‘What does love look like? It has the hands to help others. It has the feet to hasten to the poor and needy. It has eyes to see misery and want. It has the ears to hear the sighs and sorrows of men …… That is what love looks like.’ - St. Augustine

Thursday, December 18, 2008

Batten Down the Hatches!


Yup. That's what we're doing tonight. Storm coming. We are in full preparation mode: locating shovels ,car scrapers and de-icers, recharging the flashlights, stocking the fridge....we'll be ready. Of course, having lived through the Blizzard of '78 means I'm an expert in weathering big storms -- even if I was only 13 at the time!

School has been cancelled for me, so I'll be home to enjoy the 'show' with my winter-loving daughter. Anastasia loves a good blizzard. After living her first twelve years in Siberia, she is pretty used to them. When I first met her in Russia in March '05 it was a balmy twenty below zero, with a foot of snow on the ground. My eyes kept freezing shut because the water on my lashes stuck together. I had to keep pressing my hands to my eyes to unlatch them! Anyway, my Siberian princess adores snow and counts every winter day without snow an injustice. We are expecting 14 inches Friday and then 4-6 early Sunday. I will be able to give you the exact amount this weekend, because Anastasia has a habit of measuring the depth every few minutes so she can tell me how wrong the weather man was.

" He said 12 inches and it's only 11 and three-quarters!" she told me last year at this time.
She never trusted him after that. She is actually known to hunt stations to find the weather-person she thinks is the most honest and, therefore, most accurate. I don't know what her criteria is, but it seems to have something to do with how young they are. She definitely doesn't trust the "old" ones. And she trusts very few of the younger ones! She thinks the whole weather predicting thing is a scam. "They don't know what they're talking about!" She will yell at the tv.

So, I am off to shop for food -- the dog and cat and people variety. We have none at the moment, unless you count saltine crackers, canned mandarin oranges and Russian candy. I hate shopping right before a storm, because all the crazy people are out then. But it's my own fault for putting this off for two days...grrrr.

Hope wherever you are the storm is just a news story on your tv screen! If not, hope you've battened down your hatches!

4 comments:

  1. Good luck! I can't remember the last time I didn't have to go to work because of snow. :(

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  2. Tara is obsessed with weather, too! Good luck! I love a good storm. We just had one a few days ago. I got Monday off of work and the kids drove me nuts in a good way.

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  3. Good luck. I hope you are able to make some fun while huddled in for the storm. We're expecting one here too!

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  4. Anonymous9:56 AM

    they are releasing us at 1pm today so we don't have the nightmare of this time last year when it took 7 hours to do a 1/2 hour drive.

    geoff is the same as nas when it comes to the snow. he measures, listens to all the forecasts, plotts the snow track, goes to weather dot com to see when it will be over, and then checks on our friends and family elsewhere to see how their weather is. it cracks me up.

    see you on wednesday night.

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