The storm on Friday was a wild one. While I did manage to get to work (Mary went with me, and drove, since such road conditions were, as she put it, "a piece of cake" after her 21 years in the Northeast Kingdom), the snow fell harder and harder, and was predicted to continue throughout the day. We closed at noon, after a jangled FedEx man brought a load of boxes and stories of getting stuck, and seeing cars and trucks off the road. It had taken nearly an hour to get to Manchester (we even passed a big tour bus which was stuck facing uphill in the downhill lane on the mountain road), but took a little less than that to get home - about 40 minutes. I've driven in worse.
Mary tried to get the car into the garage on Friday, but the snow was deep in the yard, and she could neither drive nor back up to the garage. After whumping into snowbanks a few times, she decided to surrender to the elements, and park in the open. We came in and put on dry warm things, and watched baseball (the 2004 ALCS Game 6, on DVD) all afternoon, and along about 3,30pm, the snow stopped, the clouds cracked, and the sun tried to shine, and I felt as if I was playing hooky.
Yesterday was a bright, sunny day, but breezy and cold. The wind pulled streamers of snow from the trees and sculpted drifts around the car. After breakfast I shoveled a path to and around the car, scraped the snow and ice from the windows, and shoveled again. Mary was on her way home, meeting with Ken in White River Junction, and I had to make a path down which we could lug all her stuff.
We got on the road at about noon, and the traveling was fine. The strengthening sun melted the last of the snow on the road, and we even turned the heater down in the car. But there is where the trouble began.
My boots were soaked. As long as I was moving around, I didn't notice, but sitting still, my feet cooled off, and my boots got cold.... and then my feet got cold.
There's nothing quite like the misery of cold, wet feet. Everyone gets chilly now and then, but my feet were COLD. Cold enough to hurt. Not frostbite-cold, but chilblains-cold. Cold feet make me unhappy, cranky, crabby, sad. Passing back through Chester late in the afternoon, I stopped at Linda's, and she rescued me with warm, dry socks and a cup of hot tea, and I felt the crankiness melting away as my cold, wet feet tingled with warmth.
Of course, I did have to put on the wet boots again and drive the final leg home, and when I got here, my feet were once again cold and unhappy. I could not park in the garage, of course; I gunned it through the as yet unplowed snow and slewed the car to an angled halt just in front of the garage, and didn't even try to get it inside. I know futility when I see it. So I slogged into the house, scattering snow onto the floor, and divested myself of the offending footwear.
I woke this morning to steady snowfall, piling up on top of Friday's snow. Though it is ending as I write this, and should be partly sunny this afternoon, tomorrow is going to bring yet another storm, this time with a mix of snow, sleet, ice and rain. The pretty fluff on the ground today will turn to translucent grayish slop, and then freeze to an iron-like crust.
I've had enough. This winter has been so long, and so hard, and I am SO ready for the end of it. Though yesterday was a pretty day, with plumes of windblown snow sparkling against a pure blue sky, it was the breaking point. The cold feet - that was the last straw. I've had enough.
