New Englander 101

So today marks the 9th time we have gotten the car stuck in our driveway in two weeks. There is snow up to my fence. I skipped ice skating this weekend because I slid so much on ice all week (and fell) that the thought made me want to scream.

This is my backyard. A heaven to many many layers of snow. What am I getting at? I’m SO not used to/ready for this. I laughed when Yale offered a class in “New England Winters 101” when we first got here. Surely, it can’t be that bad in CT they need a class on how to cope with winter? Oh, can I please rewind? Can I take that class? Because this winter has shown me a few things:

• There is this invention called a boot tray. It’s to keep your nasty, salty, wet boots from ruining your floors, like above photo. I should have ordered them weeks ago. I’m ordering 2 now.
• Speaking a shoes, I own a pair of rainboots and used to own a pair of cute black boots from TJ Max I got for $20 that were stylish. Those black boots died after the fact that the had no traction/tread made me slip for the 346457 time and I promptly yelled at them. And then banished them. I need real boots.
• I don’t know how to shovel snow. Yes, laugh all you want, but there is a skill in shoveling snow. I don’t have it. I manage to get some snow in the shovel but promptly loose it all as I’m trying to dump it elsewhere. And you should probably own a snow shovel before 3 massive snow storms dump over two feet of snow on you because you will never ever find a shovel anywhere. So your neighbors pity you and give you their old shovel.
• Your sweet 2003 honda civic does not have the power to make it up your driveway with any snow or ice. So you will get stuck 9 times in two weeks, spending a total of 8 hours getting unstuck. I kid you not. I abandoned our driveway and now park across from our house in the street.
• Hoard. Hoard like a crazy cat lady all the winter supplies you can. Those 2 40 pound bags of salt you got from Home Depot way back in December? Ya, used up in 1 day. And now I can’t find any. Nor a shovel. Or an ice breaker upper thingie my neighbor has.

Which brings us to the last lesson. One I’m still learning. Remember that pretty blue room I was trying to figure out which gray to paint? Well my indecision paid off people! Natalie actually said my obsessiveness on the gray paint was good because…drum roll people: We have to repaint the whole room now anyway! Why? Because when we came home from home depot (with paint samples but no shovel, humph) on Thursday night we found a big surprise.

We have a giiiiiiant leak. It’s called “ice damning” which means massive amounts of water comes from your gutter, through your walls, into your house. And by leak, we are not talking “Drip…….drip……drip” we are talking “Drip,dripdripsrip, trickle, drip”. We call roofers. And apparently we are not alone. Lots and lots of people are having this issue along with their roof collapsing. So. We are on a waiting list to fork over hundreds of dollars just to stop the leak. Then we get to replace the window, gut the walls because of water damage, and then we will repaint gray! But I did find my gray: Martha Stewart’s Heavy Goose. So there!! Take that winter!!