The Blizzard of ‘06

We got about two feet of snow dumped on us in a 24-hour period. If you're like me and aren't very good at imagining the depth, imagine wading though snow that comes up to between your knees and your mid-thighs. We have at least 2 feet of snow on the ground (everywhere), with drifts 3 to 4 feet high in places on our property.

This blizzard did a good job of shutting down most of Colorado. Every large and small city government, school/university, and business east of the mountains is closed. The airport closed yesterday (Weds) and is not planned to re-open until at least noon on Friday. Every major highway in Colorado is closed…I-25 is closed from Wyoming to New Mexico, I-70 is closed from the Kansas border to the mountains, and on and on.
For more snow pictures, visit my online photo album.


Michael and I have been talking a lot about the possibility of selling out and moving to town. We want to be closer to our friends and our workplaces. We like the idea of being closer to our community. However, this blizzard has got me thinking that right now we are living in a community…a slightly different one than the one we've got in Boulder.

When you live in a pseudo-rural environment, your neighbors become your community. Your neighbors watch over your animals while you're out of town, and you watch over theirs while they are at the state fair. Your neighbors grade the dirt road you all share with their tractors in the summer and plow the dirt road when it snows. You pay a neighbor to cut and bale your hay, and you buy stuff from their kids' school fundraisers. You all own shares of the same ditch, and you meet once a year to talk about the hopes for more water for the coming year.

Today three of our neighbors had out their tractors clearing the dirt road all the way to the highway. One of them even helped us dig out our driveway. Michael and I spent several hours helping out another neighbor that needed help getting paths dug to her hay and to all the animals on her property. We know that there are a lot of people on our little street that we can call on if we need help.

Big Snow #3

If you can believe it, we got big snow #3 on Friday, Jan 5...Another 9-10 inches at the house.

Michael had re-shoveled all the paths to feed the animals on Friday morning before we left to head to Boulder. Turned out my work was closed because of the snow storm, so I headed back home. By the time I got home at 11am, I had to shovel the entrance to the garage to get the truck in it!

Michael went in to work on Saturday morning, so I shoveled the path to the hay barn (again). While I was shoveling I started singing to myself a little song about how the winter would be a long one if I had to shovel the same path over and over to the haybarn. I got a good workout in the morning between the shoveling and hay-bale carrying (another 150 pound of hay carried by woman power!) During the hour I was outside, the temperature raised from 13 to 23 degrees!

We got hefty winds Saturday night, and all that snow was blowing everywhere. This morning all our paths were invisible again under the snow...so we got to dig out once more! All the lovely shoveling I had done to clear out the path to the garage had been un-done by the winds!

I tell you, this is going to be a long, long winter.

How I spent winter break

Winter break came early this year because of the Blizzard. I had 2.5 extra days off. Looking back at what I did over the "break" I am startled to see how little "break" there was.

Weds 12/20 the blizzard hit. I left work at 11:30am and got home from around 1pm, worked on making paths to the animals to feed them and shoveled for another hour before I finally had lunch. Once Michael came home, we spent another 2 hours shoveling so that we could get the truck into the garage since the gate to the back was completely blocked by a 3-foot snow drift.

Thurs 12/21. It had continued to snow through the night, and the paths we had made were completely covered. Our neighbor Lynley runs a llama rescue and has about 200 animals on her property. She's a single mom and called us up asking for help to dig paths so she could get food to her animals. We were at her house shoveling for 2 hours. We came home, ate lunch, and then spent another 3 hours re-digging paths to our animals to feed them. This much snow was so different than anything Michael and I had ever experienced before—it was FUN to do all that shoveling!

Fri 12/22. Michael went to work and I spent the day cleaning the house and doing laundry. My parents and sister were scheduled to arrive on 12/28, and thought it would be a good chance to start picking up. In the afternoon, I got a frantic call from Lenley that her hay delivery wasn't going to happen, and she didn't have enough hay to get her animals through the Christmas weekend until the hay deliveries would start up again. So all by my farmer-jennie self, I dug through 3-foot snow drifts to get to the hay barn and then carried hay bales to the porch. Once I had gotten 3 bales to the porch, I realized that to load them in the truck, I would need to shovel out the gate that separates the driveway from the back of the property. When Michael finally came home, I hadn't been able to dig enough—my arms were totally fatigued. I had a melt-down when he came home, but was able to find a little more strength in my arms to put bales that he carried to the porch into a wheelbarrow and could push the wheelbarrow through the house and into the garage so we could load the bales into the truck.

Sat 12/23. While Michael was in Boulder the day before, he borrowed snowshoes from our friends Matt and Sara. We snow-shoed to the back of the pasture and had a fun time flopping in the snow making snow angels. We then shoveled the driveway for a few hours and carved out a 6' tall snowman from the drift in front of the garage. When we finally came inside in the late afternoon, I found out that my dad decided to stop all the treatment on my grandma.

Sun 12/24. My grandma Betty died.

Mon 12/25. Michael celebrates Christmas, so we prepared a Christmas dinner and our friends Matt and Sara came over. The highlight of the day...I made cheese! Yes, I'll say it again, I made cheese!

Tues 12/26. Woke up at 4:20 am to make an early morning flight to St. Louis, Missouri for my grandma's funeral. Flew back to Colorado that evening and was home by 11pm. A long, hard day.

Weds 12/27. While I was in St. Louis, Michael made plans for us to haul unsold Christmas trees from a place in Boulder to our neighbor Lynley's house. Michael drove the truck with a 16 foot flatbed trailer attached down to Boulder, while I followed in the Prius. We got there a little before 8am and the two of us and the farmer and a helper filled the bed of the truck and the trailer to a height of approximately 7 feet high. Michael went to work and I drove the full rig back to Lynley's. She and I then dug out the 18-foot trailer and I hooked it up and drove it back down to Boulder. Repeated the fill, and drove the second load to her house! Can you believe, this took nearly all day. I never realized that carrying all those trees was such hard work!

Thurs 12/28. The second snow hit in the afternoon. I spent the morning pulling out hay and getting the critters all situated since they were predicting another 1 or 2 feet of snow...fortunately only 8 inches at the house, and no drifts since there was no wind with this storm. I was crashed out for the second half of the day...wouldn't you be after all that happened the few days prior?

Fri 12/29. Spent most of the day shoveling out. While we were lucky to "only" get 8 inches, all our paths were covered in 8 inches of snow!

Sat 12/30. The day that the house decided to fall apart...the handrail on the upstairs stairwell pulled out from the wall, the hallway light fixture quit working, and the vacuum quit. Well, they say these things come in threes.

Sun 12/31. New Year's Eve 2006. We spent the day doing a little more shoveling and some picking up around the house. We had dinner with our friends Fern and Jeff and then spent the night at their house ringing in 2007. It was really fun for me to hang out with them for New Year's Eve...a tradition since high school to be together to celebrate.

Mon 1/1. Hung out at Fern and Jeff's for a while in the morning before departing for separate adventures: Michael and Jeff went to fly in the Piper Cub (Jeff has a pilot's license and Michael used to); I bought a new vacuum! Last day of vacation.

My conservative estimate is that I (alone) moved/carried 500 pounds of hay, shoveled 50 cubic feet of snow, and hauled 250 christmas trees across Boulder County. Not a bad accomplishment for winter break. My crazy hubby probably shoveled twice as much snow, though I think we carried an equal number of hay bales!

In memorial

My Grandma Betty died on Sunday. My grandma was the oldest of four children, and survived all her siblings. Her father left her family when she was young, and she helped her mother by working various jobs to help provide for her family. She never went to college, and what she wanted for all of her grandchildren was a college education so that we could have better jobs and easier lives than what she endured.

I went back to St. Louis for the funeral on Tuesday, and got to meet my grandma's best friend. I knew that my grandma had a friend named Thelma that she talked to frequently. What I didn't realize was that she and Thelma shared everything. Thelma knew everything about me and my siblings. When she asked where my sister Lindsey was, and I told her she was interviewing for a job in California, Thelma's face lit up and said that my grandma would have loved to hear that news. She was so proud of Lindsey. She was so proud of all of us.

As I sit here now, I can't write this without breaking down and crying again, so I'll end with one more thought.

Grandma Betty often said to me was also the last thing that she said to me when I saw her in November…"Take care of each other. Be good to each other. Respect each other." I think this world would be a much better place if we all lived these words with everyone.

Introducing Hashimoto

I find myself in an interesting internal dialog.

Yesterday I received a call from my doctor to say that I have Hashimoto's disease.

Hashimoto's Thyroiditis is a type of autoimmune thyroid disease in which the immune system attacks and destroys the thyroid gland. The thyroid helps set the rate of metabolism, which is the rate at which the body uses energy. Hashimoto's stops the gland from making enough thyroid hormones for the body to work the way it should. It is the most common thyroid disease in the U.S. Some patients with Hashimoto's Thyroiditis may have no symptoms, others encounter a range of symptoms. I essentially have no symptoms. I say "essentially" because the one symptom that I do have, is really not a big deal, and may or may not be related to the Hashimoto's.

Such a strange thing to one day be a girl with really wacked-out cyles, and the next day be a girl with a diagnosis. I'm taking a bit of time to review my options and think about which medicine I want to try out. I'm leaning toward Synthroid, so if anyone has got any experience with this, I'm interested in hearing it.

chickens are like dinosaurs, but more chicken-like

well folks, after a 10day myspace hiatus, I'm back. I've had a pretty hectic 2 weeks since returning from the Thanksgiving road trip, and have been pretty out of touch with everyone. i'm sorry for just now getting back on here and reading backlogged emails and comments. If you make it to the end, I hope you'll get a piece of the picture about why I've been MIA.

The semester is ending at my work, which means it is one of my busiest times of year. In addition to the usual end of semester stress, I'm on a committee that is meeting frequently and in the evenings (I'll be at work past 8pm tonight). I'm taking the morning off to take care of some business at the house, because today is my only chance to do so this week despite the extra-long days.

Home hasn't been much of a respite lately...there has been a lot of farm drama. We've got moms that are too caring, and won't wean their babies, so we have to do it for them. A week ago, we separated two of the babies from their moms. We put a year-old female (Samsara) in with them for company. They spent the last week in a pen away from the rest of the herd in an attempt to wean the babies. Every day for the last week, when I went to feed the babies, they were wimpering and crying...hard and draining.

This past weekend (2 days ago) we did routine vaccinations on the whole herd (everyone gets a shot in the arm!). While I giving a shot to the female baby (Brinca), the male (Amcharo) decided that I was in the perfect position to jump on and start humping. Since I was standing bent over and had a syringe in one hand, it was not easy to shove him off and smack him as hard as I should have. After we vaccinated all the animals, we put the girls (Brinca and Samsara) back in with the rest of the girls. Since Amcharo is clearly starting to act like an unruly boy and can't be with the girls anymore, he needs to move in with the boys. We were hesitant to put Amcharo in with the really big boys, because he'll most likely get really injured...boys play really rough. We decided to try putting Amcharo with Dash, our year-old boy. When we got the two in a pen together, Amcharo and Dash sniffed each other, and Dash promptly kicked Amcharo in the head. It must have really hurt, because Amcharo staggered away shaking his head. That's when I broke down crying...despite having been jumped on by the kid less than an hour earlier, it was just heartbreaking to think about the fact that he'll never be with his mom again, and he'll spend the next few weeks getting beaten up by Dash and eventually by the bigger boys.

When we finished with the herd, we started doing some repairs on the chicken coop. The hut was long overdue for a new interior ceiling. The old ceiling had been put together by attaching insulation covered in cardboard to the inside of the corrugated metal roof. After years of mice and pidgeons and chickens messing with the cardboard, there were several big holes in the ceiling with insulation falling out. We had a pretty easy time ripping out the old ceiling, and mucking out the hen house. Things seemed to be going ok--demolition is a pretty good for healing a broken heart. The chickens had been running around the yard while we were ripping down the ceiling. We decided to take a break, and when everything was quiet, the chickens decided to explore their house. While I was standing in the coop enjoying watching the chickens, one of my favorite little hens caught a mouse, killed it, and started playing with it...that was the second time I broke down crying this weekend.

I'll jump forward to Sunday night when I spoke to my dad. My grandma has been in the hospital for the last week, and is not improving. The doctor wanted him to start thinking about what he would want to do if she needs a feeding tube in the next few days. I wish that I knew how to best support him in making the difficult decisions that he'll have to make.

The Thanksgiving RoadTrip of 2006

Prologue

I was raised in the suburbs of St. Louis, Missouri. My parents were both born in St. Louis, as were my paternal grandparents (and some of their ancestors). St. Louis is where my roots are, and where most of my family still lives.

About a month ago, my 94 year old grandma had a stroke. Up until her stroke, she had been living alone the last 18 years in the house that she's lived in since 1954. After being in the hospital for 3+ weeks, she was transfered to a nursing home for "rehab".

Chapter 1. The Journey Home

The alarm went off at 4:30am on Wednesday, November 22. I handn't slept very well. As a way of trying to reduce our guilt for leaving, we had decided the night before to allow our cat, Nemo, to come in the house and sleep in our bed. Nemo was thrilled, and expressed his joy by purring LOUDLY most of the night. It isn't easy to sleep when you've got a motor humming in your ear. When the alarm went off, I was exited. Today was the day we'd drive 900 miles across the country to make the journey home.

We left the house by 5am and drove 8 miles to our first stop, the Waffle House. I love going to a 24-hour truck stop greasy-spoons in the early hours of the morning. I always wonder what secret mission or exotic destination the other diners are coming from or going to. Why are THEY there? And what is it like for the folks who work those graveyard shifts? What are we to them...entertainment? an annoyance? or just another tip?

I savored my chocolate chip waffle and covered my side of hashbrowns in Waffle House salsa. (I don't know why, but I really love Waffle House salsa. Michael has convinced the manager on multiple occasions to sell us a bottle so I could have it at home.)

At 6am we were back in the car, and as the engine started, I started the stopwatch. We were back on the road with Michael at the wheel. He took us 400 miles though the barren landscape of Eastern Colorado and Western Kansas. We stopped in Hays, Kansas to re-fuel our bodies and our gas tank. I took the second shift and as the miles ticked by, I watched the flatness become gently rolling hills and slowly trees and started to appear alongside creeks and streams. I got through the snarl of day-before-Thanksgiving rush hour Kansas City traffic.

As the sunlight started to wane, I did too. Michael took over and drove the last hour to Columbia, MO. We met his parents for dinner at 6:30pm at an all-you-can eat Chinese buffet restaurant. We continued on in the dark for the last 100 miles. We stopped at Steak-n-Shake to pick up late-evening snacks to bring home…four junior milk shakes (three chocolate, one vanilla), a large order of fries, and a side of pickles to go. Michael and I became hysterical imagining the thoughts of the person taking our order. Who goes through a drive-thru and orders tiny milkshakes and a side of pickles? We arrived at my parents' house, with a round of tiny milkshakes 14 hours and 44 minutes after our departure from Waffle House.

Chapter 2. Giving Thanks

I spent Thursday morning making a pumpkin pie from scratch...starting with a pumpkin from my garden, and cutting it, roasting it, mashing it, and mixing in the rest of the filling ingredients. I made the pie crust from scratch too. I didn't bring a rolling pin, and my mom didn't have one, so the crust was a bit "rustic".

What a gift to be able to spend Thanksgiving with my family. This was the first time since I was in college that I was home for Thanksgiving with the whole family there. And while it was a quick visit, and I didn't get to spend as much time with my siblings as I would have liked, it was still great to see them all.

I also appreciated being able to visit my grandma in the nursing home. I don't know when I'll be able to get back to St. Louis again, and what kind of physical and mental condition she'll be in when I do. Her mind has clearly been touched by the stroke(s), and she would sometimes confuse me for one of my sisters, confuse Michael for my brother, but was very clear and present other times. When I went to see her on Friday, she was asleep. I spent about half an hour just standing at her bedside as she slept. It was like watching a child sleeping in a crib, only this was my grandmother in a bed with side-rails. I felt very peaceful just watching her and watching my own breathing as I held her hand. The staff woke her up and put her in her wheel chair to take her to lunch. We walked down with her to her dining room and as we were leaving she told Michael and I to take care of each other and to respect each other...that was when it was hard to leave.

Chapter 3. And then you drove where?

On Saturday morning we drove 12 hours to Marshall, Minnesota where our friend Richard now lives. Richard was a dear friend to us throughout our five and half years in San Diego, and it was so good to see him. On Sunday, Richard gave us the tour of Southwest Minnesota State University, where he's now teaching physics. SMSU is small (3500 students) as is the town of Marshall (pop. 13,000 people). We spend the day talking and playing games with Richard and his girlfriend, Tristen. It was a short visit, but wonderful to see them both.

On Monday morning Michael and I completed our journey by driving 13 hours back home to Colorado. We put about 2500 miles on the car over the holiday trip, and spent nearly 40 hours in the car. We really did have a good time together, and realized that we hadn't seen each other much in the last few weeks.