Snowprah Winfrey

I can't remember where I read it, but Snowprah Winfrey is my favorite name for Snowmageddon or The Blizzard of 2011. Today will be snow day number 4 for the kids. I really wish there was school today, but I suppose having the weekend to dig out sidewalks and turn lanes will be much safer for walkers and bus drivers. As of last night there were no turn lanes onto or off of Detweiller. It was a hard, sharp turn for my dinky Toyota; I can't imagine trying to turn a school bus. We were completely snowed-in on Wednesday. The plow got our street around 4pm. Kudos to the City of Peoria! The last big storm 3 or 4 years ago it was THREE DAYS before our street was plowed and I had to get rides to work. This time they even came back sometime during the night and plowed our street wide enough that we don't have to dig out the mailbox!

I was stuck at home Wednesday. Fortunately, several people live within walking distance of the zoo (or a short drive) and made it to work. We had made extra diets and prepared for a day with only a few people. Roz sent me photos of several areas before any snow was cleared and many of the doors were half covered. It was amazing how bad it was! I imagine our maintenance crew will be digging out paths for days. One of the park crews came in Thursday and used big tractors to clear our employee parking area and paths to the dump area. They hauled away several dump truck loads of snow and accomplished in a couple of hours what it would have taken our guys all day (or longer) to do. What a mess! I was just thrilled there were paths cleared so I didn't have to walk through ANY deep snow with my bad foot. It's incredibly much better, but uneven surfaces still make it flare. Thanks Doug!

Wednesday morning I headed outside to start shoveling. I wasn't in any hurry because I knew I was almost certainly stuck for the day. I made pancakes for the kids and dinked around before bundling up and heading out around 9. Gene HATES snow more than I can express, so I went out and cleared a path from behind our cars to the garage. The snow was so drifted behind the cars I knew the snow blower wouldn't handle it so I started digging out by hand. I eventually got to a less drifted area and started up the blower. It worked for about one minute and never started again. I did a huge area by hand. Meanwhile, the neighbors were out with their working blower. When they finished Gene went and asked if we could use their blower to finish our end of our driveway. I don't know how they got the thing over, but husband, wife and dog came over (their three kids were already in OUR house.) I was still shoveling away and not paying attention to them. The dog came bounding up and started jumping on me. He was leaping into my face when he nailed me with his teeth, cutting below my lip, chipping one of MY teeth and causing me to bite the inside of my lip. The cut doesn't look like much, but it was deep enough that it bled the entire rest of the time I was outside- at first a lot but then just small dripping. Idiot dog! It's Friday morning and my lip is still swollen and my tooth is sensitive enough that I may have to go to the dentist. I was planning to give the neighbors money for the use of their blower, but forget them! I'll probably end up paying $$$ for dental work. Oh, and word from the kids is they're planning to get ANOTHER dog to breed with idiot dog so they can make money. Yes, folks, please pass on the DNA of the most mentally challenged border collie in the history of the world!

The kids have been cooped up playing video games for several days. They played outside for hours on Wednesday, but Tuesday was too windy and Thursday too cold. They won't be happy, but I'm going to force them to come on grocery errands with me today. As of last night the neighbor kids still had school. I'm going to check the closing list right now and hope at least I'll catch that break :)