Well, the Christmas break is nearly over and not nearly so many things accomplished as planned. The tree is staying until MLK Day at least. We have been invited to dinner this evening with some of our favorite human beings, visiting English people with a cabin high up on a dirt road in a neighboring town. I said yes immediately when they called yesterday morning, and then got thinking about the forecast. (See above).
Oh dear.
And they don't have a phone. We've tried emailing but to no avail. I even tried emailing one of their relatives in England. The problem is that I accepted without fully registering that today was the last day of the Christmas break and kids and I have to go back to school and work tomorrow! We would normally depart the Last House (now a weekend only abode) for our new weekday residence in Stowe, an hour away, while there was still plenty of light. Dinner, however, is set for six - when the frozen roads will be dark as midnight in a coal mine, with swirling snow lit only by the high-beams from oncoming, speeding pickup trucks.
Query - to be a horrible boor and just send Whusband to dinner or to brave the backroads with two kids and a dog and then to drive another hour through the dark to get home?
I should mention I have something like PTSD as a result of all the winter driving I have had to do over the last couple years...
Tell me what you think and I'll come back later and tell you what we did.
In other news, today's banner actually is, for once, a view from the house, as advertised. I stood at the the front door and took it on the one day last week when we saw the sun here.
The forecast right now is for five solid days of snow and snow showers. I have been known in the past to be trifle, hmmm, "superior" to southerners who are undone by a couple of inches of snow or temperatures that make barbecuing uncomfortable. Seeing a solid week of those little cloud icons on the Weather Channel just now, many with snowflake icons as well, makes me humble.
Maybe those southerners are onto something... Of course, it's freezing in Florida now too, and that is some comfort in a schadenfreude sort of way.
7 comments:
Every year, I get a free calendar from my bank which has at least one obligatory "New England town with congregational church and twenty federalist houses all blanketed in snow" photo. It always looks beautiful and quite serene until you realize, people actually live there and probably hate driving around in that stuff for six months. We're lucky if we have to deal with snow and ice for merely a couple of weeks.
Cheers.
it's a beautiful photo.
but
how do i know that other house is not the last house
and you're the second to last house?
hmmmm...?
ha! that's good, projectivist -
my sympathies - those long dark days when it is dark late into the morning and early in the afternoon.
the 32 below temperatures when warming up the car for 30 minutes doesn't even help.
when the house pops and creaks with the cold and the spirits are much more active.
when the house breathes cold - it's in the walls, on the floors and you wear long underwear under your clothing In the House.
yep - you have my sympathy...
deb
R - No doubt winter involves a struggle up here. Sometimes one quails. Then, the sun comes out on the federalist houses and the white church and the new snow (as it has done today) and one is reminded of what becomes of people who give up the struggle. (Yes, I am back to feeling superior to those who have retreated to the uni-season parts of the country and into the kenneling that constitutes modern housing built in such places). Certainly this would never include the stalwarts of Missouri.
Proj - I assure you that the house you can see in the banner at the moment belongs to our next door neighbors. They have the second to last house in America. We are the ultimate.
Deborah - Nice to hear from you. I see your Vermont heritage has not left you! (See my response to R. above). I am wearing my long underwear right now and the shadows of the evergreen branches outside the window are moving wildly, suggesting that the windchill on this clear day must be well below zero.
In other news our dinner hosts called moments after I finished this post (having picked up our email). We managed to reschedule dinner for this afternoon. I persuaded them to allow us to arrive at 4:30, so we could at least have a little light left while we were searching for their cabin.
Glad you managed to get to see them. Hope the weather is kinder to you than it is to us over here (although I suspect this is a mere flurry to you hardy Vermont types)
If that's a view 'from' your house, what is that building? A neighbor? Your barn? I thought it was your house and was going to say, there's a place on my land I can stand looking back at the house and it looks much like that except more mountains. What is the one I see? Camel's Hump? It looks like one. I know C's H is in VT but I don't have any idea where.
I just wouldn't go. period. I'll be interested to see what you did.
And I guess I missed this second home biz! Wow, is it because it's just too far to drive to school and work in the wintry weather? Did you do this before?
And I'm loving getting the New Yorker!
Hi Madame - We managed to get together several times while they were here. I said I was sorry they came when the weather was so rough, but they thought it was perfect since they come for the snow. We did talk a little about the UK cold snap and news of the grit shortage.
Hi Nan - Nice to have you around. This is the view looking south from our door. I am not sure of the name of the little lump that appears on the horizon. It is not a very significant one. Our views are best to the north, where we look into Quebec at what I have heard called the Notre Dame Mountains.
Yes - the Stowe relocation is based partly on the need to get closer to work. The winter driving was killing me!
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