Snow!

When I was thinking about what I should write today, I kept coming up with things I wrote about last week. My medical issues, Teen A's loss of his IEP, their birthday, which is over, so drop it.

Oh, wait, I thought. I remember what happened this week! We got two and a half feet of snow! Our official total for the city of Boulder was 30 inches, which is a lot of snow. 

Not only did we get 30 inches of snow, but they canceled school for TWO days. I can't even remember the last time they canceled school for two days. (They say this was the biggest snow in three years, so maybe it was three years ago.) Happily, they allowed theatrical performances to take place Friday night (Thursday's were canceled), so Teen B and I were able to see Boulder High's performance of the musical "Big Fish," which I enjoyed thoroughly. But anyway, today is the fourth day of a four-day weekend. I told the kids we should get a lot of homework done during that time. Did we? No. We did a little. But most of it we saved for today, as usual. La la la.

The snow was so heavy and wet that it did a lot of damage to our trees, some of which I am not sure how to deal with. In this photo (taken today, after some good melting), you can see a large branch that fell from our Siberian elm. The branch took out our clothesline -- you can see the post still standing, with the lines coming from it, and the other end, a plastic rectangle, lying in the snow.

Although I was sorry to lose the clothesline, I didn't mind having that branch come down. It had been messing with our little oak tree (in the picture, it's right next to the little shed), making it hard for it to grow. With that branch gone, the oak tree will have room to grow tall and strong.

But our next-door neighbor and tenant alerted us to another problem -- the branch also fell on a bunch of wires that attach to the telephone pole. The wires still seem to be attached, but they are down much lower than they should be, blocking access to the back gate, among other things. I had no idea what those wires were. We still had power, we still had internet and phone service. 

I called Rocket Boy, who knows everything. "I think those are the phone lines," he said. "But we don't have regular phone service anymore," I pointed out. "When we got high speed internet, I think they switched us to something else, like VOIP." "It still has wires," Rocket Boy insisted. "Call Public Service. I mean, call Qwest. I mean--" "You mean, call CenturyLink," I said, coming up with the current name for the phone company. "Do you want me to call them?" he offered. "Oh, no, I can do it," I said. "I don't know if they'll be there on Saturday, though." "They have to have someone there for emergencies," he pointed out. 

So, OK, I called CenturyLink. Easier said than done! First, I got the message that customer service was only available on weekdays, though I was welcome to talk to their automated system. But if I had an emergency, I could report it on the website. So I went to the website. I am not lying, the customer service/report-an-emergency page was not working. Try back later, the website encouraged me. Or call customer service. I attempted to use the Chat feature, but it just spun and spun. So I called customer service again and tried to talk to the automated system. It was a pretty stupid automated system, though, and kept giving me only two or three choices, none of which was right. "No option has been selected," it kept scolding me. Finally I started screaming at it. I know you shouldn't scream at automated systems, but I must have done something right, because it transferred me to a person. In India. A very nice person in India, who said his name was Louie, but still. 

Louie was actually helpful, though a little confused. He managed to make me an appointment to have my wires looked at. For Monday. OK, that's fine, I think. I don't think the wires are dangerous, as long as we don't touch them, and anyway, with all the snow there is no chance I would be going near them anytime soon (our tenant promised to stay away from them too -- they're half in her yard). When Louie read back to me the description of my complaint, he said, "Wires and telephone pole are lying around the yard." I decided to go with that, even though it wasn't true.

So on Monday I won't go to the grocery store, I'll just sit and wait for CenturyLink. Should be fun.

That big branch isn't the only one that came down, though. There's this thing lying partly on our roof. I think it may not be fully detached -- I can see a big rip in the branch -- which is actually worse. If it were fully detached, I could haul it off to the front yard, but if it's not, I can either wait for another big windstorm to take it down, or hire a tree-trimmer -- and you know ALL the tree-trimmers in the area are going to be really busy right now, charging high prices. Hmm.

I told Rocket Boy last summer that we needed to have that tree pruned and he said no, that we'd already had all that damage done to the maple tree (by Xcel Energy) and he didn't want anyone else messing with the trees. I reminded him of that on the phone yesterday and he totally gaslighted me. "I didn't say that, or if I did, I meant that I didn't want Xcel to come back and damage the trees," he claimed. "That's ridiculous," I spluttered at him. "Of COURSE I wouldn't have had Xcel come back, I would have hired a professional!" But I couldn't yell at him too much, because I need his help, and anyway, it's too late to have already hired a tree-trimmer last summer.

In the front yard, a big branch came off from somewhere -- not quite sure where. I think it's from the little volunteer Siberian Elm that I keep hacking at, trying to kill it and then feeling bad and stopping. At first the branch was balanced on end, but then it fell over, blocking the path to the street, so I had to drag it across the lawn. The snow was so deep (seriously, 30 inches is deep), that I kept postholing, stepping deep into the snow with each step. I was afraid I'd hurt myself, but I had to get that branch out of the way so that the mailman could get to our house, etc., so I kept pulling and falling, pulling and falling. Now it's there, and it can just stay there until I figure out what to do with it. And all the other branches that are down in the backyard.

One bright spot is the lilac, which I was afraid was badly damaged by the storm. Part of it popped up by itself yesterday, as the snow melted, but the front half of it was still just lying there, buried in snow. I figured its branches were broken, and I was so sad. But just to check, I went out there this morning (after our Starbucks run), and tried to pull the branches out of the snow. And what do you know -- they weren't broken! (mostly) they were just covered with heavy, wet snow. Now they aren't fully back to normal -- they're kind of low to the ground, blocking the path to the back gate. But I think they'll recover with time. I'm really happy about the lilac.

***

On a completely different subject, the other thing I've been doing this past week is writing my memoirs. A couple of months ago I was working on a big genealogy project; now, it's my memoirs. The difference is that I'm writing these primarily for myself. I may never share them with anyone. If my kids ever express interest, say 20 years from now, maybe I could create an edited version for them, just hit the high points. I've written about 15 pages so far and haven't even gotten myself out of elementary school. Just think what's left: junior high, high school, college (Davis and Berkeley), the years after college, living at home, being a typesetter, traveling around the world, then moving into a group house, psychoanalysis, graduate school, life in Michigan, the move to Boulder, getting a job, buying a condo, meeting Rocket Boy, our courtship and marriage, and having the twins.

Everything since May 2009, when I started blogging, is more or less covered by my blogs, so I could just defer to them at that point. I'll see when I get there, if I ever do.

The main reason I want to do this is because I feel as though I'm losing my memories. It's easy to understand why that's happening. It's hard to keep track of so many things -- my brain has to edit some of it out. I'm finding that I still have a lot of memories -- they're just buried. But some are messed up -- what I remember isn't what happened. It's definitely a strange experience, trying to write this.

For instance, right now I'm trying to remember music education in elementary school. I know I played the clarinet for a year plus summer school -- but which year was that? Was it 5th? or 4th or 6th? I can't connect it with any other memory. And then when did I take piano lessons from my aunt? I want to say I started in 5th grade and quit in 8th, but I'm not sure. Does it make sense that I would have started clarinet and piano at the same time? Did I play clarinet in 4th, then quit and start piano? Or did I start piano in 5th and add clarinet in 6th? No idea. It doesn't matter, of course, except that dramatic things were going on during elementary school, in our family, so it does matter (to me) which year I did what (and therefore what else was going on at the same time).

***

So, one more week before spring break. We have our plane tickets, long since paid for, and I've contacted the cat sitters, although we haven't given them the key yet. 

Other than that, what do I need to do to prepare? Laundry, at the last minute, which means next Saturday, and eating the perishable contents of the fridge throughout the week. Helping the kids finish all the school projects that are due on Friday. Reading as many of my library books as I can. For some reason I have 10 books checked out of the library right now, and nine of them are due before we get home. I'm going to return five of them today, and one of them is actually a book that Teen B is reading for school and it's not due until April, so I won't worry about it. That leaves four books to finish in the next six days. I haven't started any of them yet. We'll see how it goes.