Windy wack

I had planned to write a blog post about how I have pretty much done absolutely nothing the last few days except hang out with the family, eat Christmas goodness, and do a little shopping. So much nothing that I slept over at my parents' house the last two nights. We stay up late, and then I don't feel like going home to a cold, empty house. Adam is still visiting his family in Salt Lake.

Last night, though, Mitzi and I decided we needed to get out and about, so we went to see "Doubt" with my aunt. Great movie. I love both Meryl Streep and Philip Seymour Hoffman, and they were incredibly intense in the movie.

After we dropped off Alice, Mitzi stayed over for a bit. We knitted, watched "What Not To Wear" and "The Dog Whisperer." She went home around midnight, and I went to bed.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I woke to the sound of the wind outside. WIND. What the hell? I'm a very heavy sleeper. It takes giant thunder claps and lightning to wake me up. Last night, though, the wind did it.

I got up, peeked out the window, went to the bathroom, and crawled back in bed. In my half-asleep/half-awake state, I reasoned that it must not be a tornado, because I didn't hear sirens. I think I did contemplate for a split second going into the bathtub just in case...but only for a second. (I was half asleep and groggy!)

When we got home from the movie last night at 10, the car thermometer read 65 degrees. It was warm out - we weren't wearing coats, and I had the vent going driving home.

When I went out to pick up limbs this morning, most of them were covered in a layer of ice, and it was 32 out.

Of course I didn't pull the car into the garage last night, so there was a little ice on it this morning. I moved it in the garage since the weather is supposed to get worse later today.

I call this photo: "When's summer?" Through the ice, you can see my bike hanging in the window, and those Christmasy colored blobs in the bottom right are our coolers/camping gear.


I'm pretty sure there are still some lose limbs that will come crashing out of the trees if we get ice today, or if the wind kicks up again. Luckily, nothing fell on the cars or the roof.

Our trees are really old - I was just looking at photos of the house from back in the day, and the trees were about six feet tall. They really need to be trimmed, but with wind like this, they're getting thinned out.

No, we don't normally keep the trash can lying on it's side next to the fence.


Our giant pampas grass always falls over when it snows or ices. The weight pulls the grass down. It always looks so pitiful like that.

We're supposed to go over to Julie's for Sax Christmas this afternoon. I hope the weather holds out for that. I'd be quite perturbed if we haven't had a school snow day yet this year, but our Christmas celebration gets snowed out!

I read in the Star that the Wal-Mart at 159th and Metcalf will be closed for a while because of structural damage and a broken gas line. That's right next to my school - guess it was a lot worse out there. Hope my students are all okay.