January 13, 2011

8:02 p.m.

Storm

We had a hell of a storm this week. Two feet at least. There was so much snow that our plow guy couldn't even manage my long, steep driveway. Normally he comes after four or five inches and then comes back if there is more, but he was busy with a couple of commercial accounts that he has to do first, and the snow just kept falling all night and day. Karl and I had ideas about going to work for a short day, but after an hour and a half of shoveling the back porch and unburying the car, I was discouraged with so much more to go, and he tried to bring the dynahoe up my driveway and it got stuck halfway up. The dynahoe is 14 tons of excavating machine with major plowing/shoving capabilities if your plow guy just can't cut it. He had to take it back down. So we conferred by phone and decided that we couldn't get to the road yet, so we couldn't go to work.

Meanwhile I went out for a second round of shoveling and made a deep path to the bird feeder and suet feeders, and cleared both front stoops. Then I came in for tea.

My clothes were nearly dry again and my tea nearly gone when there was a knock at the front door. Rose had waded over her knees in snow up to the house and when I opened the door, she was panting with her head resting on the door! And she's in a lot better shape than I am. She said, get your boots on and grab a shovel, 'cause guess what we've been doing for the last hour and a half?

They had the little Quad halfway up my driveway, having cleared a turnaround at the street and uncovered my trash and recycle bins. I fought grumpiness. I was already so tired, but here they were bailing me out and I didn't even know it. We fought our way back down to where Karl was, and after some discussion she went and got the Ford tractor ("Little Blue!"). Between the two of them they cleared the rest of the driveway up to the house. Meanwhile I shoveled a path where we had walked through the snow, all the way back to the front door. I was shaking by the time I was done.

Karl had managed to plow one path the width of the tractor. That was enough for plow man to come and widen it later. There are mountains of snow in the woods where K. pushed it, with the bucket, then backwards with the box blade. The whole operation, their house and mine, took nearly til dusk.

So plow man came in the early evening and cleaned it all up, and after work tonight Karl came again with the Quad and pushed some more of the soft stuff off the icy patches, and cleared again where my car had been, the ridge pushed up by the plow. I've never seen this much snow in Connecticut, not come down at once.

I don't know why it dismays me so.

Plow man gave me his old wood stove, as someone gave him a newer one. Karl and I were in the midst of refurbishing the little one I'd gotten last month, but this one is much bigger and will heat the house better -- and doesn't need as much repair. I told Dar, "It's butt-ugly!" but if it heats well, it will become beautiful. This is my last weekend home for several weeks, so the onus is upon us all to get the stove installed, and come up with a shitload of wood for me to burn the rest of the winter. I am overwhelmed by the task -- so many steps to it all, and now complicated by the mountains of snow where I would otherwise have been processing and stacking wood -- and this weekend only predicted to be in the 20s.

Normally I don't work Fridays. I do have to go in some tomorrow though, as I missed a day with the storm, I'm between money with the cancelled gigs, and we have a crunch in production and are behind. The inventory software is frustrating, inadequate, buggy and tedious. There's nothing I can do about that. Ironing out its wrinkles takes a lot of my time, and interrupts anything else I have to do, like building 26 circuit boards for speakers that were supposed to arrive at the customer tomorrow. So K and I both will work a half day, after which I must find stove pipe (AGAIN -- I swear I have a stash of every size stove pipe there IS, because no two stoves that I have acquired could possibly just have the same size pipe), a replacement damper valve for the furnace, and a couple of other things. It would also be helpful to get laundry and grocery shopping done, to free up the rest of the weekend, but I do have rehearsal in the evening so I don't know if it's all possible in one afternoon.

Then, Saturday: Repairing a few small things on the stove; cleaning the stove, because he delivered it with the ash pan full and the stove stuffed completely with paper and cardboard they forgot to burn; removing the flue cover in the chimney and cleaning out the fallen debris behind it that keeps it from closing; assembling various stove pipe parts and installing a T; fetching spare insulation from next door to stuff around the pipe; putting everything in place.

Then: Going to Geeky Dave's house to pick up 4' lengths of well seasoned wood he's trying to get rid of, bringing them here and cutting/splitting/stacking them (after removing 2' of snow from a couple of pallets and putting them on the back porch). ...Meanwhile taking some of them to Snow's house, and buying a bag or two of BioBricks from her, just in case.

(Then: Starting wood stove and making sure it all works, and finally getting the living room above 59 degrees.)

Then: Bringing the tractor over and pulling out several felled trees from the woods, which are blocking the path usually used by the Quad and the tractor; cutting in some reasonable lengths that we can put somewhere to season for next year.

Then: Finding more deadfall in the woods around the house that isn't rotted, that we can chainsaw up and add to the wood pile.

At some point I will go next door and help Karl assemble a little table saw he acquired, so that small projects will be easier to manage.

Sunday, finishing whatever of the above we didn't get done on Saturday.

And that pretty much outlines the whole weekend. After the day I had at work today, that list seems as impossible as shoveling out this whole property by myself. Of course I won't be by myself; my family will be helping me. But, like everything else so far, it's last minute and labor intensive and we're working like mad in "crunch mode." It makes me tired. As for rehearsal tomorrow night, I've told them I haven't had time to practice at all. They seem to understand.

The terrible virus is pretty much gone, though I am still congested at times and my singing voice isn't totally back. I have one more week to become a mezzo soprano again. I can honestly say it is the least of my worries.

And now it's time for bed. I ate too much chocolate after dinner. I'm doing it out of stress, I'm sure. I can't seem to keep my mind in the moment when I reach for it. I know I'm hating the upcoming touring obligations. I wish I could just be calm around it.