keep centered

I spent the day shoveling snow (gasp, wheeze). My muscles are aching, tingling, and doing all kinds of screaming behaviors.

My earlier guess was that the snow over my sidewalk that had been shoveled the night before was waist high was wrong; it was chest high. Of course, I may not be the tallest person on your f-list ;-). An interesting effect, this is the first time I’ve seen ‘air holes’ in the snow. The little areas that keep avalanche survivors alive.

My goal was to shovel out enough that I could get to the car, which I parked down the road away from the worst drifting, by 2:00pm in hopes of getting to town. Alas, I didn’t meet the goal until after 5:00pm and I felt it wasn’t a good idea to set out after dark. Tonight and tomorrow is supposed to be worse with 7 inches of snow predicted, which means I will get much more than that; and 30 mph winds, which means I will get heavier winds. I really, really, really hope the shoveling today wasn’t in vain. I tried to pat down snow berms when I shoveled it out in hopes they would slow the wind damage.


This is Amby on my front sidewalk. I am afraid to let him off the leash. His predecessor dog, Clara, once fell through deep snow into water below it and it was just good luck that we found her in time. Too scary.

Some sunshine!
( so some pictures )

One of the worst days driving to work I've had in years. No trace of a road grader for the 50 miles I travel. No vision for the several seconds oncoming traffic billows up snow when they pass, drifting. This brings up a painful and terrible realization, I am going to have to get up 20 minutes earlier or be late to work every day.

Lewiston usually doesn't get snow so the whole town was flummoxed. Over 78 cars involved in 30 in wrecks in town (and not a large town). No snow tires, no weights in the back of pickups, stomping on brakes, stomping on accelerator, etc.
I have to say again, the subaru rocks, there was never a time I was endangered from it.... just from large vehicles coming towards me sideways. I'm trying not to be smug about my car & winter road preperations. Humm not working, I'm smug.

Although I’m doing fine with house stuff winter came early enough to catch me unaware with the pottery studio. Because my studio is not connected to the house, and the studio is heated with wood, and the day job prevents me from going to the studio daily; a cold snap is a big setback. The pots I made last weekend didn’t dry enough to protect their surface water from the low temps of this past week. So they froze and are thawing out today as I heat the studio. Then they collapse from the uneven water expansion and contraction. The clay from the collapsed pots will require remixing, as will the bagged clay which freezes around the edges with the core clay staying unfrozen.

Frozen, thawed clay is very, very miserable to wedge it is so cold and requires mixing gooey- wet, frozen clay with the core clay that has dried out though osmosis (or maybe it‘s reverse osmosis.) Then there is the ice in the studio water and frozen glazes that have to be remixed. At least that doesn’t have to be by hand.

As tiresome as this has been, it’s kind of comforting to think that my Medieval ancestors must have gone through much the same thing.