Snow Thank you

Looks like all those years of Oklahomans praying for a white Christmas finally paid off.  We ended up with over 14 inches, according to the Official Report, but it had to be real hard to count because the dadgum wind blew so hard that we really got everything from bare spots to six foot drifts. Not us personally, but throughout the state. The official count came from the airport, which is about eight miles east of us. Out here at the True Light Carrot Patch I'd say that between the bare spots and the drifts, we probably averaged two to four inches.

I know a snow like this is common enough in the upper regions, y'all, but it is an all time record breaker for Oklahoma. Hot potatoes!

BTW, WeatherBoy (or WeatherGirl) is the name I give, individually and collectively, to our television meteorologists because they always look young, fresh-scrubbed and  Sunday-best. Children grown tall, telling the weather.

We got the porch cleaned off, and the sunny part of the sidewalk at the barn. The shady parts are too icy to clear yet. I think it's supposed to get about 35 degrees today, so maybe....

We traditionally have a Big Family Doin' at my parents on Christmas Eve. This tradition within my family started when I was a child. My mother and aunt's families liked to meet on Christmas day as so many do, and Grandmother liked to have everyone together, so the sensible solution was to have a big dinner on Christmas Eve. We'd all eat and open presents. The grown-ups would always reserve a few for Christmas morning as well, and of course there's always a few packages from Santa Clause.

When Grandmother passed on my own mother picked up the Christmas Hostess baton, because she really likes to have everyone together, too. Unfortunately, this blizzard kept people in. I did not even go outside on the 24th.

We cleared the porch and sidewalk on Christmas Day, and just before dark decided to brave the elements to see if we could find anyplace open where we might sit down to hot food that someone else cooked. We ended up over at the Flying J truckstop restaurant and had whatever we wanted from their buffet. They had one, count 'em one, waitress, who had probably been there for a very long time, but she was still friendly and got us all fixed up. We got home without incident, although there are certainly a few patches of pretty scary road out there.

Steve gave me the gift today of taking our laundry in to wash today and found our local Mustang laundry closed. There was a sign on the door saying, "Closed Christmas Day," but this is the 26th now, so I hope she's okay. She comes over from El Reno (about ten miles west of us) to open the place up every day, and they had some pretty dramatic multi-car pileups out that way, so  I suspect she may be unable to get through. I hope she's okay. Having found the Mustang laundry closed, he ventured up into Yukon to our second choice in laundromats.

Grandmother always said, "If you're going to say anything, say something nice," so I'll have to think of something nice to say about that laundromat - oh, yeah, here's one - their washers and dryers were in good working order the last time I was there. Anyway, it took him over an hour to make a twelve minute drive because it's still pretty awful out there everywhere except right out on the Interstate highways. He got stuck in the slush somewhere along the way but a Good Samaritan helped get him unstuck.

This all reminds me that another thing to appreciate from our time in Cooperstown is  experiential reality in the Importance of Clearing Snow Accumulation. I catch myself thinking they'd have this cleared by now in Otsego County, and then I remind myself that I'm certainly free to go back there if I wish. I think I'll stay put, though. Hopefully this weather event will be enough to satisfy most of those Snow Pray-ers for a good long time!