The Drill...

Me: "We'll be fine as long as it's not widow maker snow."

Tony: "Widow maker? Widow maker snow???"

Me: "Widow maker. You know, the snow that's so wet and heavy it causes the spouse to drop dead in the driveway."

Tony: "OH!! I get it now.... you mean, freedom snow!"

Yesterday Home Depot and Stop and Shop looked like an episode of Doomsday Preppers.  I'm not sure what the urgency is to get milk and eggs, because without power eggs won't do you much good and I don't know any plow driver that has a hankering for a nice glass of milk after being out for 16 hours straight. And how people could be angry that Home Depot was out of snow shovels is beyond me.  Hello people?  We live in New England, and it's January... you don't need sunblock right now.

That said, we were at Home Depot looking at what they had left... garden shovels, pool salt, chaos, and cranky people.  We did manage to find some new gloves for Tony at Kohls, and of course we stopped for our own supplies at Stop and Shop... two containers of cookies, some potatoes for chicken pot pie, and Cadbury Eggs.  This girl knows how to survive a storm letmetellyou. 

Thing is, we've done this before.  We've known this storm was coming for three days now.  We expect at least one of these a season. Storm prep is part of why we live here.  And as you'd expect, I have the drill down by now.

• Every stitch of laundry gets done.
• Run the dishwasher.
• Vacuum the house.
• Charge everything... ipods, kindle, phones, battery packs.
• Find the candles, pile them on top of the stove.
• Make the kids finish all homework
• Fish tank heaters turned up a bit.
• Find the kid's sleds.
• Fuel the cars.
• Extra comforters, check.
• Flashlights, check.
• New library books, check.
• Board games found, check.
• Shovels and ice melt in the house, check.
• Boots, check.

And of course, Tony's brand new snow blower is gassed up in the garage, aimed at the door, ready to go.  That is, of course, if we can get to the garage.

Currently we still have power as the snow (so far) is not as wet and heavy as they predicted.  We've had 60 mph winds, and some areas are without power, so I'm typing as fast as I can to get this out to any of you who care.   We can't really measure how much we have so far, as the drifts are nearly over the fences at some points and bare in others.  All and all we are expected to get anywhere from 18 inches to 3 feet.  The onset of the widow maker snow of course will keep totals down, but will increase the likely hood of power outages. Eh, it's a trade off.

For now though, we are good.  The post office closed so we are all home (for now) staying warm, watching, TV, and (for now) not driving each other crazy.  I am off tomorrow as well, which is nice, as I think the kids will be off from school Wednesday too.

But for now, we're all fine... and I'm off to find those Cadbury Eggs.

Update:

We went for a walk.  This is a MAJOR road at the end of our street.  Traffic normally flows at 45-55 mph.  We are walking in the middle of the oncoming traffic lane while taking this picture....

Snow banks are 3-4 feet high on either side, pictures are going South and then North.

We still have 7+ hours to go.

And I'm down to our last Cadbury egg...