Blogging from an Igloo

Two days ago Bentley and Fatty refused to come upstairs. They sat at the bottom of the basement looking terrified. The squirrels in the back yard ran frantically to build their nests and the little birds were curiously gone. Down Georgia Ave. and New Hampshire Ave. drivers were honking and cutting each other off, all trying to get to the nearest store and buy the last piece of bread, milk or snow shovel. I looked at it all and scoffed, "Pfff...there will be no blizzard." You see, last year, the Weather Channel predicted 30 inches of snow and we got 3. This year they predicted 20-30 so I thought that meant no more than 10. For New Jersey standards, 10 inches is a regular snow fall. You pull on a hat, a big wool sweater and make some soup. So I pulled on my sweater (not the warmest because I wasn't convinced), didn't put on a hat but made some lamb stew. Then, full of confidence that this was nothing, I went out to shovel the driveway and clear the 3 inches that accumulated. Thanks to that, I got sick. What a genuine idiot. I  knew, my mother warned me, my chef told me to cover myself, and I went out like superwoman in 3 measly inches to get a cold. I got inside and made tea then with a stuffed nose and red puffy eyes looked out of the window and saw how it had really begun to snow.

And snow

And snow

And snow

And snow

And snow

And snow

And snow

And snow

And snow

And snow

And snow

And snow

And at 3 AM I looked out of the window and saw the top of our mail box still standing. The ground shook at 5 AM with a powerful  thunder storm. It genuinely scared me. Now all we have to do is wait. For what I'm not sure. You see, I miss NJ right now. There the town knew that they needed to start plowing during a storm. Giant trucks barreled down Main Street with their steel blades scraping up the snow, clearing a tunnel during the storm. The trucks went all night. You would loose sleep from the sound of the scraping metal but the streets were more or less cleared. 

Here, our street looks like a marshmallow. It is sitting under 30 inches of snow. The longer it sits, the heavier the snow will become. Not one plow has passed by. I can't believe how they haven't worked around the clock. We need NJ plows in Maryland.