Coincidentally, a friend emailed this to me this morning:

Forget Rednecks…here is what Jeff Foxworthy has to say about New

Englanders:

You actually understand these jokes, and forward them to all your New

England friends.

how very apropos

ps.  thanks for your good wishes… the freezers seem to have survived!! (frozen, that is)

The way I see it is like this… if I hadn’t been checking the morning blog posts yesterday, I wouldn’t have read Norma and wouldn’t know that areas of VT were without power and phone service.  I would have figured that my neighbor that I had been emailing for a weather check had been out of town ( well, he actually was.. but had gotten home Thursday morning) and that all was well and that the phone lines were their usual funky selves.  BUT, that is NOT what happened.  I read Norma’s post.  I figured if she got 10" then I’d have a whole lot more.  After calling everyone I could think of in an ever widening circle form my house, I finally got our mechanic on the line.  30" of wet HEAVY snow, he said.. his power and phone just back on in town, nothing outside of town until say… maybe this weekend.  Worse he’s ever seen.  Woods are a mess.  Phone poles snapped like tooth picks.  And I’m thinking, I’ve just spent the last 4 months filling my freezers, no power, better get to the generators as fast as we can.  Next call I got through was to the family that plows us out, all 1/4 mile of it.  Sorry she tells me.  We couldn’t plow you, worse we’ve ever seen, you got at least 10 trees down across the road that we could see.  Yep, I’m flipping.  You get where this is going.   My back is out, I’m no good for this job.  Poor C had to head north.  Damage report is still coming in.  He counted at least 40 trees across the drive.  He’s cutting and clearing, alone.  The phone is still out.  Last night the power returned, just in time for the thaw.  I am so relieved.  Before we put the electricity in, we never knew when it was out, no worries, no freezers, no color TV.  This is the price we pay.  We are dependent.   I don’t have a great solution.   I’ve tried the alternatives.  They work, up to a point.  But we are spoiled and we do NOT have good alternatives.  Solar can only go so far in the Northeast.  We simply do not have enough sun to run all the things we depend on.  Freezers run on kerosene work, but one has to be very diligent, and then there is the kerosene.  I’ve used propane refrigeration, for many years.  My electric fridge is way better,  and I don’t have to keep checking my carbon monoxide detectors that were hung around it.  You see where this is headed.  We are addicted to our power consumption.  How much worse it must be for those people in the south, weeks and months without.  The damage report.. we lost trees,  many of our apple trees are uprooted, we’ll wait to see how the berry canes make out, they’re still under snow.   We were lucky, and once again.. I love the power of blogland.   

The cold that followed all the rain the past weekend, precipated the yearly bring in of Podo and the rest of the plants (read that *trees*).  I gave Podo a good trimming back in preparation, but no matter how much I think I can get away with, when he comes into the house he needs more.  Podo is a major presence in the room.  Major!  The room is dwarfed.  The sane thing would be to send him out on a job.  But Podo has lived here, with me, for many , many years.  C. always treatens to cut a real Christmas tree.  We have.  But most years, Podo is enough.  He looks good decorated and lit up with hundreds of lights.  Two trees and there isn’t enough room for us. 

My back is out, again, big time.  So what do you do when you are way too groggy from muscle relaxents to drive, yet not so bad that you know you need to keep moving?  How about ring a round the rosy spinning.  A little bit of the natural spun seated.   Then, when my back starts screaming "IT", as it has for the past couple days, I’d move to the Fricke elelctric in the back room and keep right on spinning,

this time standing up and walking backwards from then back again towards the spinner, a couple yards at a time, some stuff I bought from Persimmon Tree at Maryland,  just recently pulled from my stash.  Shopping at home again, between stash and the internet, I hardly need to leave.  Sounds good anyway, especially if you leave out the part about the office work, and the laundry. 
In answer to just what am I thinking of doing to the sweater.. that front cabled sesction I want to change.. well.. I’m looking for a cable to use that works in a space with a mutiple of 5+3.  I’m up to the armhole decreases on the back and the sleeves are knitted onto the sewn together font and back sections.  I’ve got to think fast.  Any ideas?