Here we snow again!

It’s snowing. Again. But, surprisingly, I’m not worrying about it. I have no big plans to fret over, my pantry is stocked and I feel like after our last adventure – we’re set to handle anything. Well, we still don’t have a snow shovel, but we’ve been improvising.

At the end of my last pity post, Rob had trekked down the hill to get some milk and fresh food, and I was glued to the 24/7 (literally) coverage of ARTIC BLAST 2008. Duh du duhhhh.
Colin was happily cozied up with a blanket and a movie and I began to get a bit anxious about Rob’s whereabouts. I was making my umpteenth window check and I saw him trudging along, with a box in his hands. I thought it was chains, and got a bit giddy. But I didn’t want to ask again if we could drive. It was up to the Safety Professional to make the call.

As you know, he gave the Go For Go and I started to scramble to pack. In hindsight, I have to wonder just what I thought we were getting into. I guess I’ve seen too many news stories about the families that think their all snow driving savvy until they get their shit stuck in a snow bank and end up drawing straws to see who’s going to lose some toes or worse.

Since it was already around 1pm, I went into high gear Bear Grills mode and packed extra blankets, pillows, emergency toilet for Colin, boots, jugs of water, cups of milk, peanut butter, tortillas, cheese sticks, fruit cups, sandwiches, DVD player, books, kitty litter (for traction), crayons, granola bars… I know, right!? I had Donnor Party thoughts in my head even though we were getting onto I-5 (a slightly major road) and going to my parents house, not the short cut to nowhere with a broken down cabin at the end of the road. But in my defense I was just trying to be prepared and keep my boys warm and fed if something happened to take us off-road.

It took us two hours to get from our house to Salem, which normally takes under an hour. Portland, bless it’s granola-lovin heart, doesn’t use salt on the roads, and the gravel trucks were nowhere to be seen even on the major freeways. As much as I was scoffing at questioning Rob’s insistence that we needed chains with my four-wheel drive, I have never been happier to be proven wrong. We had one moment of sliding, even with all our traction devices, but other than that, it was mainly just trucking along at 25 mph until we cleared the snow zone.

We hit the Siskiyou Pass, the second big worry about the drive, at about 9ish, with strict warnings about chains/ 4x4 required to get through. We had to admire the road crews in that part of the state, who were actually stopping and turning people around if they didn’t have the right traction. In Portland, chains were “required” but as far as we can tell, “required” stands for, “we’re not checking, we’ll hold up traffic to bail you out, so go ahead and do what you want with your low-clearance cars that can’t clear the foot of snow out there since the news stations need something new to talk about.”

I took over for the last stretch of driving and aside from nearly making deer sushi it was clear sailing and we hit the compound around 1:30 am. Rob was handed the golden halo of Son-in-Law done good for the whole week. Even got a mincemeat pie out of the deal.

Christmas was great. Colin is really getting into the spirit. But luckily not so much that he felt obligated to get up before 8am. He kept coming back to the empty milk glass and cookie crumbs in awe. The gaggle of cousins kept him in a whirlwind of motion and high emotion all day and we were all glad when it was time to toss him into bed.

The week flew by as usual, all my plans to see friends and others kind of came and went. But I was happy to do nothing, just hang with the family. We packed up and headed North on Sunday, arriving to our familiar, mostly melted landscape. It was good to be home, and the Soss was ecstatic to have us back to warm his bed, but I admit that the post-holiday grumpus was worse than usual for me. I ho-humly schlumped and sulked my way through the short work week (imagine, the gall of them to require me to actually earn my paycheck…) and lame-assedly celebrated New Years. Well, I can’t say we actually celebrated New Years since we were asleep by 10:30. We’ve never been big New Year revelers.

We undecked the halls this weekend and I’m feeling better now that home and our routine is getting back to normal. I got to hook up my new sleek External Hard Drive, pop some popcorn in my Whirly Pop, try out my new wickedly sharp Wustoff Knives, wear my new warm Wildcat Socks and drink Starbucks to my heart's content. Today I finished up some craft projects and roasted a chicken. It's the simple things, really.

Happy 2009!