Winter! Illinois! 2014! When Will It Be Over??
Good for pictures. Bad for driving. Above is a “snow” picture. Below is a “sub-zero” picture. I really wasn’t kidding. The temp was a balmy 23ish yesterday, but it snowed another 2 inches. Today, no snow, but the temp only climbed to about, mmmm, zero. And the thing is, I don’t even care anymore about the negative temps. I’m fine with the cold as long as the roads are clean and dry. If the snowflakes would just fall all over the grass and sidewalks, and avoid the actual driving surfaces, I say bring on 20 more inches. 50. 100! Makes no difference to me. My car can’t even get over medians in the middle of the roads if they have more than 2 inches of snow anyway without getting stuck, so more snow on the “sides” doesn’t bother me at all. I can’t make it into my own driveway when the plows come and push it all in front of where I have to drive across. I’m not kidding. I’ve been stuck 2 times already coming home from work. My son had to give the car a push while I rocked it back and forth to get out of the snow ruts. Once those front tires dig in and spin, I’m done for. Anyway I have to go to bed. I never mean to type so much. But this is meant to be the start of the many many, many, pictures I have taken thus far. We will see just how many actually make it into an already over saturated market of “Winter Snow” pictures. Remember, my pictures always come with at least 300 words of rambling nonsense to lull you into a peaceful slumber on these cold and snowy eve’s. Goodnight fair reader. Sleep sweet and sleep warm and cozy. At the tone, the time and temp will be: 11:58 PM and Negative One degrees Fahrenheit. Beeeeeep.
We Take A Lot Of These Shots Too
Driving. Somewhere between here and Kentucky. From the boy. That’s it.
Classy All The Way
On the Port-A-Potty Express. This picture has many things that I like and am trying to include as new features and categories. Stuff On Trucks. Check. Driving To Work. Check. Random Images. Check. And it’s mostly blue. The color. I like pictures that have a lot of blue in them. Hence all the sky and clouds. But you know, they can’t all be sky and clouds. Of course I took this picture while driving on the highway to work. There was another truck exactly like this one right behind it. Full of the same cargo. I sort of got both in one shot but it doesn’t pack the same punch, I felt, as this one did. So there you go. I have to go to work but I wanted something new up here to jazz it up for Wednesday. Remember WOW Wednesday? Say it with me…WOW!
Weekly Photo Challenge: Curves
This is my big “curve” shot. Following up on an idea from another site that is pretty cool, right here (thanks for the info and the comment reply!): CLICK THIS!
I always love a theme. I will waste tons and tons of time taking pictures of almost anything as you can see from this site. Anyway, I already had this picture taken from last Wednesday. My son is a permit driver now, so he drives the car and I can sit in the passenger seat and take as many pictures as I want of anything in front of us. I thought this looked cool. The kids thought I was crazy. “Orange cones mom? Really?” Yes really. I even posted it on Instagram. It got zero likes. But I don’t care. I take pictures for myself, mostly, and this site, and posterity, in the bigger scheme of things I guess. And at least one other person in this fabulous internet world ALSO thought it was a good idea! Respect.
UPDATE: I am learning so much lately about this whole blogging world. I see there is so much to participate in and be a part of. Here’s hoping I can follow simple instructions. I am re-titling this post and tagging it proper for this weekly challenge thing. This pic does not compare to the one on the main site, in fact, mine looks kind of cheesy now, but I’m doing it anyway! Thank you WordPress!
I Suppose I Could Have Gone With Flood Flowers As A Less Creepy Alternative
The rain is over. The water is as high as it can get in this area now, with all the rivers cresting and reaching their flood points on Saturday and Sunday. The water should start receding and retreating, back into its proper channels, to lie in wait for the next big storm to arrive, and let it loose once again from its muddy shores. Poetic huh?
Reality check. We sit high on the block so we never have a lot of standing water, but my flower bed does get full and floats the timbers onto the sidewalk and onto the driveway. I just put them back in place over and over until the rain stops. Small problem. However, I might have created a bigger problem with my car when I drove through all that stupid water the other night, although I am desperately hoping not, because now it’s making a weird sucking or blowing noise near the engine, I think, that sounds like a fan, or a motor that’s constantly spinning, or something that is trying to suck or blow air under the metal box that is covering the actual engine. It almost sounds like a hose is disconnected, and creating extra wind noise, kind of like a vacuum does when the suction isn’t right, or when you’ve sucked up something that doesn’t quite fit in the tubes and it’s blocking the path to the debris chamber. At any rate, I need to get my tired, lazy bum self, up, yet again, and haul my ass, and the money drain, over to the repair shop for a quick, “Hey, can you listen to this and tell me how much it’s going to cost to fix?” early in the morning. Staying up and posting this is not helping my anxiety or bad feelings about this newest problem with the car. And I haven’t even gotten around to telling you the last few problems that have already occurred. I’ve hinted. I’ve teased. I have pictures to illustrate. But work, and time, are conspiring against me. There’s too much of one and not enough of the other. I even took more dangerous pictures on the expressway, in the rain, to add to my current backlog of exciting and entertaining, but foolish and irresponsible, life story posts.
I’m tired. I have a headache. I just took my blood pressure pill and I should go to bed. Because I am old. To beef up this posting I am including a few more pictures from the rain. They aren’t really good, but now I can file them under “used”. I will caption them up here: 1. The sky looking like crap to the North. 2. The muddy puddle, in the back lot, of our stick inventory. 3. Some of the really wet sticks, that used to be brown, but now look red, for some reason, hiding a bunny. (That one is a bonus, like one of those puzzle pictures.) See if you can spot the rabbit! Brain games! Later.
I Call It: Green; With Branches. 24 Hour Rainfall.
I could also call it: We Pay For Spring In This City. 24 hours of rainfall. Really. I drove home last night through many flooded areas. Standing water up past the bottom of my car. It’s the deepest water I have ever driven through in a car. I was scared. But if you just keep going and don’t stop you have a fighting chance. Besides I could see ahead from 2 other cars that attempted it, how deep it really was. They gave up and turned out of it. Not me. Now I know why people get stuck. I did the same damn thing, and thought the same damn thing, “Pshh. I can make it.” I luckily did. There was even a police officer sitting off to the side in a parking lot watching all of us idiots trying to go through, probably just waiting for someone to get stuck and then he could shut the intersection down. Anyway, it’s still raining, and I hear worse weather is on the way. My daughters school just called to say they’ve canceled all after-school activities due to the impending weather predicted. I think I heard tornadoes and what not. I guess we are going to find out.
Which brings me to my other working title for this piece: Hurry Up Because You Have To Go To Work. Dummy. I really do. This was going to be quick. Ever the dreamer I am. Be careful and stay on the ground today. Later
A Saskatchewan Screamer? Really?
Rain, sleet, then snow. That sounds like every night that I have been driving home so far. Tom Skilling, from WGN, says this is the thing we have to look forward to tonight. A storm being driven by a fast-moving, low pressure system out of the Saskatchewan province in south-central Canada. Although technically, Paul Konrad said it first this morning at 6 am. Apparently it consists of “thundery snowfall” and “accumulation of heavy thick snow, the likes of which we have never seen before, arghhh!” I added that last part for effect. It’s basically a big blob of crappy weather combinations that lead to lots of wet, gross, heavy snow that will fall for all of the hours I will be at work, so that I can be the first to drive in it! Because I don’t have enough to worry about tonight. (It’s just a day like any other. Get in, get report, pass those meds, call any docs, do the paperwork, chart on the computer, go home. My day. My pace. I can do this.) I won’t complain too much about the weather reporting though because I am a huge fan of the terminology being thrown around. Stuff like, “wintry cocktail of precipitation” and “embedded thunderstorms”. All fancy ways of saying the same ominous things to scare the hell out of us because we haven’t had enough “winter” in our winter this year: rain, sleet, snow, then lightning in the night with heavy snowfall. Plus, I get to use all the pictures of sloppy roads and weather-type shots I have been saving for just such an occasion. This post has to be quick because I need to shower and go. The best cure for a nervous stomach is to just face the fear and get it over with. Eleven hours from now, I can officially call myself a full fledged, independant, non-orienting, unprecepted nurse. Chief in charge of my own destiny. But I can’t finish if I don’t start. Later.
View From the Back Door
In case you haven’t noticed… Or in case you don’t live in the Midwest… Or you don’t watch the news… Or go on Facebook…. Or go outside, after watching the news, and reading your friends posts on Facebook, because you live in the Midwest…
IT’S SNOWING.
It’s January. It’s winter. They told us. We expected it. We were ready. But still…we must talk about it. And take pictures! And I am no better. That’s one above. My kids have already played in it for about 2 hours. My BF is still driving in it trying to get home from work. That’s 65 miles away, or so. Takes about an hour, to an hour and a half, on a good day. He left at 3 pm. He texted me this message at 4:30, and I quote: “Ok this sucks royally!!!!” With four exclamations. I told him that he really can’t declare it “royally” sucking until about 6. That’s double the time, with a two-hour lead. It’s coming up on 6 now, and he’s been pretty quiet. I feel his pain, but I’ve never been a “driver” commuter. I always took the train. THAT sucks. I had a two-hour traveling bubble around me at all times. If you start at 9, you need to leave at 7. I mean, it was better than driving into the city every day and parking, but you end up being a slave to the train schedule. Nothing feels as helpless as watching your train close its doors and start moving away as you are frantically running up to it, pounding on its rubber sealed, tinted windows, while the conductor and the other passengers shrug their shoulders and think to themselves, “poor sucker.” Nothing makes you more aware of time, its every minute, and every second, then having a train to catch. Knowing the next one is 26 minutes from now, which puts you back 37 inexplicable minutes once you get to your car, that you still have to get out of the train parking lot and drive home, however far that may be. And all because you left work just a few minutes too late and the elevator took forever and the bus was slow and the people would not walk faster or get out of the way on the sidewalks and stairs, and your ticket was bent and the turnstile was broke…hmm. I don’t even take the train anymore, so I’m just going to stop there.
6:20. No word yet. My dream the whole time I took the train (that’s 19 plus years of fantasizing) was to have a job, in a building, that had its own parking lot attached to it. One where I could drive right up, park, and walk in the door. Where I could carry many things, heavy things, or bulky things, because I wouldn’t have to haul them off a train and onto a bus. Or walk with them another mile to my workplace. Anyway, I called the hospital. Left a message. No call back. I will give them the benefit of Friday and the bad weather. But I sure hope its not me. I have more prospects next week. Drive-able prospects. So it’s all good.
6:30. I better end this now before I get sidetracked again. Dinner is almost done. Meatloaf and mashed potatoes, that I need to get mashed. Still no BF, but I’m sure he’s close. Here’s a picture of the backyard in case you forgot that the original point of this whole post was the snow. Later!
Driving Update: The BF did not get home until 8 PM. Yes. That would be a FIVE hour drive. And that’s not even the longest trip he’s ever had. One time he didn’t get home until 10. That sucks. Sorry honey. XO
On the way to the second-day check-up…
I was sitting at a light. Big intersection. Waiting to turn. The medical building looming to the front left, a cemetery (?) front right, and houses to the side. Suburban residential. Life and death in four corners. And I’m just sitting there. And I think to myself that the truck in front of me turning the opposite way looked so strange. I was tired. It was sunny (no specs, they just broke remember?, didn’t get the new ones yet.) It was hot. 90° and you start seeing stuff. I say to my mom, “That truck looks so strange.” She just agrees. It was so red and square and it had those safety cones hanging off the front…I took the picture…my mom says, “You’re so weird.”
To the Zoo!
Quality time with the kiddies. Stevie is on board. Mason says no. Majority rules! Pictures and updates later! Summer is almost over!
It’s sunny and beautiful here in Chicago! 72° at 10 am. They say the rain is on its way. We better go!
Enjoy your Thursday wherever you are!
EVERY time we go to the zoo! Alligators attack my kids!
Victory is sweet!
just shy of pretty 