The Decompression of a Boomer

Ol’ man winter
That ol’ man winter
He don’t say nothing
But he must know something
Cause he just keeps rolling
He keeps rolling along

My theme song of late … I woke up yesterday singing the tune of Ol’ Man River, sung by Paul Robeson in the classic 1936 film version of Show Boat (substituting ‘winter’ for river). Winter in southeast Idaho is wearing to the bone with storm watches, snowfalls, incessant shoveling, a slight melting, then a deep freeze. Here I took a photo of our last snowfall a week ago:

9:07 AM. January 10, 2017

We were wondering if the city had any money left in their coffers to plow our streets again. But then on Friday, a hopeful sign. Returning home late morning, I met a humongous city truck stuck crossways, spinning its back wheels on a thick sheet of ice. The snow had been plowed into an icy ridge down the center of the road, and they were now attempting to clear the ridge. Except, this one truck got stuck, blocking traffic in. I waited ten minutes watching the back wheels spin on the ice, while the driver attempted to rock the truck enough to break free. Finally another truck showed up, backed up to it and pulled it free.

Friday the 13th,10:45 am, Hartert Dr., Idaho Falls

I started rolling again toward home, then caught up with the operation. Don’t follow too closely. They need an empty replacement for that dump truck ASAP!

The trucks roared through our neighborhood again on Saturday about midnight, shearing the matted snow off the icy rutted streets. They cleared driveway entrances too, lining them with mini snowy mountain ranges.

House across the street

But it’s bitter cold, the snow isn’t melting, and the ice remains.

We hardly left the house this whole past weekend, except to pull the trash to the curb. Very carefully, mind you, since our driveway doubles as an ice skating rink:

Treacherous!

We were out there last week trying to secure a safe path over the ice to our front door, using a combination of ice melt, leaves, tree branches, and finally, cat litter. I didn’t want the mailman or anyone else falling and breaking, who knows what, getting to our front door. First laid down some traction across our driveway from the neighbor’s house,

Then, tackled our front sidewalk. Our house faces north and this time of year, the sun hardly even hits it. Plus, the sidewalk has settled over the years… We had a few days of melting, which created a small skate pond right where you enter the sidewalk…

Anyway, turns out, the mailman wears crampons or some such set of spikes over his boots. Smart. We all need a pair of these…

Idaho Falls received 30 inches of snow between Dec 1 and Jan 10. The first 20 or so inches were cold and fluffy, but the top 8 inches were heavy and wet. So when we let Rudy out to go potty he’d head back into the house like a bouncing snowball. We carved out paths in the back yard for him, so he could roam, do his business, keep our place safe from strangers (bark) without romping through snow drifts.

Oh and run to the east fence to taunt our neighbors’ two big dogs, Einstein and Titan.

Mission accomplished!

Except, Titan and Einstein apparently took Rudy’s taunting so seriously, they broke through the fence and were now romping around in our back yard. Rudy went berserk. We let him out and there he was up to his head in snow drifts chasing after the big dogs. We ran them off. Rudy was back in, looking for a lap, covered in snow clods the size of cotton balls.

David knocked on the neighbor’s door to tell them about the fence. They propped a door against the hole on their side, there, problem solved!

David was hardly through explaining the fence situation to me when Rudy went berserk again. Titan was on our back deck! I let Rudy out – and watched them play. And make friends …

Titan and Rudy

David went back and overhauled the fix on the fence. Secured the ‘patch’ on the hole with rope.

Problem solved … for now…

Meanwhile, it turned bitter cold. And stayed cold. The snow isn’t melting much, but a hard crust has formed on the surface and Rudy can run atop the snow now like it’s bedrock.

Rudy rousing the neighbor dogs

I dunno how others are holding up. I will say the world just made it through Blue Monday, the third Monday of January, Jan. 16, which is considered the most depressing day of the year. Whoopee! Although there seems to have been no dearth of news in the local paper lately of people going off the deep end. We had two fatal shootings in our town just this past week. Whereas, I don’t recall in recent memory there even being a fatal shooting in this town. A week ago, after that last snow storm there was a domestic fight ending in an arrest of a woman who threw a gingerbread house and a vacuum at her boyfriend before cracking him over the head with an empty beer bottle.

Which caused me to ponder gingerbread houses. How DO you properly dispose of a Gingerbread house after the Holidays are over, considering all the work put into making it? I will say, that this Christmas I experienced the most wonderful gingerbread house of all, on display at the Museum of Idaho – at the exhibit I told you about in my previous blog. Here, I took a picture of it:

Tags: 2017 winter in southeast idaho

This entry was posted on January 17, 2017 at 7:29 am and is filed under Holidays, Idaho. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.