Happy Holidays!

As posted earlier I've been taking a hiatus from blogging lately, but I wanted to take a few minutes today and post a few photos of the results of Maine's latest Nor'easter.

The snow storms have been rolling in one after another lately, mostly leaving a few inches at a time -- until yesterday that is! A day-long Nor'easter dropped 1-2 feet in local areas, with winds 40-50mph which drifted the snow up to 3 or 4 feet in those concrete-heavy piles that make shoveling serious weight lifting work.

As you can see the piles in our yard are higher than the dog's backs (they are about hip high). Tim is away just now so I'm getting a good workout shoveling alone -- so far I've only made it to the gate and getting our dogs an area in our yard where they can actually get out to go to the bathroom. They were real troopers last night as they plowed their little bodies through snow higher than their head in some cases trying to circle around out there during the height of the storm.

Once little Jazzie got sort of stuck in a drift out there, and when she came inside her head was covered in snow like a snow beagle. I had been watching her from the window and was about to pull on my boots and go after her when she managed to twist herself around out of the drift and work her way back to the deck. Even at 13, she's a real trooper! I have pictures of Sammie and Jaz this morning, but none of Kennedy so far because he's still curled up in a ball upstairs in his bed sound asleep. I'm not sure he likes the cold that much and being out in it tends to wear him out.

If you've been following the news you may be aware that New England has been in the grip of winter weather several days before the official start -- beginning with a major ice storm almost 2 weeks ago that left hundreds of thousands without power and/or water for almost a week in some cases.

Red Cross opened shelters everywhere and since I've been training to be a Red Cross DAT (Disaster Action Team) member for over a year now, I was called out to work in a shelter first in South Portland, then later I lived and worked in a shelter in South Berwick (near NH border) for about 4 days. We finally closed the last Maine shelter on Wednesday or Thursday of last week I believe, but given this latest storm we may be opening some again -- the winds gusted 40-50 miles during the height of the storm and they were expecting power outages again. Of course now the problem some people might have is getting out of their houses and driveways. I'm not looking forward to seeing how high the pile is blocking our driveway from when the city plowed our street. That's always fun.

Time to go now and move some more snow. In addition to shoveling the back to get our car out, we also shovel the front porch down to the street so the postman can safely deliver our mail (in our neighborhood the mailboxes are located on the front porch and the mail carriers mostly walk from house to house -- very common in Maine towns). I'm not sure how he manages if people aren't home to shovel before he gets there, although I have seen him wading through deep snow on someone's steps to reach a mailbox before, so I'm guessing he does a lot of that when needed. Talk about troopers!

I really respect the hardiness of people in places like Maine and Montana where the weather sometimes adds another challenging aspect to everyday things like getting to your car. I learn a lot from watching the way people here just deal with whatever comes with that "let's make the best of it with a smile on our face" kind of "can do" attitude. It's inspiring....and contagious!

Stay warm all and Happy Holidays!
Best, cy