The last post ended as we here in NW Arkansas, US of A, were headed into a major nasty polar chill dropping all the way down to us. I felt really bad for all the folks in the northern states and Canada. My gosh, I haven't dealt with temps even remotely like this since I moved down here, and just the thought of it was causing me to be miserable. Me and cold just do not get along well. One thing I am grateful for here with still being on-grid, is that in our area, if you live in a mobile home, your power comes in on overhead lines, but from the pole to the house, the lines have to be buried. So as long as our yard light has juice, so does the house.
I left McQuack's Saturday night about 9ish, because it was starting to rain, getting down to the mid-30sF, and I wanted to get home before it started to freeze. Quentin took his last half-point (he still has seven-and-a-half weeks to go to get off probation) and came home at break because he wanted to beat the weather home. I wasn't happy about that, seeing's how now, no matter how bad he feels, or the weather or anything, he has to be at work, start to finish, period. I hope he can make it through, as so far, this winter has been harsh.
I'm truthfully glad I took a half-point and left work Saturday at lunchtime. The head cold I had was starting to kill me, and by the time I got another roll of insulation to stick up over the inside of the windows, got the shopping done to fill in necessities, and got email and did what I had to get done at a bare minimum, my back was killing me. By bedtime, I was whipped to the core and felt like ten miles of really bad road. Aches everywhere, couldn't breathe right, sneezing and sniffling (though that had mostly dried up, thank goodness), and just plain wanting to collapse. I told the supervisor at work, Cathy, when I had to leave at lunch that I was starting to feel like I needed to get home and lay down ASAP before I fell down on the production floor. As hard as we work, I likely would have passed out before end of shift if I hadn't left. I barely made it through all the things that had to be done before I got home and ate a bit of supper and then pretty much immediately crashed.
Thing was, I tried Saturday to get him to wear his backup clothes to work and let me take the laundry to Harrison with me and get it done. No, says he. We shall get out on Sunday and do it then. He should have let me take it with me. We didn't get quite the snowfall expected, maybe an inch if that, but on top of the fact that it was drizzling for several hours before it got cold enough to snow, means likely the roads and especially the mountain road, are a sheet of ice under the snow. It'll be Wednesday before it warms up enough to start melting it off, and until then, we may have to slide our way down the road with the vehicles to get to work, and then park at the bottom and walk again for a couple of days.
And it was cold, too. Highs were only in the teens, so while he started the van up, the chills and the snow had him paranoid enough that he would have a wreck or get stuck or whatever, and have to walk in the cold, that he wouldn't go do the laundry. Good thing I made sure ages ago that we could squeak by for a week without doing laundry if need be. We may have to air things out a bit in that case, or smell a bit manky, but honestly, I don't care as I don't go through clothes myself like he does.
He has this thing that is very modern, in that every day has to be all-new clothes that he hasn't worn, so they don't smell at all. Me, I change out the underthings and the rest - shirt, pants, extra shirts for warmth - all are the same for work day after day. They don't get filthy or whatever, so why change them out? I guess I'm a bit old-fashioned (okay, VERY old-fashioned!) in that respect. Laundry will scrape by.
The house is chilly but manageable. The kitchen, now that I covered over the windows with that insulation, isn't great but at least it's not so cold you see your breath in there as it was all the time. When it's early morning or in the evening, yeah, but at least during the day it's manageable if you have to microwave something to where you can be in there for five or ten minutes at a time. The living room is staying about 50F, so not too bad. But the bedroom is the best, so we are hunkering in there. Hey, at least we're comfy, and only have to leave the bed to use the loo or get food.
Monday was just plain awful. Despite wind chills nearing -20F, and all the schools around here closed for a wind chill advisory, Tyson still ran both shifts. I had called to double check because I was pretty sure that with the cold, they'd call off work. No dice there. The overall plant manager would rather see trucks full of dead birds come in that can't be used than let people stay home and stay warm. Out of nearly twelve people that work in my section, x-ray, only four of us showed up. We had to borrow a person to make sure we could run two lines out of our three. It was just that bad.
Neighbor Eric borrowed his mother-in-law's Explorer with 4x4 so we could get to work and back safely. I'd texted him to let him know that yes, we were working, after I'd called the guard shack to double-check, because with this cold, I was almost positive that the plant would cancel. Shows what I know! He called me a few minutes later and asked if I'd like a ride, he was taking the Explorer, and of course, I am a hardy girl, but not one to turn down a ride in a warm vehicle that will get up and down through this crap without issues. The road down to go to work was ok, and coming back up after, he didn't even have the 4-low engaged, and we still got up no problems.
However, the house is pretty cold in this mess. I'm not griping, it's better than homeless or no heat at all, but I will be glad when this chill is over in a few days. I've gotten quite a bit of what I wanted most to do all covered over with the R13 faced insulation I bought at Home Depot. It looks pretty stupid, and it's a mess, because it's so thick that the staple gun couldn't get through it to stick it to the wall. I had to hammer 16-penny nails through it to hold it up. It's not ideal but it cuts down a good deal of the drafts.
The problem with the windows is that they are double-pane thermals, but they are about twenty years old, and so badly-cared for before we moved in here that the inner seals are worse off than the outer ones. This leads to the cold air outside just being essentially sucked into the house. I still need to find the oomph to go do the big windows in the living room, but kitchen is done, bedroom is done, there's a piece ready for Quentin to hang over the front of the medicine chest in the bathroom (which has no door on it and it's a heat sink in there), so most of it's done. It's not keeping it warm in here by any stretch in this miserably bitter cold, but it's keeping out the worst of the drafts. Part of why this place gets cold so easy is that most of the insulation is gone from the floors underneath the house. Hence why we'd like to buy the property (so we can fix everything up) or buy a place elsewhere that we can work on.
My mom's been fixing up her house her way for 22 years and hasn't finished yet. I joked with Quentin a while back that if we ever actually get to buy a place, it will finally get the way we want it about the time we die. He laughed but then stopped and realized that I was right. It takes time to do things the right way, and sometimes it means doing it in a lot of steps. Right now, I'm just glad one step is to fix the windows so they don't leak so badly. I'm also glad Bouncer is such a snugglebug, because when he wants attention, he makes a nice, living muff for my hands. He has such soft fur and loves to be held and petted, so he gets what he wants, and I get warm hands and a lot of loud purrs out of it. Also sometimes a slightly raw chin from all the kitty kisses, because he tends to smooch on one place. He's actually given Quentin a raw chin once from doing that.
I should also note that we are not going without hot meals. We may be running them through the microwave, but dinners are a lot of quick things that will fill us up and warm us up. Mostly soup over rice, because I can make up a big batch of rice fairly quickly, and store it in the fridge. Then just halfway heat some soup, divide it for the two of us, add rice and finish cooking so it's really hot. It makes for a wonderfully warm meal and keeps us full. Not very haute cuisine, mind you, but in the cold of winter like this, it's any port in a storm for heat.
And sleeping? Thank goodness for all the afghans. They help a lot. As bitter as it is, not as well as when it's above freezing even at night, but they are keeping us rather comfy and we are being smart and sleeping in clean (or cleanish) work clothes so when it's time to get up in the morning, we don't have to dress in cold clothing or warm them up on the heater in order not to freeze while dressing. I hope I can get that one granny afghan done before it gets cold like this again, it would be another layer of warm on the bed!
Quentin couldn't get up the road Monday night, and had to park at the bottom of the road by the cow pasture and walk all the way up. It was so cold it really wasn't good for him, but he had to get home. Though it was a good thing I spent time Monday night around here rotating between putting insulation over the windows and working on sitting in bed to stay warm and occupied after I got home. The deep freeze was so bad that I took the day off, because Quentin told me that he slid so bad trying to get up the road that he ended up sliding completely around and said the heck with this. That's why he walked. Once he slid around, he drove back down and parked to be safe. But it also meant I likely wouldn't be able to get out Tuesday morning to get safely down the road myself.
I took the safe way out. I hate taking points, but good night, I'd rather do that and lose a bit of pay than to end up in the ditch on the mountain road. Especially since the ditch on one side is just a little hollow alongside the road and the other side of the ditch is a few feet of trees before more trees growing out of the side of the mountain, and it's pretty steep. As in, if you start going off that side of the road, you ain't gonna stop any time soon. No, thanks. I'd rather stay on the road. So Tuesday, I called in, slept in, and woke up to temps rather higher than the forecast had called for, which was stupendous. It also meant that with the north windows in the living room covered before I ran out of insulation, that room was a good fifteen degrees warmer by 7 AM than it had been when I went to bed at 11 PM Monday night. This is what I call a Very Good Thing. I can handle living in what's essentially a cave for a few months if it means keeping the blasted drafts out of the house. Honestly, I really should take a picture of the insulation for y'all, lol. It looks awful as far as a nice, neat job goes. But it really does the trick of keeping those drafty windows from leaking a ton of cold air in here.
So Tuesday meant I did the house chores after Quentin left for work, but it gave me something to do besides veg out with books and needlework. It was kind of fun, reminded me of the days when he worked and I didn't. I kind of miss those days some but not that much yet. I don't have enough to do to keep that busy all day long yet. Though in a few more weeks, once internet is set up, oh yeah, work online at night some, do some needlework and reading or whatever, and get things going, so eventually I don't have to work outside the house. It's going to take a long time for that, but it sure will be nice once things get to that point.
Wednesday was not a lot of fun. Oh, it was easy enough to get down the mountain road, despite the ice, because it was dry and I just crept down really slowly, and hit as many of the dry dirt spots as possible. So I got off the road fine, and into work fine, and work was okay. It really wasn't that bad, because with the wind chills still being a bit goofy, it meant a lot of birds were still dying on the trucks before they could get to the plant and into live hang. So that meant there were a lot of times where we all stood around and did a whole lot of nothing.
The not a lot of fun part started midafternoon, when it started sleeting at the plant and raining everywhere around it. Which, of course, means a Very Bad Thing when you live on a gravel mountain road that goes upwards at a fairly steep angle, has lots of curves on said inclines, and had ICE on it when you left for work that morning. Rain on ice is Not A Good Thing. It is, indeed, a Very Bad Thing when you live on a mountain road that has the aforesaid details. The paved roads were perfectly fine, other than being wet. They were clear that morning, so getting home on them wasn't any real challenge. Goodness knows, I've driven on wet roads plenty of times. I've even driven on wet ice before plenty of times.
In MICHIGAN. Where it's FLAT. Here, I started to try to get up the road and didn't even get to the second cattle guard before the tires skittered on the ice. I stopped, said the heck with this crap, and ever so slowly backed down the road to a point near the cow pasture where I didn't have to worry about backing into the seasonal creek or a deepish ditch with the car, did an extremely slow back and fill, and turned around to head to the cow pasture and park. I was going to have a long, cold, wet walk home, but I didn't really mind the idea considering my other option was to wreck the car, and I really need my car to get to work and such.
Turns out, there was a neighbor who lives up at the top near Eric and Bobbi. He is a sweet older fellow with a 4x4 who was waiting for me to get turned around, and when I told him how the road was, he offered me a ride up to the drive. Oh, bless his heart, I sure appreciated that. Still, even with 4-low turned on, he still had a couple slips on the road that spooked us both. He stopped at the end of the drive to drop me off, and good grief but the end of the drive was a sheet of freaking ice. I nearly fell on it, but managed to stay upright and sidestep to the one side where I could walk up a bit on grass to get to level ground and some snow for traction, and thus to the house without falling on my behind.
It was basically not a fun way to get my butt home. When Quentin called at his break, I told him about the road and he said it was a good thing he'd stopped at the dollar store and gotten himself a cheap raincoat to get home in, just in case, because if I couldn't get up, and someone with 4x4 slipped on the road, he wasn't even going to try. Like me, he'd rather walk and be safe. Cold walks are a lot better on the body than a wrecked vehicle. Thankfully, the house is warm again, in the 60sF just in the living room, so I was entirely comfy to work on that granny afghan (nearly done with the sixth row of ten of squares before the border is worked on), and the knitted one in log cabin style (that one's going to be a huge log cabin square out of scraps, until it's the right size for the width, then finished with plain knitted ends to make it long enough) got quite a bit done on it, too. That one's about a quarter done and I just started it a week or so ago. What can I say? I knit fast, lol.
Friday was delightfully boring at work. Nothing broke, nothing went wrong, pretty much everybody showed up ... it was a good day. Of course, having to walk up the mountain road because, while it had somewhat melted, it was patchy with ice and the dirt was sucking mud, that kind of took a bit of shine off the day. Thankfully, Eric and some of his family came up the road in the Explorer and gave me a ride to the driveway. They all laughed because I said that when my tires wouldn't go through the mud well, I backed up and parked at the cow pasture with the intention of walking. Walking was such a good idea, either, as there was one spot where my shoe nearly got sucked off my foot from the sticky mud. Oh well, another day or two, and the road will be in much better shape.
But it was also nice enough finally not to have to sit in the living room to work and halfway watch the idiot box where I didn't have to have blankets to keep warm! What bliss! And the mail was so good to me. Catalogs from Select Seeds (mostly flowers), McClure & Zimmerman (flowers) and Burgess Seed & Nursery (all kinds of stuff). What fun for me. The only really horrible part of the day is that my feet, for some reason, decided to have some serious ouchies and hurt so much that walking was going to be a ouch anyhow, so I was very grateful for the ride home!
And thank goodness for a very, very boring Friday. For the first time in a long while, nothing broke, nobody got hurt, everything went just peachy. Except for my left heel spur deciding to kick up a bit right before we got done, but it was bearable. And then I went to Harrison, did a bit at Wally World, treated myself to dinner at Pizza Hut, and got my happy self home in pouring blasted rain. I kid y'all not, dry as can be when I left the restaurant, and before I got to the turnoff for Alpena, WHAM! I got hammered.
No, not a wreck. It started just pouring buckets of rain with side winds that had me slowing way down, and even with the wipers on full, I felt pretty brave to go 30mph. I had a bad feeling I'd be walking up the road one more time, unless the rain let off before I hit the cow pasture. Well, it dropped to barely anything at all by the time I got to the go/no go spot at the cow pasture, and while it was a bit slippy on the level, I made it up to the driveway safely. Why was the level slippy? Oh yeah, all the blasted rain off and on all day that melted off the last of the ice and, since the road isn't that thawed, all that water ran downhill to ... you guessed it. The level part of the road from the cow pasture to the second cattle guard. Ugh. But I made it all the way home, so it was time to settle down with my seed catalogs (still working through them ... oh dear, this is getting expensive) and have some fun.
I really need to start some small orders this weekend, just to get stuff done. I just wish this darned cold would let me alone so I could work on things without being so tired. I hate being sick, but between the crazy weather and having to work in a cold environment, it's just dragging it out. Oh well. This too, shall pass. Yay me. Besides, 14 1/2 weeks longer and I'm at my anniversary with Tysons. Even more yay me!
And lest anyone I work with think I can pull overtime anymore, now that I no longer have to, because, gosh, everybody just KNOWS I'd be so happy to give up my weekend and work ... let me reassure you. I wouldn't be happy. Make it mandatory, and I'll show up. Otherwise, I have a whole host of things I need to be doing that are a bit more important on the weekends. Like today, a rather typical Saturday. Up, dressed, load laundry, make a grocery list, head out the door.
We went to O'Reilley's for some auto stuff for the van, Race Brothers for sawdust for the toity, pawn shop to look for a couple things we thought they might have in that we could use (no dice there), lunch at the best of the Chinese restaurants in Harrison (if you ever come this way, stop at Diamond Head, they have a great Ding Haow buffet), Wal-Mart for groceries and a new tire for the car, up to Green Forest for the laundromat to do two week's worth (since last week's polar vortex made it impossible to get out with the clothes), the dollar store next to the laundry to get a couple things we can get cheaper there, the smoke shop for cancer sticks for the hubby, stop at the Red-X in Alpena for gas and filling water jugs. Then we got to come home, and thank goodness the road is good enough to get up and down as long as the nimrods we live close to don't go tearing it up while it's soft with their 4x4s and ATVs. Unload everything, get it up to the house and on the deck, then I got it all in the house while Quentin put the new tire on the car.
Then I had to get the trash together to get it burned, and with last weekend's weather again hampering things, that's a lot of trash for us. I had to pull last weekend's trash out of the front bedroom so it could get burned along with this week's. That had to go out on the deck for Quentin to haul to the burn barrel, while I rested for five minutes to type out the Saturday doings, and now I have to clean the cat's litter box, put the groceries, laundry and dishes away.
We left the house about 10 AM, and it's already a quarter to six in the evening, and there's still another hour or so of chores to do before I can sit down and relax with seed catalogs. Nursery catalogs aren't a problem, as we decided we want to go through Stark's for that stuff. They have good prices, and good collections so things that aren't self-pollinating have one in the grouping. So it's veggies, herbs, flowers (annuals and perennials that I'd like to have around), grains just in case, ornamentals and bulb flowers (includes bulbs, corms, tubers, rhizomes and the like). Yeah, that's a long darn mess of stuff to pull together to order over this year, whether I get it in the ground or not right off. And I still have to also fix dinner and us to have "date night" with movies and food. That's thankfully a couple of hours out, but still, all we have to get done makes for a VERY long day. And yet, we often get asked if we want to volunteer for weekend overtime. HA!
And oh yeah, the granny afghan is six rows done and row seven of ten started, so it won't be too much longer before I'm putting the border on it and then draping it over the back of the loveseat for cuddling warmth. And even in warm weather, when the rains come through and cool things off, it will be fun to snuggle under and keep the damp off. Gosh, I love afghans. MUCH better than those nasty, expensive blankets to buy at the stores, which also seem to wear out super-fast. My Mom still has one that she uses on her bed all six to seven months of a Michigan winter, and I made it for her twenty years ago. Try and get that kind of wear and tear out of a store-bought blanket.
Anyhow, since I have a good road to get up this weekend, and reasonable weather, you guys all get books again to look over and possibly grab. Enjoy! By the way, Adf.ly and I are on the outs ... I know darned well I'm getting more clicks than they are crediting me for, as by far the clicks on books are over 1500 a month. To only get credit for less than fifty over a month's time is ridiculous, so I'm going back to the picture/text version Amazon supplies. Adf.ly is kaput. Besides, when I made a whole 15c from Adf.ly and it took my Amazon earnings to zilch, I think I'll stick with Amazon only and not try to incentivize the book links. At least I get affiliate income that way, which comes out better than the nothing I've been getting. No more experiments in that respect!
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FREE KINDLE BOOKS FOR THE WEEK
COOKBOOKS
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FICTION I PICKED UP THIS WEEK
And that's it for this week. My time is up and I need to get home so I can do some prepwork for going to work tomorrow. See you next week!
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