The secondary roads are posted which means bright orange signs posted on telephone poles litter the rural scenery. In Maine this means it’s spring.
This weekend, despite the calendar date, we are going to get snow. Again. Initial reports were for 2-10 inches. And more, perhaps, later this week.
Even this girl has had enough and is ready for tulips. Which I forgot to plant last fall.
Welcome spring! Let it snow!
Gone knitting.
December 27, 2014
Belgrade, Maine
Thank God yesterday looked like this.
Today looks like this …
December 28, 2014
Belgrade, Maine
There is a trace of snow and the lake is only semi-frozen but it’s still my favorite place to be. We decided to eat out and to sleep in the bedroom since it’s not particularly cold this year. The baseboard electric antique heaters from the 50s are working enough to take the chill off the bedroom and the electric blanket was even too warm for N last night. We both turned it off after it warmed the sheets. Climbing into cold sheets in Maine in the winter when you live in Florida is sheer torture. The wood stove is keeping the house a toasty warm and we’ve managed to wash faces and brush teeth with water carried in and using a two-bucket method (one for fresh and one for dirty).
My least favorite part is this …
The dreaded outhouse … or “chick sales”
As a nod to my willingness to camp and use the outhouse for a couple of days, I got the sweetest gift at Christmas … a fleece toilet seat cover for the outhouse seat. While it may seem silly, it really does make it more bearable and it’s good to be home!
Gone knitting (or out to breakfast)!
Safe at Home
Last night one of my neighbors’ homes (only two houses away from our home) was struck by lightning and caught fire. It made for an “exciting” few minutes as I smelled smoke in our own house and after sniffing around (really, I did sniff around) realized that it was coming from down the street. N went out to help find their dog who is blind and was terrified by the storm and the emergency response vehicles.
They say that lightning doesn’t strike twice … but tonight’s storm just missed the house that was hit a few years ago (and just happens to stand between ours and the one hit last night.) Too close for comfort, in my opinion.
While I may not be knitting a whole bunch, I am living a busy and full life. My children and siblings and all their families are healthy. Our home is safe and dry. We have so much to be thankful for.
Life is good.
Gone knitting.
Home - even if it needs paint and landscaping and there's construction trash in the front yard!
It’s not always easy to leave Maine but this time I think we were ready – or mostly ready, at least. The big Nor’Easter probably helped our readiness a bit, too. We left the house in Maine on Saturday – also dump day which is why it was the chosen day – and headed to my brother and sister-in-law’s house on Boston’s north shore. We hit snow flurries and wet snow in lower Maine and it kept up to Massachusetts but as we neared the ocean, it turned to rain. Overnight, the big October storm hit … but where we were it was no big deal so on we pushed.
The biggest mistake we made was not filling up the truck with gas at the “cheapest gas station in the world” that we pass in Salem, MA. So, when we were starting to need gas (and a pit stop, too) in Connecticut, our first stop was a total flop. No power means no fuel – no pumps working. No lights in the rest areas. Doors blocked by huge closed signs. We got off the highway no fewer that three times and each time, we were unsuccessful finding a gas station (that was most important!) with power.
My old “home-ish” towns of West Hartford and Farmington had more power lines down that I could have imagined. Since we were pulling the Hobie Cat (an 18-foot sailboat) it was a bit dicey managing turns and avoiding downed power lines and tree branches. We gave up when we hit New Britain and were planning to head to a LaQuinta hotel that we’d stayed at on our way to Maine when we found a gas station in the projects that seemed to be pumping gas. We only slightly brushed the sailboat against the bumper of another guy’s car (enough to elicit some four letter words from N but no damage to the other car) on the way in and they only had premium gas (or so they said) but we filled up and were on our way again. A near miss. And who knows how many days we’d have been stranded without gas. There are still 200,000 people in Connecticut today who don’t have power returned to their homes.
So, when the rest of the trip went off without a hitch, we were relieved and pleased and grateful. And I have to admit it’s good to be home … even if it’s Florida!
Gone knitting.
Queen Bee Knits 