Slush, snow, freezing rain

I need to enhance my vocabulary for snow.   SNOW doesn't really do justice to the nuances of white stuff that we've enjoyed in Seattle over the past 4 days.   Seattle doesn't do well with snow.  I mean, sure, we love it but normal routines stop:  schools close, many people don't make it in to office jobs and my bank declared "rolling closure due to unseasonal weather conditions."    In Seattle's defence, our city IS hilly and we don't get snow much so things are designed for it.  I followed a snow plow along a major arterial yesterday and it was the first plowed road I had seen!

Following a snowplowed route at Northgate!

 This morning, I woke to the sound of snow falling like 'pic, pic, pic' sounds and thought it might be hail.  It wasn't.  It was tiny pellets of slushy rain that made my fleece wet immediately and, according to the NWSwe are in an ice storm.

I noticed it last night when I woke.  Snow makes the night quite  brilliant, especially if you have a moon or city lights.    From the gray snow-lighted uncurtained windows, I didn't need lights to walk around the house but when I looked at the trees the branches were all shiny, covered with ice.

Our street yesterday

The boys walk home after sledding.

 Although we were scheduled for a thaw today, the conditions are still the same.  Snow is falling and as I look out the window all the cars in our street are covered in 3-4 inches of snow.  Nobody is driving past but a family - a father and two tiny children - just slid by in an ungainly practice on cross-country skis.

The weather does bring out it's share of crazies.  Although the sidewalks are fine to walk, I have seen people snowshoeing to the coffee shop.  Yesterday afternoon we had some guys on quad bikes roaring around the snowy hills and we had to pull Wren off the sled to let them pass. 

Ice rain is very cold

Wren hated walking in the snow because it got in his
face and his hood was missing.  He had to sit backwards
in the sled

Frost loved sledding and had a sleepover at
a friend's house. He is hoping to sled Gasworks Park
this morning.

In the late afternoon, Wren and I made a snow fort
which he used "as a weapons' stand" for a
snowball fight.

Snowmageddon, Slushmageddon?

There has been another day of light snow chez nous. We enjoyed the cold - the icicles that formed on our rain chain as the melting snow refroze overnight - and managed to get outside a few times at least.  The nicest thing about snow is the feeling of being on vacation when you're at home.  We can look out any window and it feels as if we are in another country, a strange and special place where we could ski, drink hot chocolate all day and read books wrapped in a blanket.  It really slows things down!

On the remains of a giant snowman at Greenlake Field

Beezle did not want to sit on this snowball

The boys liked this spike-haired snowman (we didn't make it)

According to our local weather celebrity, it is "a major snow event" and we face either Slushmageddon or Snowmageddon over the next few days.  We could see 2-15 inches of snow by the end of Wednesday and variable like the location of the trough and speed of warming (rain vs snow) will be deciding factors over the next 48 hours.

This is not usual in Seattle.  Its the kind of thing that really tests local utilities and administration.  Many credit the last Mayor with losing re-election due to his botched response to our last "major snow event" which shut the city down for days.

At our place, the kids are begging, hoping and praying for a few days off school for snow.   Not coping the the tension or unknowing Wren has begged me to:

Just say it RIGHT NOW that I don't go to school tomorrow.  Just say it anyway!

I am less cantankerous than usual at the prospect because Joshua cleaned the dump zone in the hutch so I feel a great burden has been removed from my shoulders and that, along with the clean kitchen, makes anything possible - even doing some work while the kids are off school.

Or building a snow-titan if the snow really falls.  Or sledding!

Its sounding better all the time.

Boy Vs Nature

I was playing with iMovie and made this up.  Sorry for the abrupt ending.  I ran out of time :)

Big Snow (for Seattle)

Japanese Maple in our front yard

My family in the sub-tropics thinks of Seattle as a zone of evergreens and snowy vistas.  My family in the mid-west think we are all about rain.  The truth is that Seattle has some clear but non-traditional seasons known only to those who live here.  They are:

Blazing heat and Drought Season:  August
Thank god its started raining / Oh god I am so depressed the summer ended Season (Fall):  Sept-Nov
Its dark and cold but its never going to snow Season:  December -February
The one day of snow season:  One day in December or January
Lets-go-Someplace-Sunny Season (when everyone leaves town):  Feb-April
Sort-of-Spring-maybe:  May-June
Sort-of-Summer-maybe:  July

Today is Seattle's "Annual Day of Snow" season.   Everyone is happy that it is on a weekend and they don't have to go to work and even happier that it will continue to snow tomorrow and be a public holiday as well.   The kids are thrilled its going to continue for a few more days.  They are all hoping that we will get more than the inch now on the ground so they can go sledding.

The arsenal of snowballs to hit Fred

Frost and Alex

This evening the boys made 150 snowballs in hope of hitting Fred.  Fred has a reputation for being a formidable target but this evening was ill-prepared with only a cashmere sweater to mark the hits.

Alexander has a frighteningly good throw which is more dangerous when the snowballs have solidified into ice-rocks.

Wren said "Do not throw any snowballs at me!"  then threw them at everyone.

Beezle went for a snow walk but since that time has hidden from me.  I suspect he is eating raw meat in my bed.  The thing with the raw food for dogs theory is that dogs take their kills to the den and the den is often something plush that should not have raw meat on it.

But that is a story for another day. 

Wren on the Snow Beezle we made in the yard

Cardiology Clinic & Icy Weather

Wren had another cardiology check-up today. It is still icy (was 17 degrees F, around -7C, when I left at 8am this morning) and the streets were packed white with ice. The arterials were clear but there were almost no cars out.

I found clinic very difficult. When I watched the echo it was clear that there is still a lot of turbulence through the aortic valve. After the echo there was a long wait to see Dr Olson and I started to imagine the worst - he needed surgery again NOW, the valve was failing, he was in heart failure.

It turns out that its not that bad. His gradient was up a bit - 3.8mm/sec through the valve - but Dr Olson felt it was still relatively stable. Why can't stable be lower? Why does it have to creep? The mitral valve is still mild-moderate.

What I realized is that I am very very anxious about Wren's heart but I don't think about it day to day as much as I did pre-surgery. That doesn't mean my anxiety has gone anywhere except underground. I am starting to understand those parents who steal their children from hospital and run away with them. With Wren looking so good day to day it feels as if the hospital makes him be a sick kid and when he is at home everything is fine. As we approach the hospital both Wren and I feel lousy. Wren starts asking for comfort ("want milk?") and reassurance ("no owie?" "Owie all gone?") while I feel sick and defensive and like bursting into tears.

I just can't stand the tension of waiting to hear how the echo is. I wish the Doctors could be standing right there and explaining things to me so I wouldn't have to go through such a process of dread. Today was worse because there was a delay post-echo (probably due to ppl being delayed by snow).

Our next appointment is in 3 months so we shall be able to get a better sense of the trend in gradient. We can taper lasix to 1X day for a week and then stop it.

In January, I am going to see a therapist I saw last year. Hopefully she can help me put these fears in perspective and to cope a bit better.

Snow activities
I took the rice out of the sensory table and let the boys play with snow in it. Frost liked to melt it with the hairdryer and Wren wanted to eat and scoop it. They were both very excited and ran around the house squeaking and talking about it, wanting more and wanting to HAVE IT ALL.

We also went for a walk and it was very cold but lovely to see the sun. Wren wanted to walk a long way but he lacks good snow boots so I brought him home after one lap of the block. He saw icicles, ate frozen raspberries, wanted to see the chickens and examined the stones in the sidewalk poking through the snow. Here is Frost dragging Wren in the sled and then sledding with Elias yesterday.



Frost wanted to talk about everything all the time. When I didn't talk fast enough he would narrate his experience to Wren. Frost was hunting for icicles and wanted to harvest them from strangers homes. He also liked making snowballs. He didn't want to go sledding today. If there is more snow this weekend I shall insist!

Here they are in the garden building a snow fort for the army guys.