ICE

The ice is 3 inches thick on our cars & truck.  Rick has cabin fever and went out to start the vehicles and clean them off.   He let them run for 30 minutes on defrost.  Since the Prius has very good defrosters on the front and back windows, the ice loosened up and he was able to remove it in big chunks.  But the Prius isn't the car he wants to take out on these salty icy roads.  He feels safer in the AWD Saturn and since it is so old the defrosters aren't as good so he saved it for last.

I'm sure he must be getting really cold out there because the windchill is 8 degrees F out there.  I opened a window in the bathroom and talked to him for a few minutes, but then I had to close it back up because it was too cold. 

I better check on Rick again.  He's been out there for almost 20 minutes, but he has the Prius and Saturn both running, and he's smart enough to get out of the cold and warm himself up.  I'll go check on him anyway, through the window.

  

Suzanne & Delores worked their butts off on Wylie Drive

We barely got a dusting of snow from last nights snowfall and it's so warm that it has already melted.  How lucky can we get?  Whoop! Whoop! Whoop!  However we still have our old snow and ice and that is slowly melting.

Poor little Suzanne, on the other hand, hurt her back yesterday while using a heavy iron digger to break up the thick solid sheet of ice on her road.  It got so impassible that you couldn't even walk down her hill, let alone drive on it and the city decided to disown the road when each neighbor called to find out why their road had not been scraped or salted. The City Road Dept told them that they don't take care of gravel private lanes and Suzanne was quick to respond that the road was paved, named and had a STOP sign on it, and has been maintained by the city for the last 18+ years that Suzanne can remember.  The Street Dept had no record of the road being theirs and said that they must have lost the papers that all the home owners had signed deeding the road over to the city.  And with 'no papers' that means it's not their road to maintain.  So, the only recourse Suzanne had was to clear off the road herself.

Delores who is in her 70's was also out there with Suzanne and the two of them worked on the road together, alternating between using a shovel to toss the ice off the road, and the iron digger to break up the ice.  The iron digger did the job but it's so heavy that Suzanne, who already has back problems, went away with an aching back and Delores got sick to her stomach.  Jimmy said that if he would have known, that they were going to work on the road, he would have gone right over to help them, but we found out too late after the job was done.  Suzanne & Delores were working on Wylie Drive at the same time that Jimmy & I were chipping the ice on our driveway.

It's time for all the neighbors to band together and attend the City Council Meetings to voice their complaints about Wylie Dr.

Working Together

This afternoon we're working together to breakup the ice in our driveway and getting ready for another winter blast later on in the week.

Jimmy breaks up the ice and my job is to scrape it off to the sides and over the bank.  Maybe the sun will do the rest.  In the last few years we are lucky to have snow that has lasted until the next day.  Usually the snow is gone by the afternoon, but this year we weren't expecting the snow to stay so we didn't shovel it off the driveway and as everyone drove over it, it turned to ice.

One of our neighbors started this effort one morning around 4:30 a.m. when he couldn't get his truck out of the driveway to get to work.  A relative of his went out to help him try to dig out followed by Jimmy.  The neighbor, after an hour of digging and trying to put lumbar underneath his wheels finally managed to get his truck straightened out enough to be able to back it back down the sloping driveway.  With his relative on the main road as a lookout for on-coming traffic, he was able to get some momentum and keep right on going.

The main roads are clear but many people are still trapped in their homes because of ice covered driveways, and there are still many side roads that haven't even been touched by snow plows yet.  We're getting a little break in the weather this week with temperatures barely above freezing and tomorrow it's expected to rain making already icy roads and driveways much icier.

I've been baking and freezing what can be frozen for Christmas day when all the kids, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be here.  Today I should have all the Christmas cookies finished and tomorrow I will start on candy making.  I make two kinds of fudge, peanut-butter and chocolate, and Jimmy will make his old fashioned fudge, then it will be time to go shopping for our food for Christmas day.  I will be making a couple main dishes from scratch, and lots of little tidbits to eat and snack on throughout the day.  I can't wait to see everyone again.  It's always nice having the kids drop in and out all day long on Christmas day and I'm really looking forward to it.  Christmas is my favorite holiday of the year and I hope that I have time to make everything that I want to make.  Merry Christmas Everyone.