Getting the House Back to Normal

With freezing rain battering at the windows, we put on our new opera cd (yes, on purpose!), and got to work getting the house back to normal. Once I gathered all the little things onto the table I was shocked how much stuff was there. How was I going to fit it back into the boxes? The answer soon become obvious - I wasn't. I didn't think I had gotten that much new stuff but I guess I had.  But then it turned out okay - I decide to pack away the Christmas tree, with all it's lights and decorations. It is tucked away in the basement carefully wrapped in a sheet ready for next year. The house is back to normal, but it sure looks bare with all that bric-a-brak gone.

Meanwhile the freezing rain continued pouring down. I made sure we had buckets of water in case the power failed. On days like this we can't help remembering the  1998 Ice Storm when we were out of power for 9 days. Nine days is a long time to have no electricity in the dead of winter - especially with an aviary full of parrots in the basement. Try as we might we couldn't get heat from our upstairs wood stove down into the birdroom. To say we were stressed is an understatement. Many people left their homes and moved in with family in town, but that wasn't an option for us, not with 10 parrots, 3 dogs, and 2 cats. On the last day the temperature of the birdroom was down to 49F. It was Friday night so we figured we had all weekend to run the generator for the space heater to try and get it warmer before the work week started again. It was about 9pm when we looked outside and saw a light on down the road. Could it be? YES! Our power was back.  I guess it won't be too surprising to find out that we finally installed that basement wood stove that we had roughed in. Now we are better positioned to weather a long storm - not that we want to!

Luckily by mid afternoon the freezing rain had changed to snow. Mind you, it still wasn't nice out - we tried to do our little walk - Bella and Spike were keen, but we couldn't lure Kabira off the front porch - I don't blame her as the wind was just howling. We took our excuse and headed back inside where a fire has been roaring all day. Toasty!  Really just the perfect day for staying inside.

My pleasure/gratefullness today - the fact that we didn't have to drive anywhere in this mess! Another pleasure, believe it or not, feeling the cold wind whipping at my body - I can't help but feel ALIVE! Yesterday at Costco we purchased a cd set of "Greatest Italian Opera" so we played that today - it has over four hours of music, but honestly we could only handle an hour or so, but what we did listen to was a pleasure. What voices! And the last pleasure that I'll mention - enjoying the beautiful blossoms of a daffodil plant that was gifted to us by one of our lunch visitors on Monday. They are like little suns in all this winter mess.