Look what I woke up to.

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There’s a half-inch layer of ice on everything. I took this through a crack in my front door. That’s my small front yard past the banisters. I should have taken a picture for you before my Christmas lights came down. It is a wonderful view. Just one levy between us and the rest of our town. The levy used to be a railroad track. Jeez, I’m glad that’s gone. It was literally between my front door and that stop sign. For as far back as I can remember. My favorite thing about it snowing was watching it fall beneath a street light. After waking up two days ago with the outdoors like this. It was shortly after this the electricity went out. I was here in 2009 when the entire southern part of the state went lights out for an entire week. Spent our days at the field house’s warming center. We were struggling with laundry, running out of our gas, waiting in line to get some gas. It was crazy. But people were not rushing the grocers. Instead, they were trying to eat as much as they could before it went bad. At the time I was a lunch lady at the local high school and school was closed but the food had to go somewhere. We cooked the food for the town and any hungry people could eat too. Finally found out his sister was at their mother’s house by herself with a generator big enough to run two houses on backup power. Much more comfortable. We even had cable back after day 3 but still no electricity. I don’t want to relive that episode. We were camping in the freezing cold. But I have been checking out my enormous trees and they are telling me uh oh. Now it’s time to get off-topic. Why don’t they bury the lines underground like the cable is now? No, they are talking about a new above-ground line that fixes itself. Uh okay. Whatever you say. My electric company says we have to pay an extra fee for them to fund updates on their systems and move to solar power. Does that mean I’ll be a shareholder for Ameren UE? Uh-huh, I just bet. Back at task now. All-day Thursday, there were outages. Forbid any of us to get some or done. After we spent Friday watching movies cuddled under heavy quilts lounging in our bed. Friday we became Alaskan nomads. We pulled the laundry basket full of kids with the four-wheelers. Then, of course, we unhooked the basket and played some of our own. Shoveled the walkways and put down some salt. Each of us made our own snow angels, then we drank cocoa when we came in. So far this year our trees held firm. But this summer they all get haircuts. There are two pecan trees in my backyard that reach over the entire house. Then the azalea tree in the driveway threatens all the cars. Now it’s Sunday and the ice has turned everything into a slushy mess.