blizzard, buffalo
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well it was shaping up to be not a very merry christmas, but the sun came
out so we went out to shovel.
cut for photos and blathering
in my driveway, looking west toward the garage. [image: snow, a drift of at
least five feet pressed up against a small white garage, nearly obscuring
the door; the corner of a house, heavily-drifted, but a section of driveway
scraped down to the pavement by wind.]
My driveway, looking east toward the road. I set about shoveling this
drift, but it broke me and i gave up and only removed the left half of it,
to clear part of the driveway to make a foot path. [image description: a
drift coming around the side of a house, about four feet in height but
quite thick, in front of a car with very little snow on it. Beyond that, a
man in blaze orange snow pants is throwing snow onto a pile; he is up to
his thighs in snow.]
Dude started out by the sidewalk. The street wasn’t plowed, so we figured
ther was no point clearing by the road because when they came by they’d
plow us right back in. (This is the horror that all of us in the snow belt
know: when they plow the road, it throws a snowbank into your driveway.)
But after we’d been working for maybe an hour, we heard an engine, and
looked and there was a town snowplow working on the cross-street a block
up. We were very excited about this; I ran out to take a photo of it. But
then imagine our shock and delight when it turned and came down our street
next! Dude ran back in front of my car to get clear, and it came down the
road in a glorious explosion of snow, operating at full speed– Town of
Tonawanda operates big highway plows so this guy was probably going 30-40
mph, flinging debris a good 20 feet either side. it’s the only way to deal
with snow this deep and heavy.
Once plowed out, we focused our efforts on getting a pathway to the street.
[image: my partner, a six foot three inch man in orange snow pants, sits on
a hunk of snow in a tiny passage he’s digging one shovel blade wide through
a heavy snowbank. he looks tired.]
Once we’d dug out, we came inside, cleaned up, and then assembled our goods
and hiked a quarter-mile down the street to dude’s mom’s house. Just over
the border into the city of buffalo, no plows had been by but people were
trying to dig themselves out.
[image description: footprints in snow in foreground, midground is the man
in the orange snowpants carrying a shovel over his shoulder, background is
a row of houses.] Note the cloud bank behind the houses: this is looking
south. That is a lake effect front still dumping on south buffalo, which
had been spared the worst of this storm but now is Getting It, though I
think less severely.
Once at Dude’s mom’s house we unwrapped some presents and then made
appetizers. These were what we’d planned to bring to a party on Christmas
eve that got cancelled: Lil Smokies sausages wrapped in those Pilsbury
crescent rolls that come in a tube.
[image description: pastries with tiny hot dogs sticking out of the ends of
them, on a platter]
I’m pleased to report that I managed to wear the me-made dress I’d intended
for Christmas after all; it traveled beautifully under my snow pants.
Merino wool, baby.
[image description: the author, a fat blonde woman, is posing in front of a
large mirror wearing a knee-length wool dress that’s quite tight-fitting
through the bodice and flares a bit in the skirt. It is maroon-red with
elbow-length sleeves.] That’s a Cashmerette Turner
https://www.cashmerette.com/collections/size-12-32-patterns/products/turner-dress-pdf-pattern,
modded to include side seam pockets.
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