It always snows in October

Yes we always have some snow in October, and it always melts (except for one year) so I wasn't shocked or stunned when I got up this morning and there were inches of heavy snow bending the trees and covering my geraniums.  I was surprised that it felt so cold, it was 30 and in a couple of months that will feel like spring.  But it's NOT a couple of months from now and it's been very, very warm and lovely.  I never really put my winter things away, including boots and jackets, so getting wood was only a problem because I suffered so much.  We had no power.  No phone.  No Internet.  But more than that...no television.  No water.  My house is incredibly silent where there's no TV and the fridge doesn't run.  Spooky.  No, peaceful, really.  It was cold, in the 50's, but the fire helped with that, I'm lucky to have an alternate source of heat.

I got up around 7 (boy it is SO dark then), stoked the stove, lit my Coleman lantern and assessed things.  OK, Fred and I had planned to share coffee at his camp at 7:30, so I went to the closest convenience store (10 miles), bought 2 coffees, Pop Tarts and lottery tickets, and delivered them to Fred.  His camp was very, very dark and very, very cold but we sat in front of his fireplace and had a good visit.  Much discussion about "what are we going to do when we get older?"  What, indeed.  I think about this fairly often: how much longer can I live in my house in Hawkeye in the winter?  Who knows, and it's not something I fret about, I just wonder.  In 10 years I'll be 73.  Fred is 75 and he can manage fairly well on days like today but it's not comfortable or swell.  Anyway we enjoyed being together and laughed a lot.

Later in the morning I went to Pat & Jim's, they had no power either and their house was getting pretty chilly.  The sun came out and warmed us all just before the power came back on.  We don't know how long it was out for, we all went to bed with power, heat, television and very strong wind, with sleet.  My guess is that it was out for about 10 hours.  This isn't a problem when it's 30, but it can be scary when it's well below zero.  We were all surprised at the outage, the power company has been around for at least a week, clear cutting along power lines.  Oh well, crisis averted, life back to normal.

I have little planned for the week, my calendar is woefully bare.  Dinner Thursday night with Fred, Bill and Pat and maybe Jim to celebrate Pat's birthday, which is Saturday.  We used to go to Big Daddy's, our neighborhood diner, but Big Daddy's is closed.  Rats, how we miss that place.  No, the food wasn't particularly good but it was convenient and OK.

Tomorrow's list includes putting plastic on the back door, feeding the birds, cleaning the living room (when will that black dog stop throwing her hair on the floor?), dumping flower pots on the deck and doing some more laundry.  Camp laundry, it's taking forever to do.

The weather for the week looks pretty benign.  40's, maybe some sun but also maybe some snow.  I don't have my snow tires on yet, I suppose I should start thinking about getting that done.  Oh winter, oh winter.