Brrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!

I awoke this morning to a (minus) -12 degrees with windchill at -18 degrees. Nothing works in negative degrees. Nothing.

My car didn't want to start, my garage door was frozen to the (concrete) drive and our electricity is going off and on. Without electric, we have no HEAT! I don't think I can make it without heat. I told my husband that we should go to a hotel tonight (just in-case) we should lose our power. I spoke to a friend of mine who is living in Florida for the winter months and she said it was in the lower 40's there.....in Florida!

What the heck? Even the warm States are going through a cold spell. My mother-in-law who lives in Alabama (it is usually in the lower 70's during the month of January) said it was in the lower 40's and had gotten down into the 30's overnight. She had to turn on her furnace, which are wall unit that burn natural gas, but in no-way would I consider it a furnace. It only heats the room in-which it is located in, so it does not distribute heat through-out like my Real furnace does.

It stays so warm down in Alabama, that most people don't have garages, they have car-ports. It just covers the top of the car with 2 sides exposed and 2 sides closed to the elements. Here we have to have garages or the weather will damage our vehicle's.

In the summer we have BAD storms. Tornado's and hail to the point that if your vehicle's are outside, they will receive some sort of damage from it. And then you have our blistering winters with (minus) degree's of coldness and ice to the extreme of losing power for days until the electric company can make it to your home. If you live in the country you may be without power for weeks. Most have generators to use so that you can have heat and minimal lighting at night.

Years ago in March of 1990 (on my birthday to be exact) we had a very bad Ice storm that last for 3 days and 2 nights. The ice was 4 - 6 inches thick on the power lines and trees, which made them snap in two. We had a tree that was many years old. It decided that it could no longer take the weight of the ice and snow. Well, it broke onto our house, luckily it landed more so on our garage instead of the house and didn't expose us to the cold, but sure did scare the shit out of me when it hit the house/garage and made the most god-awful sound.

We were stranded in our house for 4 days without power or heat. The Governor had made it a State of Emergency and you could only be out if it was an emergency and if caught they would prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.

We had snowmobiles and were able to get to family and friends who needed medicine or food. We used the fireplace that we had in our family room for heat and cooking. We shut off the other rooms with plastic to keep the heat in one room and cooking off the fire. We unfortunately did not have a Generator and could not fine one or a vacant hotel within our city limits or next city over. Everything around us was sold out or occupied. Not even milk or bread was available for weeks until the ice and snow melted to be able to get trucks into our city. It was a mess.

I remembered reading somewhere that 9 months later from the date of the storm there was recorded record amount of babies born ever in our city. I guess we all know what most couples were doing with their time being shut in their house with nothing else to do but make babies.

It was a fun time although I was sick to death of Chili and Soups. That was all we had to make over a open flame and couldn't find anything else in what few stores that were open.......and even that was very limited. Some stores stayed closed for almost a month before they re-stocked their inventory to open back up.

We have had a few more Ice storms since. We even had one a month ago, but nothing compared to that one. I think it made history for the longest and most dangerous Ice storm on record for the Mid-West.

Oh well, I don't think our community could take another jump in the population like it did back then. We would need to build on to our maternity wards in our 3 hospitals, cause god knows just the 3 wards that we have is nearly not enough. They were birthing babies in the Emergency Rooms because they had ran out of rooms and space within the hospital. Now that's bad.