the ice which continues to insist upon rising up every day.

Yeah, that was a long sentence, but we've received a long sentence of winter demise this year. As noted below, our storage shed roof gave up all hopes of hanging up on the west end for the remainder of the winter.

I got the tractor stuck in the lane last night----twice and uttered some more of those G-dammits as I dug and dug in the snow only to have more snow avalanche on top of what I had just removed. When I had gotten the tractor almost unstuck the second time, Bill came out and asked, "Is it stuck?"

I asked him if it had been snowing lately and then tried to maneuver it those two inches to freedom, to which he said, "Wait a second," to which I said, "Okay, I'll wait a second. I'll wait an hour," after which I dragged my wet, sweaty body off the tractor and hurled a few more G-dammits his way as I stomped to the house resolving that I was damn sick and tired of winter.

After changing into dry clothes and sipping on a glass of wine, I checked my email. There was a note from Susie Puckett who told me about a family member who had visited the Dufort Mall and heard the story of the couple who had come and dumped a lot of their high-end items in the "free" pile at the dumpsters as they were leaving Sandpoint never to return again, thanks to the winter.

Apparently, these folks had had enough and they needed to remove all reminders of their stay in "God's Country." I won't say publicly what happened to those items, but do remember it's the Dufort Mall, and we all know about the brisk commerce that goes on at the malls, especially those with "free piles" in the rural areas.

Bill has driven----I think----to Coeur d'Alene today. I don't know if he made it or not, and I don't know if he did make it, if he will make it home tonight. I'm thinking about staying off from the tractor today because I hurled enough profanities last night to drive all the neighbors away, but the one thing is they probably can't get out this morning.

I have seen the snow plows go by and a few cars but no school buses. So, I'm guessing my sisters are over there at Colburn plotting how they're going to clean up the latest dump. You see their driveways are grand canyons, and the plows don't go high enough to push that snow over the canyon walls, and we've all heard and experienced enough of our own avalanches lately to know the futility of trying to move snow out of the way.

Gosh, this is fun. Julie, it's coming close, but not quite enough wind yet to meet the requirements of a '68-'69. And, I must correct a major error in yesterday's Daily Bee story about the auditorium roof collapsing in '95-'96.

It was '96-'97 because my Cedar Post students did a special issue on the collapse and won a National First Place in Quill and Scroll journalism awards that year. So, let's get those facts straight for all the folks in future years who have to listen to us geezers talk about "the winter of . . . ."

And, when we tell those stories, we like to pile it higher and deeper----unless it avalanches, that is!