Winter Wonderland

We left home Friday morning, February 5th, just hours ahead of the weekend blizzard. We missed it all while we indulged ourselves at the Friend's of the Groundhog (Fog) party. It's an annual bash thrown by our dear friend Ed. (His wife Carol just smiles and lets him do it). This year's party is very special -- it's the 40th year of the party.

New York City sparkled all around us from the 12th floor of a warehouse on west 31st street. Sixty of Ed's closest friends mingled drinking wine, scotch and margaritas while eating bits of Asian delicacies amongst white leather couches, glass tables, and white decor. Antique chandeliers splashed soft light on everyone--the men in their tuxedos and the women in silks. Afterwards small groups of us retreated to a very euro west side hotel in the fashionably hot meat packing district for story telling, more libations and baskets of pom frits. The morning came too soon as John and I woke to see, through our toes, crystal blue skies stretching across the horizon framing the sky scrappers on the Jersey side of the half frozen Hudson River. It was a quintessential New York kind of weekend. I wanted to stay the princess I felt like, but fantasies don't last forever.

Early Monday, after eggs benedict in "The Grill", we packed our fancy clothes, put on our sun glasses and drove home on cleared roads, refreshed and pleased that we had so successfully escaped the weather. I was ready to dive back into work, confident that the federal government would be open on Tuesday. But it was not to be. Before Tuesday was over, a second blizzard, as predicted, beat our area relentlessly. Hurricane force winds made the sky white, blinding our view from the balconies. It left us stranded, blanketed.
( John's video)

The snow is now higher than Fred and twice as high as JoeJoe. They must jump and plow themselves through the snow to take a pee. Down the street, there's a bunch of five-foot icicles hanging from the eaves of one building. They arch out toward the street, bent by the winds. Others drip onto the sidewalk laying down a layer of sheer ice, waiting for unsuspecting walkers to slip and fall. The saying "Nature is cruel" is certainly true in this case.

It's been four days now that the federal government has been closed. But there is hope for tomorrow. Men with snow blowers have cleared the sidewalks of the drifts. Men driving front loaders (every little boy's dream job) have made the street passable by pushing the snow into mountains that surround the buildings.

This weather takes me back to Chicago and those winter mornings when I threw a coat over my jammies and ran out into the snow packed parking lot to start the ol' Chevy Malibu so it could warm up while I finished getting ready for work. That's why I left the Midwest--to get away from all that.

Oh, well, this will all go away soon. I will keep focused on the spring. It's time to dress the boys in their sweet little monogrammed coats and take them out into the cold night air for that last pee of the day. Tomorrow is another day.