We interrupt this blog for....

an ice storm!

What a week this has been! My heart has always gone out to anyone who was without power, but this time we were one of those experiencing the power loss. It definitely gets cold in the house! There are far worse things that can happen in life though and we are thankful we had a roof over our heads and we were all safe.

With that said, I hope we never experience this again! We knew we would be okay and that the S-Girls {Sasha and Sweetie} would make it just fine. Sasha is a Samoyed and German Shepherd mix, so with her Northern heritage she has one thick coat. She had been "practicing" for this by spending more and more time outside the last few weeks. I was amazed how much time she wanted outside before the ice storm. This gave her great insulation! I wonder if she sensed this was coming?

The first couple of days in the dark, the girls seemed puzzled. Since their food dishes and water bowl kept refilling as needed, they decided this was an adventure we were on. When the lights finally came on Friday afternoon, we started cheering. Sweetie got so excited at our jubilation she started running up and down the hall. She would stop right in front of Sasha and bark, then race down the hall and back to Sasha, barking again as she briefly stopped. DH {Dear Hubby} finally opened the back door, went out with Sweetie and let her run outside where she did some more laps around the backyard before coming inside again. He lovingly calls her our "lap" dog because she enjoys running laps.

The family member we were most concerned for was Bonzo, our Okatee Corn Snake. I put two folded towels over him and then scrunched up every sheet and pillow case we were not using all around the outside of his enclosure. I was going for a cocoon effect hoping all of that would provide some protection from the dropping temperature. We did not move anything until the heat had been back on for almost 8 hours. Late Friday evening I took the first towel off, then moved a corner of the bottom towel. When I saw instant movement, I was so elated! This is my buddy and I did not want to be burying my friend after this ice storm. I then moved the bottom towel totally off of him and saw that sweet face looking at me, flicking his tongue all around to catch the scent particles in the air. I covered him back up and left the towels over him until the next morning when he started coming out from underneath the towels on his own. Then I knew he felt warm enough to have the towels removed.

Bonzo started his life with us as a Christmas gift for DS {Dear Son}. Since college dorms and many apartment complexes do not allow reptiles, Bonzo has remained with us. He has always appeared to be interested in what I am doing. Since we are not going to breed Bonzo, we have never had him {or is it a her?} sexed. His abode is near my desk. I will be working along, look over and there will be my friend with his head raised up looking at me.

Bandit, our son's iguana passed on this summer. It would have been so difficult to keep him {another guess on the gender} warm during the outage. We probably would have lost Bandit. I am thankful all in our household are doing well!

Here is a video from the storm. The beginning is at a grocery store where the store director is showing the long lines of people who were stocking up after the ice storm first hit and the store's power was restored. After the grocery store shots, our newspaper added someone else's video {the music starts there}. They drove around and captured the aftermath, so do not stop watching during the middle of the long grocery lines:

The picture below is a common site this weekend, with tree limbs covering almost all of a lot of people's yards.

One of our neighbors has really had tree destruction this year. The tree to the right of the tree that was ripped apart during this storm, was hit by lightening this summer and that tree sustained a lot of damage on one side:

As we drove around, all over the place we saw trees that were ripped apart from the weight of the ice. Here is another neighbor's tree:

Instead of ripping apart, one neighbor's tree just came out of the ground.


Trees limbs are laying in just about every yard you see:

We are so fortunate as we do not have any damage.

Here is our rose bush that keeps on surviving. You can see the weight of the ice has pulled it almost to the ground.

Today the ice is gone and snow is in it's place. Our rose bush is beginning to come back up off the ground and will no doubt produce many beautiful flowers when the warm weather again returns next year.

Special thanks to all who helped restore our power and other services! Many live here and many came from a number of states! Please accept our heartfelt gratitude!

It was way too cold {and dark} to knit this week, but I did get some good reading in by flashlight. I am looking forward to some knitting time this week!

Carpe Knitting,
KZ