random thoughts – Day 1,392 – (Monday) – two sided

Winter looking mean.

Before I went to bed last night, I looked out the window and was greeted by the sight of icicles from over the bedroom windows. It looked menacing and felt a little like prison bars. Instead of relaxing for sleep, I started worrying about ice dams and roof issues. Yay. They were still there this morning, despite my most fervent wishes they would just disappear. 

There is a system that runs through the gutters to keep them draining, but it only runs when plugged in, which it wasn’t, because, well electricity rates. Even if it was plugged in, there aren’t gutters over the window, so it wouldn't have helped in this specific location. 

It wasn’t as simple as plugging in the roofing system, as the outlet is mounted on the back corner of the house, It would have required traversing the full length of the side deck which was covered in about 97 feet of fresh snow. And it was 10:30 at night and I was already in my pajamas.

The morning sky was blue, and the snow-covered trees looked like they came from central casting for the call for “picturesque winter day.” In a word, it was pretty. It was the flip side of the nighttime icicle prison bars. 

Pretty winter.

At 7:00, without benefit of coffee, I was back in the snow pants and coat, pushing the shovel along the deck to clear a path to the outlet to plug in the roof heating system. While I was out playing around, the downspouts on three corners of the house were checked to make sure they were clear. It was quick work, probably because I knew there was fresh, hot coffee at the end of the chore. 

As the sun rose higher, the sky got bluer, and the day was warm enough to soften the snow and make things melty. I had extended an offer to a neighbor to park in one of my spaces for the parking ban, and unfortunately for me, it was the spot that the sun hits. I had a pang of envy as her car basked in the sunshine, freed of its coat of snow, while mine was on the other side of the house in the shade, still cloaked in the stuff.

In the space of two hours this afternoon, the practically bare street was plowed with multiple passes three separate times by the massive yellow bucket scoop kind of plow. Maybe the plowing was wrapping up and the drivers were trying to run down the clock on a shift. There still weren’t any cars parked at my end, so the plow had free reign. There just wasn't much snow left on the street to be pushing around.

My ear had been cocked to the street because it was trash and recycle pickup day and my bins were currently being held captive in a show pile behind the neighbor’s car with no room to wrangle them out. That’s one reason I don’t normally park there. There were no trash trucks heard on the street today, just the plows, and it gives me a shot at getting the barrels out tomorrow morning.