Linus's Blanket

Our car this morning. We had knocked off 6 inches yesterday

 

They are calling this storm Linus. Unlike the Peanut's character, his blanket is not comforting. If you listen to the national news, it hits two places: Chicago and New York though it hasn't reached New York yet. We in the middle don't count yet the official snowfall at the airport was 17 inches. Lots of hand wringing last week when 5 inches fell in Central Park there. And initially only 5-8 inches were to fall here but then, the snow kept coming.

After about 4 inches fell yesterday, I saw the truck that plows the bike path (which gets plowed way before our street does) come through. I should not of dilly-dallied but got out there immediately. In 20 minutes, there was at least an inch already. Fine, I can run  in up to 3 inches. Back and forth on the bike path; it was pretty though hard to see with the snow on my glasses. Within minutes, my footprints were covered up. Finally the snow was too deep to run in comfortably so I shoveled the few inches that had accumulated in less than an hour after Steve had shoveled. When it is below 20, I wear all polar fleece which the snow clings to. I must have looked a sight but no one was out to see this white fuzzy creature.

It's pretty icy inside here too. I am getting the silent treatment for culling Steve's financial files even though I touched nothing less than 8 years old. Neat hoarders are called collectors. We get financial statements from several institutions every month, some of them being 6 page reports. In my book, only the end of the year reports should be saved and then only for 7 years. When I was in charge of my mother's stuff and she had a lot of reports coming in, I saved things only for a month until they were replaced by the next month, excepting bank statements that I might have to show to the court ( I was her conservator). Steve however, neatly hole punched each page, even blank sheets, and put them in binders, lots of them and then squirrelled them in the closet. Did he ever look at these things again? No..but he likes having them around apparently. And I only tackled a small portion of this. He didn't object when I threw away 20 years of IRS instructions for each year(2 huge wastebaskets full). He snarled at me whether I planned to take all the bikes in our garage to the new place? No, I won't. I'll leave one for Naomi and a bicycle recycling shop just opened up. But I guess he has a point that bicycles take up more space than his paper files. I've thrown away plenty of 'my' stuff too. Usually it takes a week for me to be forgiven for my trespass. Nothing I do shortens the time, threats of leaving, apologies, nothing. In the mean time, the wound festers. This has not happened in a while as he has been in a good mood about the move so I guess I should consider myself lucky. I do tell him how harmful this behavior is to our marriage but it falls on deaf ears (literally and figuratively).

I didn't have the fun I was hoping for yesterday. It has finally stopped snowing and it is quite pretty out. Our new house has an impressively long driveway that better be cleared. Presumably the neighborhood association's snowplows are efficient at clearing the private street. The busy road behind or house has been plowed but few people are actually on it. Schools are cancelled. Workers are staying home.