“BRRR COLD!” When I step outside in KC this week, those are about the only two words I can manage to spit out before a chill goes through my entire body. We are definitely living in a Winter Wonderland in mid-January. Although, “Winter Wonderland” signifies something enjoyable (in my mind at least) and this weather is the furthest thing from pleasant.
I don’t know about all of you, but I feel like this is the coldest winter we’ve had in my 26 years of life. No, I haven’t gone through any records or statistics, but this is definitely the coldest winter in my memory. On Monday, January 10th, KC set a snowfall record for the date at 6+”. The prior record was 3” in 1918. WOW! The overnight and early morning temperatures have been negative (yes, NEGATIVE, as in below zero!) degrees and the wind chills have been upwards (or is it downwards?) of -20 degrees. Again, I only have two words: BRRR COLD!!! Oh, and may I vent for a second? I find it seriously NOT funny when the weathermen/women try to make their cute jokes about the temps increasing and say, “We can expect temperatures to rise to the mid-20’s today; it’s going to feel like spring!” Um, no it’s not!!! Please, for the love of the freezing viewers, don’t quit your day job and take up a career as a Comedian!
I wish I could say I have done something fun with all of this snow we have accumulated over the week, but I haven’t. The kids and teachers were all given snow days on Monday and Tuesday, and some on Wednesday, but the business world doesn’t believe in snow days. So lame, right?! On my drives to and from work I have seen kids and parents out enjoying the snow and sledding down some of the biggest hills in KC, but to be honest, that doesn’t even look fun to me with the temperatures as low as they have been. It may be different if I lived in a mountainous state and could go skiing every day, but snow-shoeing and ice-skating down our street and in our driveway are not my ideas of fun.
Speaking of our driveway, it still isn’t shoveled. I know; the shame! Our first accumulated snow in our house and we act as if we still live in an apartment complex that takes care of snow removal. The neighbors must think we’re just “lazy kids”, but we have a good reason. Promise! Caton had to fly out first thing Monday morning on business for the week, so I thought to myself, I’m a strong girl… I’m in good enough shape (even with the strike through, please take that lightly; I’m working on getting back in shape!)… I’m perfectly capable of snow removal as the woman of this household…
Yeah... not so much!
When I got home on Monday evening (after work and dinner with my wonderful friend, Emily) it was already dark AND they were predicting more snow overnight, so I decided to wait until Tuesday. By the time I got home on Tuesday it was already dark, again, but I was determined to accomplish something. First, I felt awful that our poor mailwoman, who is so nice and friendly, had to sludge through the snow to get to our front door. I know, I know, I’m sure the majority of houses she delivers mail to don’t remove their snow either, but that doesn’t make it right so I wasn’t going to jump on that bandwagon of lame excuses! Secondly, I had to figure out how to get our humongous trash and recycling bins to the curb that night for pick-up bright and early Wednesday morning. Just to give you a clue of how bad our driveway was, I have had to put the Envoy in 4-wheel drive just to get up the curb and to the garage all week. If only our rolling trash bins had 4WD! Hehe So, I layered up on clothing, turned on both outside lights, grabbed the shovel, and went to work.
Yeah… that lasted a whole 30 seconds!
Besides the fact that is was FAAAREEEZIIING (that’s a given) and my legs were sore-to-the-point-that-I-couldn’t-walk from doing a hardcore P90X workout the night before, there was also a thick layer of ice under the snow since I waited an extra day to break out the shovel. Just wonderful! It didn’t take me much longer after that to realize that I was definitely not going to be able to shovel the driveway by myself. But I was still in “pay it forward” mode, so I not-so-gracefully managed to shovel a path (please take that lightly as well; by path I mean there was still packed and iced over snow on the ground, but at least it was something you could walk on top of and not have the snow come half way up your calf!) across our driveway, along the sidewalk to our front door, and across the yard to the neighbors house for the mailwoman. And please don’t think I was so naïve as to think that there weren’t neighbors watching, with a bowl of popcorn in hand, out their front windows as I slip and catch myself here and trip over the front sidewalk there and get too cocky and jam the shovel too far into the snow, only to remember it is ice, as I’m practically falling to the ground. Oh, I’m sure it was quite a site to see and will make it oh-so-awkward to meet them for the first time when the weather is nice and we actually make it outside once in a while. I won't even get into the story of the trash bins. It took a ridiculous amount of time just to get the darn things out from the snow drifts on the side of the house, let alone all the way down the driveway. Oh, it was just as much fun to get them back up to the house on Wednesday evening! So, needless to say, our driveway is still a snowy mess and I will have to continue using the 4WD to get in and out… boy am I thankful for 4WD right now.
As if this hasn’t been enough “winter wonderland” to hold us over until… oh, next year! The KCTV5 weather blog is predicting 3-6 MORE inches by Monday evening. All I have to say is (in the words of one of my favorite TV shows, Grey’s Anatomy)…
SERIOUSLY?!?!?!
Stay warm, be safe and take my advice: bribe someone else to shovel your driveway!
haha...this would be why Joe spent 2 hours outside and was practically frost biten when he came in Monday evening!...and don't you worry, I didn't even try to make it up the driveway after the whole getting stuck in the driveway incident last year. Just parked in the street and waited for the driveway to be clear enough!
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