Everyone sick of Snowmaggedon 2010 yet??  Sick of the pictures?  Too bad!!!!!

The kids have been out of school for about 2 weeks now – I think they went 1 or 2 days last week and were out all this week.  Needless to say my house is a wreck, they’ve eaten the pantry bare and I am so very ready for them to go back.  Looks like Monday, as long as we don’t get that 2-3 inches they’re calling for Sunday night.  Oy.

UPS closed down completely for awhile there,  though USPS braved it out, at least in our neighborhood.  I was none too pleased, since I was expecting a cat fountain.  Yeah, you heard me.  I couldn’t wait for my darn cats to have fresh circulating water in fountain form.  Of course that was once our power came back.  All weekend it was on again, off again, and we had long stretches without – Friday around 6 pm through late morning Saturday, and again from about 3 pm Saturday to 7 pm Saturday.  I can’t tell you how gratfeul we were for those few hours WITH power, because a lot of people never got that, and ended up being out all weekend.  Our friend Mike who is further out in the county was off from last Friday morning until just a day or two ago.  We had no phones for a good 3 days – and no internet.

Paul broke the bobcat clearing the bottom of the driveway because the snow was so heavy – the bottom 6 or 8 inches was snow, the middle few inches were ice, and the top layer was snow again.   The meteorologists were saying if it hadn’t turned to sleet for that middle portion we’d have ended with with almost 4 feet.  So, heavy snow, broken bobcat.

We had to pay a guy to finish the job.

A portable propane stove/oven can be your best friend when there’s no power ( and your normal stove is a crappy electric affair).

It still looks like a bomb went off around here.  There are trees down everwhere and when I drove out to CVS today I saw dozens of downed power lines with huge pine boughs tangled in them, all along the main road.

Thankfully none fell on our house, though some looked mighty close.

These huge branches fell onto the front chicken coop.  Fortunately none of the fallen branches landed on any chickens.

Jerry doesn’t seem to mind the snow so much.  Milkshakes has a harder time getting around in it than he does, though.

So during all of this house-bound time I’ve been trying to keep busy.  And by busy I mean not just all the cleaning I have to constantly do behind my 3 slobs, but productive busy stuff.  I’ve been working at my knitting a few stitches here and there but my heart hasn’t been into it (except for a brief spell when the fireplace was roaring and it was snowing out and I was all comfy and warm).  I cut out some cotton jersey skirt panels and traced out a rose pattern for reverse applique and I’ve been working on stitching that together with some beads.

It’s slow going for sure, but it’s a satisfying project to work on.  I’ve been using ideas from the Alabama Stitch Book. What’s even more exciting is the NEW Alabama Studio Style.

Fabulous.  You must go buy it now!!!!   I can’t even tell you how excited I am about this book and the projects in it.  I think it will be occupying much of my time this spring and summer.

Along with cleaning.  Massive amounts of cleaning.

I don’t want to say I am spring cleaning.  I don’t even really want to do spring cleaning until, well, spring. But being cooped up with 3 kids (plus a husband, a sister, a dog and 2 cats) has forced my hand a bit in the “just how much cleaning really needs to be done” and I’ve taken to weeding through cabinets a bit and de-cluttering as I can.

I started in my bathroom vanity.  It’s kind of hilarious and kind of embarrassing how many tubes of varying types of Vaginal Fungicide and Jock Itch Cream I have in there.  And the thing is, they’re not mine.  Remember waaaaay back to last year when we first brought Jasper cat home – he had ringworm.  I tried about 8 different strengths of anti-fungal cream before one worked and it cleared up.  Meanwhile, now I’ve got all this stuff in there, barely used.  It seems a waste to throw them away, but then again…..I got to thinking about things lately.  If I were to die today and people had to come in and clean out my stuff…….what would they think of me?  Mostly that I hoarded fabric and yarn, had 31,000 knitting needles in various sizes (and many, many of the same size) , that I really like my animals, that I maybe never ever cleaned out my fridge……and that I had some seriously funky fungal issues going on.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?  What would people think about you?