Would You Believe...The Dog Ate My Homework?

 

Once again, I’ve gone silent for almost a month.  The holidays came and went, complete with 2 extreme weather events that left me running on empty, energy-wise. First, we had snow. Not just the regular it-snows-six-inches-and-then-melts-immediately snow we usually have here in the southern Willamette Valley.  No…it snowed on and off for three days, totaling more than a foot in some places.  My newly installed (very flat) patio covers with which I was so inordinately pleased during the autumn months were threatened with collapse under the snow load.  Luckily, we devised a tool with which to drag the snow off them (a leaf rake attached to a telescoping pole.  So we were out in the snow, wind, and cold every 3-5 hours for 3 days, dragging heavy wet snow off our patio roofs.  We managed to avert disaster, but at the cost of a lot of physical energy for a couple of creaky old folks.    

The snow had not even completely melted when we were treated to a wind storm—24 hours of ever-increasing winds, ultimately peaking at 40-60 mph gusts.  Once again, my cherished patio covers were threatened with destruction; and, this time, I was powerless to save them. All I could do was sit and watch them blow away, if that was to be their fate.  In the end, they did NOT blow away.  By golly, we must be better engineers than we know, because those buggers held solid.  Not even a crack in the poly.  But my nerves were completely shot by the time the wind abated and I could breathe a sigh of relief that my patio covers were still attached and in one piece.

So all that nonsense took enough of the starch out of me that my creative tank was empty. I barely had enough energy left to pack up Christmas and put it away.   

For now, it looks like I’m back.  We’ll see how it goes.  I have a few things rattling around in my brain that would lend themselves to decent blog entries.  Maybe I can actually make them happen.