Digging Out and Warming Up

 By no means did central Arkansas get hit as hard as Texas by this terrible week of terrible weather. Sure, there were some power outages, some burst pipes, but these were isolated incidents. For the most part, everyone hunkered down for a week, waiting for the snow to stop, waiting for it to warm up. 

I ended up getting more than 20" of snow at my house. The daytime temps remained in the teens, nighttime temps dropped into single, even negative, digits, for almost 5 days in a row. 

I overestimated my van's ability to handle the snow and ice, and got it stuck trying to leave the subdivision on Thursday. There are only two ways out of my subdivision, and both require climbing multiple, steep hills. At least I managed to slide it parallel to the curb on a relatively flat spot of road located about 0.5 miles from my house. That night, I made two trips to the van with my cart, hauling expensive dog crates back up the hills to my house. When its wheels iced up, I dragged the cart over icy ruts.

On Friday, the sun rose in a clear sky that morning, and it was 36F by 3pm that afternoon. I visited my car twice during the day. But the icy, packed snow was too deep and the roads were still too treacherous. I whiled away the hours by shoveling my very long driveway, front walkway, and back deck. I had to use a regular shovel, which just sucked. 

I anxiously waited for sunrise on Saturday. I planned my morning to the minute and arrived at my car just as the temperature reached 34F. It was going to be a warm, sunny day (it's 45F as I write this) and large sections of the road were now covered with icy slush. 

Using another shovel that I had left in the car on Thursday, it took me almost half an hour to dig my car out so I could get it up onto the packed snow/slush on the road. I managed to white-knuckle that van up and out of the subdivision at last! I aged 10 years and acquired more grey hairs in the process, but once I hit the main road, which had been sanded and plowed, I started breathing again.

Apparently my nutritional choices diverge from a lot of other people's because although there were plenty of bare shelves at Trader Joe's, I managed to get enough food to last for another 10 days or so. I stocked up on cat litter at PetSmart, and decided that was enough of an outing for the time being. I'm back home, van parked in the driveway again, planning to spend the rest of the day cooking.