Snowed In

The wife and I were on our weekly trip to the grocery store yesterday. All week they had been calling for snow flurries Saturday afternoon, and then Friday they delayed the forecast until Saturday night. Now I'm not one to pay too much attention to the weather, network news, or much of anything else on TV except sports or movies. That was a mistake.

We woke up early to a cloudy rainy morning, and started doing chores. We've either had visitors from out of town or have gone somewhere for what seems like a million weekends in a row. Needless to say there were a lot of chores that had been pushed off until later. This was our day to begin catching up. I did tons of laundry, cleaned up all my hunting gear, cleaned up and got my tools straightened back out in the garage, and a whole mess of other boring, random things. By lunch, it was time for a break. We were headed to grab a bite to eat when on the way we decided to make a fun beer lunch out of it. We stopped at our favorite beer joint and sat down to a couple of brews. By then it was sleeting, but not too bad.

After lunch we headed back to the grocery store. It was still sleeting. We spent nearly $200, but since we had a list it only took about 45 minutes or so. The place was a mad house. I figured it was just because it was Saturday afternoon. We had no idea it was getting ready to snow.

By the time we got to standing in line, a quick peek outside revealed why the place was so crowded. A big darned ol' blizzard had decided to come and hang around for a while. Getting groceries across a big parking lot with the snow coming down so hard you can hardly see in crazy snow-scared people traffic is a real treat. We finally got everything loaded into the truck, swiped off the inch or so of snow that had already accumulated on the windshield, and headed back to the house.

It ended up being a perfect snowed in afternoon. The wife fired up the crock pot with some chili, and I brought in a whole mess of firewood. Before too long, we were playing cards and drinking stout beer beside the fire. The snow kept coming. By the time it was getting dark the yard was covered and the streets were too. We ended up falling asleep to a movie on TV, and after all the stouts I'd drank I believe it was about midnight before I woke up out of the big brown chair and took my wool blanket to bed.

This morning is a bluebird snow day. Bright sunshine is still working on the snow, the streets are cleared (in our neighborhood anyway) and we're still watching movies.