The snow

There is a lot of snow on the ground, and looking at the weather, it's not entirely clear that it will all melt out and then have the ground dry in time for people to be able to park on the grass out back for our fundraiser for Josh on Thursday. Oh well. We shall see. That is well beyond my control.

It has been an eventful snow.  Wednesday, the day of the big dumping, we lost power from about 2pm till midnightish. Natalie was at a friend's house, and at length we were able to convince her to ask her friend's mom to let her stay the night. Meanwhile, we were trying to figure out whether to make a break for my mom's house (she still had power). Around 5, we decided to do it.

First, we had to find Graham.  He had headed out at around 2 to enjoy the snow. We thought he was out back sledding, but his friends Ethan and Daniel informed us that he wasn't. So we had to call around. Turned out he was down at Ben's, showing good initiative on his part. He had walked down there and knocked on the door. Two thumbs up!

So we gathered stuff and started heading out to the car to drive to mom's, when I was approached by two neighbors, a mom and a daughter. Turned out the granddad (father of recently divorced husband, who was in Chile), a 95-year old guy on oxygen, was alone in his house a mile or so away at the bottom of a hill. They needed Subaru help. So we piled in my Subaru and went down to get him.

It was slippery as fuck. To make a long story short, the car did pretty well going downhill, and after considerable effort to get Pop-pop in the car with his wheelchair and a bunch of oxygen tanks, we headed back uphill.

This didn't go so well. At a switchback turn, my car slid side to side and just stopped making progress. So I had to back down the hill, between a bunch of parked cars, with poor visibility, trying to keep moving for fear I would get stuck again. We made it, and got Pop-pop back in his house, but it was fucking hairy, and the Grouse was sweating no little bit through all of this.

I left the car at the bottom of the hill and walked home. Graham was asleep already on the couch. Mary made a hearty soup on our gas stove. We ate by candlelight. I was asleep by 10. Pop-pop got through the night fine, I learned the next day, helped in no small part by the fact that his house was usually kept at 79.

In retrospect, I wish we had had Natalie walk home so she could have shared the memory with us.