Journal: March Blizzard

Tuesday, I loaded an Anne of Green Gables quilt on my frame and began custom quilting it.  It was pieced by a friend for one of her little granddaughters.

That afternoon, my Walmart order was delivered – sunflower seeds, tissue paper, and four jars of jelly – in nothing but vinyl bags!  The jelly was also put in individual plastic grocery bags, as if those were any sort of cushioning.  And the delivery man ka-plopped the bags right down on the cement porch.  Amazingly, no jelly jars broke.

By 9:30 that night, the wind was starting to pick up.  It was 46°, but felt like 18°, as a north wind was blowing at a steady 27 mph.  The weatherman told us to expect winds of 35 to 45 mph soon, with gusts up to 70 mph.  In a couple of hours, it would start raining.  The rain would turn to snow by morning.  We were issued high wind and blizzard warnings.

After quilting for about six hours, the top three borders were done, and I rolled the quilt forward.  Then I shut everything down and headed downstairs.  Soon I was all cozy in my fleece robe and ensconced in my recliner, a space heater glowing nearby, coffee on a warmer at my elbow, and a fleece blanket over my legs.  Ahhhh...

One time when we were going for coffee in the old Fellowship Hall at church, I wound up behind my great-nephew Joshua, who was 14 at the time and already about 6’ 7”.  (He’s 7 feet tall now.)

Anyway, there he was, getting himself a cup of coffee.  And so I, all 5’ 2” of me, said, “You shouldn’t drink coffee at your age.  It’ll stunt your growth.”

Joshua, who didn’t know me all that well, turned and stared down at me.  And then, finally deciding I surely must be kidding, he laughed.

Late Wednesday morning, the temperature was 29°, with a wind chill of -2°.  A glance out the window – if I could find a window that wasn’t plastered with snow – confirmed that the weatherman was correct:  we were in an ongoing blizzard.  A lot of snow had fallen, but the wind was scouring it from the ground in some places, and putting it into tall drifts in others.  Everything with a north-facing surface was totally caked with snow. 

Here’s a picture of our church, taken by my nephew Robert, our pastor.

The electricity was out in various spots around the state, and many roads were closed.  Larry, of course, went off to work early that morning.  He later reported that it was a pretty tricky drive, sometimes with near-zero visibility. 

The lights blinked, and I got in gear and finished curling my hair before the electricity went out entirely.  Nothing speaks ‘style’ like a half-curled head of hair.  ha

School was canceled for the day, and that afternoon, our evening church service was canceled when the blizzard warnings were extended to 10:00 p.m., and the wind and snow showed no signs of abating.  The wet, sticky snow stuck to the evergreens despite the wind.

We often have school or church when other places around town are closed on account of the weather, because numerous members of our church who own various types of construction businesses have large equipment with which they can clear roads fast and efficiently.  They’ll clear side roads to the church and school, the parking areas, and other secondary streets around town so our people can get out safely.  Men with detachable blades for their pickups help, too.  But we live seven miles west of town, and the weather is usually worse out here.  Our neighbor across the lane, and now and then Larry, keeps our lane clear, along with Old Highway 81 down to the main road, if the county graders don’t get to it; but this was no usual snowfall.

I went on quilting, glad I was not among the thousands of Nebraskans who had no electricity, gladder yet that none of my menfolk were out working on the lines, and sorry for those who were.  I was clad in double sweaters, a scarf, leggings, thick slipper-socks, and suede slippers with faux fur linings, and I was snug and warm in my quilting studio.  Some ladies on my quilting group were not sewing or quilting, because they had fierce thunder-and-lightning storms going on. 

I have very good surge protectors.  They might not help if we get a direct hit; but meanwhile, I sew and quilt!  Maybe I like playing Russian Roulette.  (Not really.  I just like to keep sewing and quilting.  And nothing I’ve had plugged into good surge protectors has ever been damaged, even when other things did.  We once lost a microwave and an iron in a lightning strike.  But the appliances that were plugged into surge protectors were fine.

Here’s a piece of advice from Eaton Electric:  “Choose a surge protector with a joule rating at the very least in the 200 to 400 range.  Sensitive or costly equipment, such as computers, displays and audio/video equipment, warrants a joule rating of at least 1000.  A joule rating over 2000 indicates maximum protection.”

By midafternoon, visibility was better than it had been, but the wind created ground blizzards and continuously blew snowdrifts back over once-cleared roads.  Interstate 80 was shut down from Lincoln to 25 miles west of Kearney, and more roads were closed, some because of accidents or vehicles getting stuck right on the highways.  One major highway was closed because trucks could not make it up the hills, and some that nearly made it slid right back down the way they had come, jackknifing as they went.

Though I still could not see out any of our north-facing windows, I had a view out of my east upper window to Highway 81 and the intersection of 81 and 22.  For several hours, there was nary a car to be seen on those usually-busy highways.  Eventually I saw one heading northwest up the hill on 81 at a very slow pace.  And then another slowly rounded the curve onto 22. 

I had a handful of almonds and cashews, along with a hot cup of coffee in ‘Caribbean Love’ flavor – chocolate, hazelnut, and coconut flavors – and that was my afternoon lunch between breakfast and supper.  My main meals are breakfast and supper.  If I eat much lunch at all, I gain weight.  A handful of nuts or a piece of cheese is healthy and filling, and enough calories for me, too.

Larry came home about 6:00 or so to collect some coffee, grapes, cheese, and crackers, and then off he went again to help friends push snow.  Supper that evening was sweet and sour chicken and rice, carrots and broccoli, and cran-grape juice, with mocha and chocolate Oui yogurt and a pecan sandie for dessert.

I warmed up my coffee and headed back upstairs to quilt for a while longer.

Back in the early 2010s, we missed the church Christmas dinner because we were snowed in.  Larry and Caleb shoveled and snow-blowed (snow-blew?) and shoveled and snow-blew (snow-blowed?), and finally were able to get a four-wheel-drive vehicle out of the driveway by suppertime.

Midway through the afternoon, I put on my warmest coat, hat, and gloves, grabbed my camera, stuck my feet into some boots, and headed out to take pictures.  I went around a corner of the house where I knew there was a snowdrift up to the second story – and there was Caleb on the tip top of the drift, waaay up above my head, just gathering himself to jump.

He saw me too late to abort the leap, though his face said “OOOOPS” all over it.  I was too stunned and horrorstruck to think of lifting my camera up to get a shot.  I expected him to be a crumpled mess of broken bones.  But he somehow landed in a soft bunch of snow with a PLOOOF!!!, and came scrambling back out, laughing.

My heart finally started beating again some while later.

Hard to believe Caleb is now 31, with a little daredevil girl of his own.

When I was little, a chatty elderly lady lived across the street from us.  One stormy winter day she said to my mother, who was checking to see if she was all right, “I’m not worried!  If the electricity goes out, I’ll just climb in bed and turn on my electric blanket!”

Mama, telling us the story later, said, “—and she talks both breathing in and breathing out; so I had no opportunity to tell her that that won’t work.”

Thursday, I was listening to the radio as I blow-dried my hair, sipped coffee, read the news online, and checked email and posts on my quilting group.   The sun was shining brightly and the wind was only blowing at 10-15 mph, but it was chilly at just 36°.  Right when I was feeling smug (Ahem!  Thankful.  I was feeling thankful.) that we still had power while 1,500 other Cornhusker Power customers did not, BLIPBOINK, neither did we.

Or at least, for the most part, neither did we.  The same thing was going on as it had the last time the electricity went off:  about half the house still had lights, though they were only burning at half their usual brightness.

First things first:  I’d been just about to curl my hair when the electricity went out, so when it did, I grabbed the hot curling iron and put a few curls in my hair as fast as I could before it cooled down.  Thus, I had waves instead of curls that day.  Come to think of it, the style looked a lot like it did when I was a teenager, and had naturally wavy hair.  It went straight after Keith was born.  It started to regain some wave – and then Hannah came along.  I’ve had straight hair ever since.

“Y’all drained the sap right outa me,” I tell the kids.

Next, since the electricity hadn’t come back on, I called the power company, and they put me into their queue.  I wondered how long that would be.  The man had told me that 1,500 others in the vicinity were without power, too.  In the greater Omaha area, there were still 80,000 without power.

On the radio, I’d heard them warn Omaha Public Power customers to be prepared to be without electricity for four or five days, as there were miles and miles of broken power poles all over the place.  Crews were coming in from other parts of the state to help, but it was going to take some time.  Some roads were still impassable, too.

I did what I do best:  I texted Larry.  “Can you come hook up a generator?” I asked.  “We have no electricity.”

He said he’d be coming – and then he did what he does best:  he diddled around for a while.

Meanwhile, the oven was clicking and smelling like electric wires burning, and lights were flashing on the display panel.  I can’t scoot it out to unplug it; it’s much too heavy.  I trotted downstairs, opened the breaker box, and peered at all the breakers.  Several of them were labeled, but I couldn’t tell which one might be for the oven.  Rather than waste time experimenting, I flipped the main breaker switch, waited a few seconds, then flipped it back on.  When I went back upstairs, the oven was no longer blinking and clicking.

Shortly thereafter, all the half-bright lights flicked off, too.

An hour later, the power came back on.  I’ll betcha they had to turn it off somewhere while they made a reconnection, whataya bet?

I received a notice on my computer that the delayed red plum jelly from Walmart had been delivered.  Sure enough, there it sat on the front porch in a brown padded mailing bag.  I headed out to get it – and was brought up short by snow and ice that was piled against the front door.  It wouldn’t budge.  I decided against walking all the way around the house on icy, slippery sidewalks and driveway, then all the way back on them, just to retrieve a jar of jelly.  We would just have frosty jelly, and if the jar burst before a) Larry got home, or b) the snow and ice melted, so be it.

I texted Larry, who had not yet shown up, “The electricity is back on.”

“I knew I could fix it,” he responded, “if I thought about it hard enough.”

I suspect that meant he had forgotten all about it.

I washed some dishes (we have a well, but the pump and water heater are electric), then headed to my quilting studio.

Later that afternoon, I paused for a couple of minutes to take a look at a livestreaming video of a hummingbird nest in California – and discovered both babies perched on the edge of their nest!  

And then, even as I watched, one took flight for a few seconds before landing back down on the nest edge.

When their wings are going like crazy, they give each other quite the flogging.

The mother landed right on one’s back in order to feed the other one – which is her way of encouraging them to hurry up and get out of the nest.  She didn’t stay there long, as the one she landed on nearly faceplanted into the nest.

Here’s where one got clear off the nest and out of camera range for a second or two.

By the time I quit quilting for the night, I had reached the halfway point on the Anne of Green Gables quilt.

I sat down in my recliner and began looking at upcoming quilt shows here and there, then at possible places to stay, should I decide to go.  Actually, I like looking at historic Bed & Breakfast inns, RV parks, and rustic cabins whether I’m planning to stay there or not.  For instance, in Weston, Missouri, there’s a tall, renovated Coal House where you can stay overnight!

Some motels are nice for their free breakfasts.  However, there’s a drawback:  You can’t put as much butter and jelly on your bagel as you’d really like to, in public.  At least, not without looking like a pig, you can’t.  I’ve found a workaround:  First, you toast your bagel.  While that’s going on, you gather up your coffee and milk, a few packets of butter and jelly, an apple and an orange, and go set them on your table.  Choose a table in the corner, and stack the butter and jelly packets behind the apple, and orange (not behind the coffee or the milk, because you’ll be wanting a drink before you’re done eating your bagel). 

Go back to the toaster.  Casually lean against the counter.  If nobody is paying you any mind, palm a few more packets of butter and jelly.  Slide them up your sleeve, if you can manage it.  Stretch-knit cuffs work well.  (You really should practice the maneuver at home ahead of time.)  Pick up your saucer and knife, collect the bagel from the toaster, grab some more packets of butter and jelly with firm intent, just as if they’re the first ones you’ve picked up all morning, and hurry back to your table to butter your bagel before it cools. 

Hide all the jelly packets and a few of the butter packets behind the apple and orange.  Now, you have no choice but to rush with the buttering, because... warm bagel.  Ignore everyone and just butter to your heart’s content.  Those who would judge a person for liberally buttering a warm bagel are not worth your notice.  Neatly stack the butter packets together and press them down so they look like less instead of more.  Hide them behind the orange.

The jelly is another matter.  People will judge (and you’ll make a mess of yourself) if you put on all the jelly you’d like, all at once.  Sooo...  delicately and with great finesse, open the first jelly packet.  Gently scoop half of it out (those packets are small!) with your knife, and place that jelly blob, intact, on one edge of your bagel.  Be sure to hold both the bagel and your knife in an elegant fashion.  You do know that cultured people in 17^th-century England ate their tea delicacies with three fingers, while commoners would hold the treats with all five fingers, right?  So be an Englishman, not a Barbarian!

Okay, now, as daintily as possible, take the bite, right where you put the scoop.  Deftly collect another scoop of jelly, position it on your bagel, and take another bite.  Take your time, and whatever you do, don’t chew with your mouth open.  Keep the bites small enough that you can smile charmingly at anybody you catch looking your way.  (Be sure you know the difference between a charming smile and a guilty one.)  Don’t smile with teeth if you suspect there’s breadstuff on them, or worse, jelly.

As you finish each packet of jelly, discreetly stack them tightly together and hide them behind the apple.  When you’re done, use your napkin to cover and gather the stacks of butter and jelly packets in one fell swoop.  Choose your moment to drop the collection in the trashcan when no one is close enough to see all those empty packets go scattering into the can.

And walk out with a happy palate and a smug satisfaction over your successful hoodwinking of your fellow diners.

But!  If, perchance, you’re a fumble fingers, and one of the jelly packets goes shooting out of your slippery fingers and lands jelly-side down in the perfectly coiffed tresses of the fashion model at the next table, give it up; all pretense is now worthless.  Just slather on the jelly and chow down.  Use the ol’ five-fingered claw-fist grip without apology.

Finish it all off with a rumbling, resounding burp as you stroll out of the breakfast nook.

No, strike that last sentence; my mother just pinched me from the grave.

Friday afternoon, Keith sent me this picture, taken from his truck.  “Not very often you get to see a perfect ring around the sun,” he wrote.

“Oh, wow, that’s quite a picture,” I answered.  “It’s a sunbow!  The perfect amount of crystals in the air, plus a whole lot of long scientific words, cause those.”

“Haha, ‘scientific words’,” he responded.  “Those words would probably hurt my brain.”

There were still 19,000 people in Omaha out of power that day, down from 106,000 at the peak of the outage.  They had over a thousand power poles to replace – the most ever, from any storm, anytime.

I quilted for six or seven hours that day, getting a couple more rows completed.  Here is the center panel.

The accountant called Saturday morning to say he had finished Loren’s final taxes, and to ask about a couple more details.  I sent Loren’s tax papers to the accountant on February 4, and it really shouldn’t have been too awfully involved; I’d think it could’ve been done in an hour or two, judging by how long it takes me to do ours.  But there were probably a whole lot more important (or impatient) people in line before us.  After I called and inquired, it was done by the next day.  The accountant will e-file with State, but he must send the actual papers to Federal because that’s what they require when there is a Personal Representative document.  He said it would likely be four or five months before that refund comes in!  Good grief.  

Federal seems to be always years behind the times and slower’n a seven-year itch.

Ah, well.  I reckon Loren’s affairs will be settled before our lifespans are over.  🥴😏

Did I ever mention that when we were gathering up his things at Prairie Meadows, I found a small canvas with a painting Loren had done?  I saved it, for  I found it touching, to have this item he had made not too long before, likely some time in the last couple of years before he passed away.  That was one of the things I appreciated about Prairie Meadows: they had many activities for the residents to do.

I put the painting in my little library upstairs next to my quilting studio.  I loved my brother.  Dementia is a nasty disease, but I’m thankful he knew me every time I went there, and was glad to see me.

My Grandma Winings learned to paint while in a nursing home at about age 95.  She was really good at it, and everyone was totally surprised, because she'd never painted before.  Of course not, because she never had time!  😊  She was a busy farm wife.  I have this small trivet that she painted.

By 8:00 p.m. Saturday evening, I had completed the central panel of my friend’s Anne of Green Gables and had started working on the bottom borders.  I wouldn’t have time to finish it that day, though.

Early Sunday morning found me sipping the last cup of Caribbean Love coffee; the next pot would be Caramel Macchiato (description: ‘buttery caramel and sweet cream’).  We like both of these flavors from Christopher Bean.

I checked the weather to decide what I should wear to church.  Hmmm...  It was 43°, with a windchill of 19° and an expected high of 56°.  There was a steady wind of 20 mph with gusts to 35 mph.  That meant I’d better use a good layer of hairspray!  I like Herbal Essences ‘with notes of citrus’.  On less windy days, their lighter spray ‘with notes of lily’ is good.

I didn’t question if that windchill was correct, once I walked outside.  Brrrrr!  When I tried opening the door onto the front porch, the wind grabbed it and nearly sent me flying into the next county.  I could’ve arrived at church like Mary Poppins, had I just popped out my umbrella.  ((...reconsidering...))  Nawww... it would’ve been wrong side out.

Oh, look!  One little newly-fledged hummingbird decided to have a nap next to the nest:

Have you ever seen a hummingbird yawn?

And then...  Incoming!

It’s the mother, Olive (see her there at the top of the picture below?), returning to refurbish the nest for her next clutch.

Look at baby’s beak:  he thinks Mom returned specifically to feed him!  No such luck this time, kid.

But she’ll be back.  She continues to feed her fledged chicks until she knows they are well able to care for themselves.  Sometimes she is feeding fledged chicks while sitting on newly laid eggs.

Below, she’s scrambling around adjusting the fluff in the nest. 

And here she is, feeding her fledgling.

Hmmm... someone (on Facebook, of course) has just informed me that I spelled ‘mane’ wrong on Josiah’s quilt label (Mane Event).  And I thought I was bad at puns!  😄

Can you tell somebody whose first language was not English wrote this bit of instruction on this quilt-marking pen?

Time for bed!  Tomorrow, I hope to finish my friend’s quilt.

,,,>^..^<,,,          Sarah Lynn          ,,,>^..^<,,,