The Great Freeze of 2019

Well. Winter has arrived. A weekend or two ago, I promised Eli that I'd take him sledding to enjoy the Big Snow that we'd just gotten. We went, loved flying down the hills and had so many laughs together, I loved it! Hiking up the hill, trying to hit each other on the way down, tipping over and rolling through the snow, coming home to hot chocolate, what's not to love?? (Timeline - Sledding on Jan 20. Two major snowfalls in the few days preceding that.)

Next - the cold. Wind Chill of 20 below and guess what? School was CANCELLED. Snow day! Actually, technically Freeze Day! Or whatever. They're off of school on Friday. (Timeline - Cold on Jan. 28) The kids stayed home, the parents went to work.

Did I mention - David left for CANADA on Thursday? (That's Jan. 27 for those of us keeping track.) Who goes NORTH in January? We're not fans of winter. And David went to Canada. Colder? It's practically the edge of the world. Anyway, we're at work, the kids are home loving the weather that cancelled school. The weather people predict snow and cold and we're Wisconsinites so we roll our eyes. We complain about how the grocery stores are mobbed by everyone who thinks they'll be snowed in for the next 2 weeks so they'd better stock up now.We participate in the mobbing by stopping at the store for "just a couple essentials."

On Sunday we heeded the call of the local homeless shelter that's asked for extra food and blankets due to the increased number of people needing shelter. As we got to the shelter we join a line of people going into the building, everyone carrying bags stuffed with food, blankets, hats and gloves. I look around amazed at our community's response to the call for help. We get inside and see one of the gentlemen who runs the shelter standing there with wide eyes and a look of awe of his face. He's dumbfounded at the response. He tells us to just pile our things "over there." In the pile of bags of food, bedding, everything they asked for.

I walked out hoping the kids saw how one family can help another. Or how a community can come together to do something wonderful when we join together. Or how we should recognize the blessings that we have in our lives and never take them for granted. We have a warm home with a furnace that works and a fridge and cupboards that are fully stocked with food. We are so blessed.

Sunday night the call came. No school Monday - Snow Day! Archer asked if I wanted him to clear off the driveway in the morning and I accepted the offer. They were saying 8-10 inches of snow was on the way and they weren't wrong. Monday morning (Jan. 28, in the timeline...) we were greeted with a driveway filled with snow. As I started getting ready for work, I heard the snowblower start, then quit. I heard it start and die again a couple more times. Last week it seemed to work just fine, but now? I finished getting ready for work. I went outside to find Archer shoveling the snow. He apologized but also told me he was only going to do half - the left half, the half that needed to be cleared for me to get the van out. We shoveled together, I called my boss to inform him that my street still hadn't been plowed and I didn't know when I'd be able to leave the house. There was a wall of 10 inches of snow at the end of my driveway. Archer called Bampa to ask for advice about the snowblower and through a series of questions, trying again, and more questions, we finally figured it out. The auger was frozen with ice surrounding it. The chute was blocked by a solid chunk of ice. It would have to be thawed out before we could use it again, and there was only colder weather in the future. And that was when the Story was revealed to me.

Archer finally told me. The last time it snowed (Jan. 18th-ish?) he had offered to clear off the driveway, and when I got home, it was BEAUTIFULLY cleared. Even the sidewalk. Even around the mailbox. Not a speck of snow out of place. I bragged to everyone what a great job he had done. I paid him a big fat $20 bill for his wonderful work. I was the proudest mom you've ever seen. And when it came time to snowblow the driveway again, it turns out the snowblower hadn't been cleared out from the last time.  We stood in the garage trying to chip away at the ice with a stick, after we'd already shoveled the left half of the driveway together and the plow came and filled it all in again and we had shoveled more. And we were chipping away at the ice in the snowblower. And he finally couldn't take it anymore, and he confessed. He wasn't the one who had cleared the driveway last week, but he'd been told to take the money and not tell Mom anything about it. And he hadn't cleaned out the snowblower, or whatever. And when I heard this whole story all I could do was laugh. Only a perfect storm of record snowfall and record cold and someone doing a favor for someone else that turned into another kind of problem of frozen blocks of ice inside the equipment... Only then could this whole story have come out about Archer accepting payment for a job he didn't do and who would have even guessed? I laughed, and called Bampa to let him know the details of the kerfuffle and later called Shelly to tell her to take a hairdryer out to the garage to thaw out the snowblower. She said it took her an hour and a half. And now we're back in business

So where were we on the timeline? Tuesday, I guess, Jan. 28. It is going to be just as cold as it was on Friday, but school is now IN SESSION. I look at the forecast and see that at the time the kids will be getting off the buses, there will be a wind chill of 30 below. I make a decision that I've never done before. I keep ALL THREE kids home from school. I will not have them walking 2 or 3 blocks in weather that can cause frostbite in five minutes. So they stay home. I give them assignments and warnings and leave them to the warm cozies of home while classmates are off to school. As far as I can tell, none of them changed out of their jammies all day. When I got home and walked from the garage to the mailbox and back, my nose and fingers were already staring to hurt and I know I made the right decision to keep them home and order them, "DO NOT go outside today." No one talked about anything but the weather all day long at work. And this afternoon, I received a call from the school district. No school Wednesday. Wind chill will be 50-55 below zero tomorrow afternoon. The last time it was this cold in WI was 35 years ago, too long ago for even me (the old mom of the group) to remember it. I've never heard of weather this cold. (I looked it up. The last time it was this cold in WI was 1984. I definitely don't remember that.)

So I'm declaring it. This is The Major Freeze of 2019. Someday when I'm old and grey and rocking in my rocking chair, I'll be telling of The Great Freeze of 2019 when we had three major snowstorms in a week and four days of 50 below zero the very next week and it'll only be the very slightest of exaggerations. (We really did have three major snowfalls in seven days. Only one day of 50 below zero. So far.)

In the meantime, I'm waiting for the 41 degree heatwave they say is coming this weekend, hopefully that'll melt the mountain of snow in front of my front door so we can welcome a visitor or two again sometime soon.

P.S. Did I mention? This whole time, David has been in Halifax. When I look at the map, I feel like he's on the edge of the world. He's farther east even than Maine. I know it's irrational, but sometimes I have this weird feeling that he's going to fall off the edge of the earth. And it's warmer there, even though it's north of here. Twenty Three Degrees Fahrenheit. With the perspective of 55 below, 23 above feels like a luxury, practically beach weather. Just don't fall off the edge when you're visiting the beach in that balmy 23 degree weather that you've got over there, David. Come home soon, join us! I heard today that it's colder here than in Antarctica, and that's a once in a lifetime chance, to say you've been somewhere colder than Antarctica!