Take the high road, there is much less traffic

What big eyes she has

Hannah was in a much better mood when we took care of her yesterday versus a eek ago

I love paperweights

For my wall of masks

There is no website showing all the recent road closures due to power lines draped over the road so driving is an adventure these days. And in town, half of the traffic lights are still out causing traffic jams. According to the energy company that supplies us, this is the worst power outage they ever dealt with:  800,000 homes and businesses without power with another 200,000 customers of the competing company. We got an automated call saying we had a 95% chance of having power by Sunday night but it wasn't clear if they were referring to our current house, the one we sold or Naomi's condo, which we own. The condo association sent a message that no power plus record cold equals frozen pipes so take precautions so I fretted about that. Aside from having water dripping, what could we do? But power came on late last night so yay for that. Naomi works near where she lives. They ordered a huge generator to be parked in a semi outside the store, so heavy, it sunk into the pavement. As we had had so much rain recently, the trees were not firmly rooted causing many to fall in the 60+mph winds Wednesday. Here on the ranch, we were without power for only an hour. After 2 days, they finally reopened our main road.

Is this the worst outage they've had? When Shanna was only one, we had a derecho come blasting through lasting only 10 minutes. The sky turned dark green during mid-morning. 10 minutes of 80 mph versus 12 hours of 60 mph? Which is worse? We didn't get our power back for a week but as it was summer, no danger of pipes freezing. A huge cottonwood was knocked down across the street from us, the worst tree there was with that cottony  choking crap covering our lawn for a month every summer. And our almost dead birch tree was uprooted.

And it was 10 degrees when I went out to run this morning and windy. Fortunately it was dry and the dirt road is below the surface of the land so it is protected along with the many trees.. It will be way too cold to bike for the next week or so.

We had our Mom's group last night with me bringing dessert. I opted for a skillet lemon almond tart, sort of like a lemon frittata as it contained no flour. It was very quick to make requiring only time to zest a lemon. I made a sauce of limoncello and fresh blackberries as it was a bit dry. So I was off of my strict diet for the night and now feel guilty and feel fat. This too shall pass.

Funny story: one of the Mom's asked Siri to make a phone call for her and Siri told her to go f#$@ herself. Hmmm.

Earlier in the day, we relieved Julie. Allie's school was closed due to the power outages and no one has been getting sleep. So we took the baby while they slept.

Today Shanna and her kids are spending the night. Should be fun.