First, it snowed. Now, it isn't odd or extreme to have snow in winter. Normal, in fact. But it has snowed more this year than it has for a few years--and it has stayed. That is a little unusual. Not in Alaska where I grew up and could count on snow staying from October through March. But here? My experience here is that it snows, but the snow comes and goes.
Then it got cold. REALLY cold. Breaking-all-kinds-of-records cold. Coats-and-hats-can't-keep-you-warm cold. Heat-up-the-rice-bags-multiple-times-a-day cold. And the cold stayed.
We visited some of our kids/grandchildren in Houston over the first weekend of January. When our flight was landing here on our return, I looked out the window. It was hard to tell where the ground was. Snow and frost made the landscape one level. Like Siberia. Maybe Antarctica.
Then, last week, it started to warm up. (How terrible when freezing seems like a heat wave!. And then we had ice. Such slippery ground everywhere that movement was just a slide, not a step. People falling. Cars sliding.
Sunday, we drove to my father-in-law's birthday in a blizzard. It seemed a little spring-like at our house (if you ignored the deep piles of snow and huge icicles throughout the neighborhood), but at the point of the mountain, the wind was blowing so hard that cars were having trouble. Then the snow started--heavy, wet, snow, blowing sideways. And fog. I had white knuckles the whole way. We only visited for a couple of hours (which equaled about four inches of snow) and then made our way home again. Cars were backwards in the road and crunched into the barriers in places.
And today, it is snowing again. A part of me recognizes the beauty. See?
But a part of me is really ready for winter to be over. I tell myself that January is winter. I should expect it. And I do. But in two days, January is over. And I expect a change. Hear that, Mother Nature?
