I thought I could handle the threatened “classic Oklahoma Hook” (a storm system that develops in the Oklahoma panhandle and chugs north toward the Great Lakes bringing a major swath of snow, sleet and freezing rain). I even shrugged at the idea of freezing rain followed by 8-12 inches of snow…been there, done that. But a trio of events put me on edge.
First there was the crazy squirrel. I’ve watched the antics of many squirrels, but this one either knew something about the approaching storm, or sucked down too many cans of Red Bull. As the freezing rain started to fall, the little guy climbed at full speed to the highest branches of the hickory tree and jammed as many dried-up leaves into his mouth as possible. Then he ran across a large branch and hurled himself 5 feet into the air and grabbed onto the nearby Blue Spruce. He scampered down its main truck to a tangle of branches where he furiously tucked and positioned all of the leaves. At first I watched him from the window, but eventually I snuck outside and slid down the icy sidewalk for a better look.
He repeated his frantic pattern over and over again, stopping only to stare at me when I got too close to the tree. Every few minutes I would hear tiny crunching sounds as he shoved more leaves into the makeshift shelter. Okay, maybe the storm was going to be a little more fierce than I had originally thought.
Soon I was distracted by the mailman parking his truck at the top of the street. I have a very steep driveway so I went into the garage and got some salt to toss on the driveway and sidewalk so the poor man wouldn’t kill himself. I went back inside the house and watched as he attempted to deliver the mail to our slippery neighborhood.
Imagine how fun it would be to carry a heavy mailbag across an icy lake with tennis shoes on and you have an idea of how gingerly the mailman had to proceed. It looked exhausting. As he walked by the window with a crabby look on his face, I imagined him murmuring “I’d like to get my hands on the idiot that started that whole ‘neither snow nor sleet nor dark of night’ mantra…” It appeared the storm had riled even the mailman.
Crazy squirrel and crabby mailman aside, I was still feeling pretty confident about weathering the storm (so to speak) until none of my internet pages would load and I couldn’t access my e-mail. WHAT, NO INTERNET? I WILL SURELY DIE!!! I immediately thought of the South Park episode that was linked all over the web earlier this year. The citizens of South Park wake up to no internet connection. One character yells in a panic “Someone get on the Drudge Report and find out why we have no internet!” Sadly that’s how my brain works nowadays too. Coming from a library-loving family and having worked at libraries for almost a decade, the internet is my own little reference librarian, and I am hopelessly addicted to it and can barely function without it.
The thought of enduring a two-day snowstorm without the internet made me shudder. Such cruelty. Bury my house in ice and snow, wind up squirrels like little toys and torture the mailman, but don’t you dare touch my internet connection!
Thankfully the outage must not have been storm related because it lasted a mere 30 minutes. I’d panicked for nothing.
There’s a layer of ice building up on everything outside, and it’s only a matter of time before the temperature drops, the flakes start flying and the winds begin to howl. Me worry? Nah….I have the internet.