Feels Like a Heat Wave

Break out the sunscreen.

Put on the Jimmy Buffet.

We're a balmy 16 degrees out this morning in Albany, Oregon.  Feels like a heat wave.

Don't think I can take this kind of warm.  Going to have to migrate farther north.

Sweating up a storm.  Ice cubes in a bag on my head so I don't swoon.

Gosh darn.

My neighbors water heater is empty, but she had it on, not knowing where her pipes were frozen, or, at first, that it was empty.  They were frozen between the street and the water heater, turns out.  Another neighbor put a heater on one of her frozen outside faucets and it promptly ruptured.

She has a call in to a plumber.  She'll probably have to get a new water heater, too, right?  Don't they fry if its on without water inside?

She's getting water to drink and for flushing the toilet here and taking showers here.  Her teen son refuses.  So funny.

The other neighbor, a contractor, told her lots of people whose pipes are now frozen will end up with ruptured pipes so to get her call in to a plumber quickly.

My friends up in Lebanon are providing water to a neighbor with frozen pipes.  They came down yesterday and took me to Bimart where I bought a new battery for my car. My heroes!!  Despite owning a heavy four wheel drive vehicle, they slipped some on the roads.

 Later in the day I installed the new battery and the car started right up, so I could I not resist going out for a spin in the snow.  Roads were not that bad, just a little slippery in some places.  Major intersections in town are graveled and some, bare pavement.  The main drag, to town and stores, a street a block from my street, is still caked white completely in ice and snow.  It's so beautiful.  Many stores have completely cleared and de iced their parking lots, probably hoping to lure back Christmas shoppers.

Since I don't own chains, my usual method of ice or snow driving is to let air out of my tires.  My usual method for traction walking on ice, is to wear over sized socks over my shoes or to tie cut up towels around my shoes.  Works good.

Last night I settled into bed early, surrounded by my cats, with a John Steinbeck book, East of Eden.  It's the War and Peace novel of Steinbeck, very long, an epic tale, I read.  I bought the book at a library book sale.  The last Steinbeck I read was To a God Unknown and that was quite different than Cannery Row or Tequila Flats, which will likely always be my favorite Steinbeck.  Of Mice and Men, and Grapes of Wrath are good, but Tequila Flats is something else.  So I settled in to start this lengthy Steinbeck but my cats would not have it, and interfered severely begging attention with such aggression I gave up the reading to direct my sleepy energies to pleasing them.  And promptly I was asleep and dreaming!

There's nothing better I can think of right now than an early night, under my warm comforter, surrounded in cats, night sky crystal clear, a bluish black, through the bedroom window, stars shining brilliant white off the luminous snow.

I think we're headed for a real heat wave though, back to Oregon normal---which for this time of year is.....what else.....gray and rain!

Today will be one more day of cold here in Oregon's mid valley.  Highs are not expected to reach 30 degrees.  Almost seems normal now.