Weather above freezing, or back to winter in Ohio

Temps have been below freezing temperatures since before Christmas. Wisconsin was below freezing for the entire visit. Easily forgiven; it’s located in the middle of winter. But, we came home to another week plus of below zero weather. I know, the east coast was hammered, but I don’t live there.

I can remember writing before of polar vortexes and Alberta clippers, and having to explain the latter, as it is a more local term for a cold temperature system out of Alberta, across the plains of Montana, the Midwest, the Great Lakes, where it increases velocity, decreases temperatures and adds snow from the open lakes.

The current weather system is out of reckoning. In retrospect, I am grateful we escaped Milwaukee with two de-icings and one airport closure for plowing. I didn’t expect to return home to snowed in. Or out, as the case may be. Before we went to Wisconsin, I hired a twelve year old kid a couple of doors down to shovel my drive and my neighbor’s, and clean our stairs and decks.

We came home to an impassable drive, and parked in the street. Laura shoveled one path and cleaned the porch enough to get in. The next day she spent two hours cleaning both drives, porches, and cars. Or, ten bucks an hour. I put aside another forty dollars to get through the current spate of drive shoveling, and have ten left. Laura turned an extra fifty dollars since we got home from Christmas. My young hireling has not appeared.

School recommenced last Wednesday, and was cancelled Thursday and Friday because temps were well below zero. It was good small children were not waiting for buses or walking to school, but I had appointments to keep. I just counted—ten  since last Tuesday. I am so grateful my car battery died and was replaced last year.

I went to lunch with a gentleman friend to a new restaurant I thought I knew enough about. But the grade was slightly downhill and the pavement sneaker sole deep in that salt melt slush. I eyeballed at least a hundred and fifty feet to the door and was reaching back in for my cane when my friend parked next to me in his ostentatious red four door Chevy truck. I would never set foot in that truck, but I gratefully accepted an arm.

I came home, and little miss neat informed me she could not put away the Christmas tree because the storage boxes are in the shed and the shed key is frozen. I stopped at the market last night for a frozen “dinner”, having left the cook to overnight at a friend’s. I read the labels.

Everything I might have selected had well over five hundred grams of salt! I came home and steamed the last bag of spinach, which I ate with an obscene amount of butter and stale bread to soak up the spinach juice. On the way down the apple aisle I notice the train is still circuiting the tree. Perhaps their shed locks are frozen, too.

Minus four overnight last night, below freezing yet today and tomorrow. But it seems by Monday we can unlock the shed door and store Christmas for another year.