Frankenstorm…again

I love these weather headlines:  Frankenstorm predicted to SLAM East coast.  A hurricane-winter storm hybrid will likely pound region early next week.  

Now New Englanders are pretty tough when it comes to weather during the winter.  But we consider our winter season to be between December and March, at which point we’re done with the snow, sleet, and freezing nose boogers.  I don’t exactly know what a hurricane-winter hybrid might be but I’ll get in line at Target with everyone else and stock up on batteries.  But Mother Nature!  Can you please give us a break?  October?  Remember when you smacked us last October – October 28th to be exact with this?

Very pretty, but since all the leaves were still on the trees, they couldn’t take the weight of the wet snow and damages were severe. Powers lines were across roads, schools of course were closed, and Halloween was cancelled.  We were very lucky that we’d just had about a dozen huge trees removed from the back hill that were leaning toward the house & would definitely have crashed on us.  Already had that happen to us once.

Last year our power was knocked out on Friday, Oct 28th.  We didn’t get it back until Tuesday of the following week.  And unlike a lot of freak storms, where we get snow and it’s gone the next day, IT WAS COLD!  Thankfully we have wonderful neighbors with generators who offered showers and food but we still had to come back into the frigid house.

We are in a very small town west of Boston and rely on electricity.  We have oil heat (which requires electricity), a well (need electricity for that too), and a septic system (which in our case has a pump to pump up to the leach field).  We can get by with limited flushing by bucket provided someone not only fills the bathtub, but also realizes that the drain isn’t slowly leaking all of the emergency water down the drain. It’s possible to ration the number of bucket flushes but you sure don’t want to guess at how full the tank is getting since a miscalculation means it’ll be coming right back at ya.

So I’m really, really hoping that this storm which is scheduled to hit on just about the same day as last year goes easy on us this time around.  You know all those pictures you see of smiling people snuggled up in front of a blazing fireplace with a cup of hot chocolate?  It’s a bunch of garbage!  A fireplace doesn’t throw any heat and unless you’re willing to stick your butt a few inches from the flames, you are not going to get warm except maybe from the energy it takes to haul logs up into the house.  Believe me, 2 layers of long underwear, fleece pants, 4 layers of sweaters, wool hat, scarf wrapped around your face and mittens isn’t all that romantic.  Even though Bernese Mountain dogs love the winter, they still like to come into a warm house when they’re done playing in the snow if only to get a Kleenex to wipe the icicles off the nose.