WINTER SOLSTICE

Happy Winter Solstice!

Every ten years or so Seattle gets a genuine Winter instead of our usual pathetic misty moisties. This morning we are in the cross hairs of a mini-ice age, the forecast warning of high winds, snow, freezing rain. The thermometer on the back deck reads twelve degrees. A recipe for power outages and cold suppers if I ever saw one. By this time tomorrow I may be stoking up the fireplace insert and thanking my lucky stars I have enough lamp oil stored in the garage. But since computers are not oil-powered there is a certain urgency in getting the post up today.

Where was last week’s post, you might wonder. Frozen under a foot of last week’s snow of course. Not one flake has melted off the courtyard, the garden, the deck, or Flipper, my poor work van (see above), since it buried us Wednesday night. Still, Flipper and I managed to make it to all but nineteen accounts before getting stopped in our tracks by this Fargo-like weather. I despair of next week’s route - how on earth will I dig myself out of the drifts and pack forty hours of work into three days? And three days it will be since Christmas is on Thursday! How many offices are likely to be open on Friday, do you think? Pretty much none.

One thing to know about Seattle: we don’t do snow. We have nothing much in the way of snow plows so our tactic has always been to hunker down at the sight of the first flake, halting all activity until melt-off - which is usually a matter of hours. Just as native Seattlites don’t own umbrellas, they also don’t generally possess snow boots, gloves, woolly scarves and hats or thermal underwear unless they are addicted to skiing or snow boarding.

Yesterday I watched two snowmobiles churn their way up my street toward Albertson’s supermarket - I found myself envying them as I dressed myself in multiple layers, located my black kid opera gloves and the wool watch cap my dad wore for decades on the flight line down at Boeing. Garbed like one of the South Park kids, I set off up the hill with a Trader Joe’s bag under one arm and a short grocery list stuffed in my pocket. It was an endless, slippery, bone-chilling two blocks. By the time I reached Albertson’s my glasses had steamed over, my nose was running, and I was kicking myself that I hadn’t hitched a ride from the guys on the snowmobiles.

I bought a package of split peas, a couple of ham hocks, carrots and celery - the prospect of a steaming pot of homemade split pea soup being the only thing capable of prying me out of my nice warm house and up that snowy hill! On the way home I noticed a neighbor trying to clear his driveway by dragging a hand truck up and down the slope - which I thought was pretty creative on his part.
Still, I felt sorry for the poor guy so as soon as I got home with the soup makings I loaned him my snow shovel - the snow shovel I use for spreading bark around the garden. My five year old five-dollar snow shovel is finally doing the job it was created for! Just goes to show.

So, just in case I am stranded in an ice cave until 2009, happy holidays from our house to yours!!