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| Wicked stawm |
It’s exciting to anticipate a big weather event. They rarely sneak up on us. In a development that would have rendered my mom flabbergastric, our own phones tell us what’s going to happen.We know exactly when the boom will be lowered, in time to stand in line for tire chains, room air conditioners, sandbags, flashlights, bottled water. I don’t know why anybody ever thought there was a need for bottled water, but now it’s a whole thing. People pay good money for tap water in a plastic bottle. It’s criminal: you know for a fact that there are people alive today who think the bright side of the Flint, Michigan water fiasco is they can sell more tap water in plastic bottles. (They’re not in a fat hurry to fix the Flint water either. Them’s just colored people.)
A hundred years ago, people still could anticipate big weather events. They could feel it in their bones, read it in the sunset, smell it in the air, suss it out from bird chatter and the scurryings of critters. Maw gets a twinge and Paw squints up into the sky and before you know it the cattle are rounded up and the window shutters are latched. People used to know useful stuff. Now we don’t have to. Now, people might not even conclude they were in a big earthquake until they’d fished out their phones and hollered “vertigo” and “poltergeists” into them first.
Big weather events are exciting because they allow us to contemplate matters of life and death in a way driving on the freeway should, but just doesn’t. We’ve got a big weather event coming in this evening, we hear. Fortunately we’re all prepared. We had a test run a few days ago.
That would be the day that Dave and I walked out of the house past a few patches of dandruffy snow and shortly hit completely clear pavement, so we continued on to the hot dog shop. Which was closed. It wasn’t supposed to be closed. We worried the owner had finally thrown in the towel. So we went to the pastrami shop. Which was closed. It wasn’t supposed to be closed.
Sure enough–we checked later–both places were closed because a snowflake had been rumored to have fallen overnight, somewhere in the metropolitan area, and panic had set in. And now–I get the vapors just thinking about it–we’re due for four inches of the stuff. Any minute now. It’s inhumane. Nobody’s going anywhere, that’s for sure. You don’t want to risk ending up upside-down in a ditch with a lot of people who might not have voted right.
We might get snow and we might not. Either way, Portland will have a snow day. We’re progressive that way.
I buy "bottled" water, but get it in the ten litre cardboard casks and just refill the plastic bottles I have until they look too scungy even after being washed. it's 'spring' water and tastes a heck of a lot better than our tap water which is much improved from when I was little but still tastes odd to me and makes me physically ill if I swallow enough of it.
I hope you at least get enough snow to get out there and play in it, maybe make a little snowman.
You mean, of course, a snow Poot! You might want to get a nice stainless steel bottle and it would taste even better.
I would love to use a stainless steel bottle but they all make the water taste metallic to me!
Ah ha. See, now, I taste the plastic. There must be a good alternative…
My water comes from a hole in my front yard and if I travel to the Big City I bring some along. If I were entrepreneurial I would set up a little bottling plant in my basement and make a nice supplemental income. Too bad I am old and lazy.
Why don't they just call the forecast The Anxiety Report?
I heard Portland groceries ran out of kale in runup to the stawm. Possibly apocryphal.
Ran out of kale?? I could understand running out of milk, or chocolate, but kale? Urk!
Well…it's Portland.
Delaware has a very similar attitude toward snow. We seldom get very much accumulation these days, and when we get any appreciable amount, the next day it usually is raining and with a temperature of 60, so we don't even bother to shovel the driveway unless my husband gets bored and needs the exercise. Because even with this minuscule amount, people panic and do not know how to drive in it, the governor usually (and wisely) declares a state of emergency — sometimes even before a single snowflake hits the ground. Sometimes I think that all this hub-bub surrounding snowstorms is just a plot by Big Grocery to sell more bread-eggs-milk.
As to bottled water, our own water is pretty bad (as you'd expect, since this is "the chemical capitol of the world.") But bottled water is not only expensive, but wasteful with all those plastic bottles. So we have a water filter on our kitchen faucet, which we change every two months, and one on our showerhead, which we change twice a year. When I have an empty gallon jug from vinegar, I just rinse it out, fill it with filtered tap water, and store it in the basement with our canned goods for the Apocalypse du Jour. Every so often, I water our plants with this water so that it is refilled with fresh.
mimimanderly, when I was a kid in Wilmington we had 4 inches all at once. It shut down everything for three days! It was awesome!
What I associate with Delaware is tiny trees. Tiny little trees.
Well, there are only three counties to put them in. But, hey! There is always Punkin Chunkin!
Murr, those weren't actual trees in their autumnal foliage. Those are traffic cones… our state tree.
Jono, now we close down for impending flurries. When we do get several inches, it is usually gone the next day because of the milder weather. I remember when I was little and we had snow measured in feet and it stayed around for a while. But, hey, global warming doesn't exist, so I must be imagining that….
What I really associate with Delaware is Rehoboth Beach. Childhood haunt.
But, Murr, those poor people stuck on that train in Oregon for 37 hours on account of the snowstorm.
You know, I would have hated that, but the way they talked about how horrible it was sure put me in mind of what our (recent) foremothers and forefathers dealt with in the way of travel. And it seems to me I might have had to camp out in an airport that long, and I'd have been happier on a train.
The thing I dislike about your people is that you push this snowy weather on along to use to share! I know you think you are being generous….but…
"My people?"
When I was a kid, I looked forward to big weather events. Bad weather was outside anyone's control – anything could happen and you weren't exactly sure for how long.
Now, after a number of hurricanes here, I'm not so excited. Plus I have a schedule and lots to do and that throws it off.
Good luck with the snow!
Hurricanes and tornadoes would put a damper on my enthusiasm in a hot heartbeat.
"Now, people might not even conclude they were in a big earthquake until they'd fished out their phones and hollered "vertigo" and "poltergeists" into them first."
LOL!!! It's true 🙂 We're evolving into people who only look at electronic screens, no matter what else is right in front of our faces. Or maybe that should be "devolving" . . .
I still don't have a (mobile) screen habit and I don't think I'm missing anything. Just the opposite, actually. Now spending time in front of a computer at home…that's a whole other habit.
Same here, but a screen is a screen and I'm pretty much under the spell of the big one 🙁
At least when I can walk away from it, and don't bring it with me.
Hah! You should live in the south (Atlanta) when there is even a hint of 1/4" of snow. People go crazy!
I'm trying hard to stay away from places that get hot weather but unfortunately the hot weather is starting to find US.
"People used to know useful stuff"
Just the other day I read a piece about some Professor of surgery being seriously concerned that manual skills are declining.He says students are coming to med. school and can barely use their digits.His point being that they ought to have basic sewing skills. I guess that's in the same area of us oldies having a pretty good idea of impending storms.When I was a lil tacker I knew when an earthquake was likely.
"When I was a little tacker." I swear, every other time you come up with a locution I don't know.
It is reassuring (in a truly perverse way) to hear that Snow Hysteria exists outside the Washington Beltway. The fact that it is not just confined to our little bubble-world tells me that the country is going to hell in a hand-basket in a uniform fashion. It is comforting to know that I can find Weather Wusses (aka Nature Ninnies) from coast to coast!
I gotta admit I HATED having to drive my postal vehicle in the snow and ice. Gawd almighty. Your-all's winter weather is not quite as treacherous, but close. When I was in Maine I could fly around in a car with no chains and it was like driving on the beach.
Murr, your beautiful humor always improves my mood –even after I just impoverished us with a whole new roof on the farmhouse. We pump our water up from 150 feet under the back yard. It just tastes like water –not cost effective. If we won a multimillion dollar prize in the lottery, I guess we'd just keep working 'til it ran out.
Auuugh! Don't you hate having to spend good money just keeping what you already (once) had? Says the kid who just replaced half her siding…