Snowy Sunday

The sun is shining brightly on the snow- it’s Sunday one o’clock in the afternoon. We are supposed to be at church in Dnepropetroesk for the church luncheon today. Hopefully Garry is there, he took off with a lot of milk in the car this morning (and the salads I made last night) saying that it would be better if only one person got stuck in the snow. He hoped the highway was plowed and figured that if he got stuck between the village and the road that he’d phone and Maxim could bring the tractor to pull him out. It took longer to get things done in the barn this morning- Garry said it was like a blizzard when they went out to do chores this morning. It was minus 12 C, this morning, got up to -6 for a high. Then they used the loader to clean the driveway of snow, so they could get the car around from the side of the house to the other side in front of the barn to load up the milk, since the tires were spinning on the ice under the snow.

One problem with his plan of going it alone- no internet service this morning also means that cell service (we have 3G cell phone internet from Kievstar) is poor- the network has been down or calls aren’t getting through- my phone rang half an hour ago- I could see it was Garry calling- but when I answered nothing – my phone informed me I had missed the call. So I’ve tried phoning him but either no network or user busy, so who knows what happened. Based on when he phoned I’d guess he made it and church was over. 1:20 and the phone rang- once again Garry and I missed connecting - my end Hello! Hello! So I put on a coat and shoes and went outside (where it sometimes works better) and tried calling him back- TWICE- with no success getting through. There is at least four maybe six inches of new snow, that’s drifting in the driveway again. The drifts in the front yard look to be 2-3 feet high.

Last night at 9:30 pm we discovered the pretty snowflakes of the afternoon had turned bad- that’s when the lights went out. The snow had coated the trees and apparently the powerlines, and the wind picked up- in fact after Garry went outside to see if the ladies needed help- they are normally just finishing milking at that time but still are finishing up and washing things until about ten. Maxim had already gotten there- he was visiting a friend in the village, and had turned on the tractor lights so they could see what they were doing. The boys had found a light a wind-up flashlight (after lighting matches- why can boys always locate matches? Still shudder to think of the time our son Josh – about nine- and his cousin Adam spent a Sunday afternoon lighting matches in my bedroom and hiding them under the cupboard while we were milking- of course they couldn’t understand why I could smell it later) and we had managed to turn on the battery powered push light over the toilet – the bathroom as no windows and with the number of times the powers out, it seemed to be a good idea. Fortunately the batteries still worked. So we all went to bed (the boys watching Friends on battery power) and were amazed to wake up and find the lights on- they came back around 4 am- normally power outages are only fixed in daylight.

Got through to Garry at quarter to three- they were still eating lunch, church was packed and he said all the milk sold. He said Victor had only sold about half of his usual amount of milk as his church had poor attendance because of the weather. He said he was glad we didn’t come with him- only one lane open on the highway with a foot of snow in it- the other lane had 4 foot drifts. Hopefully the highway has improved when he comes back this afternoon-although the wind is still gusting and blowing snow around occasionally. Turned out that was a bit too hopeful- he got home around 5:30, says it’s crazy- the highway’s still not plowed, sometimes only one lane is drivable but the crazy fast driving SUV’s are still trying to get people to move over so they can blow by the slower cars, even when there is no place to go, or a giant drift coming up. Let’s hope for real plowing soon- the sudden unplowed lane was the cause of many accidents last year- and some speedracer/passer cut in inches in front of our car at one of the sections where there was a wall of snow blocking the slow lane- scary when you’re sitting in the passenger seat. No warning signs, so unless you drove it everyday, surprise- check out my posts from last February and March. Garry said he saw a jackknifed tractor trailer and three cars in the ditch on the way home- all going in the other direction, toward Dnepro. Apparently in the morning, he was the only car on the road, although it took longer than normal to drive in- and he had wait while Victor found men to carry the milk at his first stop. Since Garry’s back is better now, he wasn’t taking any chances on reinjuring it. He left the milk in the car at Morningstar until after the service; since it had already started, and then found men to carry it in- his plan to drive it to the door was foiled- the guard was not at his post (he had given him a gift of a bottle of milk last week.)

The boys were disappointed when they went outside today- they couldn’t finish the snow fort they started yesterday, the texture of the snow has changed from that nice packing snow of yesterday. So they did their biology tests after lunch. (Congratulations on 98% on the immune system Jonah- best grade this year!)

Maybe the internet will come back up so I can upload this post! Not yet – just woke up at 1:30 am. Hey its 5:30 Sunday afternoon in Manitoba, hi everyone- what’s for dinner? Internet and phone service has fianlly come back up- Monday afternoon 2:30.