Free At Last

For the first time ever I've been unable to leave the house for one whole week! Every morning I'd wake up to bitter cold--extremely unusual here in the Northwest on the west side of the mountains--with the hope that "today maybe we can get to the market and shop for food", but the snow was too deep to expect any car to plow through, especially since our driveway has a steep incline up to our community road. We've already had one casualty, & that was a 4 wheel drive, so we'd never attempt it with our car. But getting out on the driveway is a moot point anyway since the casualty has been stuck there for 5 days.

But at least the electricity hasn't gone off, so for the time being, anyway, we're warm, & there's stuff in the freezer. Thank goodness for Costco soup! And since I have yeast & flour in the house I baked bread to go with the soup. Wow. How domestic. For someone who hates cooking & hates to think about food, except where, other than here, I'm going to eat it this has been a real hardship! 

The mail, which usually comes anywhere from 12:30-3:00 pm is now coming about 5:00 pm if they come at all. UPS told me one truck has been assigned to the island. My packages have been accumluating there--I must have about 4 somewhere in the UPS system on hold for this are. The propane truck still hasn't come & we're afraid we're going to run out of heating fuel. But at least today the temperature is above 40 F so the snow is finally melting on the streets. There are some good size ruts left on streets that get minimal traffic, but on the whole driving is pretty good if you can ignore the piles of snow--some 10 ft. tall--in parking lots.

I hope never to see another storm like this one, but we are grateful the electricity never went out. It's a first!